It's getting hot out there in the jobs portal arena. TimesJobs.com fired the first salvo when a couple of months ago it went to town with a print campaign declaring: "Everyone's Quitting Naukri", a not-so-subtle dig at competing recruitment portal, naukri.com. Last fortnight, the Times Group portal took another dig at the same competitor with a "Nauk Out" offer that's targeted at small & medium-scale enterprises (SMEs). Says R. Sundar, President, Times Business Solutions: "They (SMEs) are being stimulated by the 'Nauk Out' offer to take a demo and we believe that once they try our products and services, they will stick with us."
Apart from the free demonstration, "Nauk Out" is offering free holidays (two days, three nights) to recruiters to some 45-odd domestic destinations apart from international venues like Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Mauritius and Pattaya. TimesJobs claims to have distributed 5,000 such vouchers and has plans to enroll 8,000-10,000 new clients through the campaign, which will run till end-June.
The company has earmarked Rs 50-crore budget for marketing and promotion for entire year, which is roughly five times the portal's monthly turnover.
The shorter point of needling naukri.com, of course, is to highlight TimesJobs as the #1 player in the online recruitment arena. Says Sundar: "Our numbers are so strong that the competition cannot respond directly, so they resort to quoting non-relevant statistics, which have no bearing on the value provided by job portals to clients.
It is the quality number of active resumes that define value to clients, and this is where we beat competition hands-down and claim our status as the 'number one job portal' in India." Counters Sanjeev Bikhchandani, CEO & Co-Founder, naukri.com: "Naukri is the clear market leader. TimesJobs is a distant third. Their claim of being #1 is a bit like Bangladesh claiming to be #1 in cricket." This battle is far from over.
