Work is slow for online recruiters
ChinaHR was up for sale by its largest shareholder Monster Worldwide Inc. (NYSE: MWW) in early November. But so far no company is willing to take over ChinaHR.
According to the company’s third quarter financial report, Monster’s operating revenue in the third quarter has significantly decreased by 10.5 percent and the company suffered a net loss of $194.2 million, of which ChinaHR contributes $233 million – partially offset by Monster’s other more lucrative holdings.
In fact, ChinaHR is not the only online recruitment company trapped in a slump in China. Data from iResearch reveals that three Chinese online recruitment giants – 51job.com, zhaopin.com and ChinaHR.com, all suffered from decreasing visitors for the first time since 2011.
The mostly homogenous services provided by online recruitment companies are losing power to attract clients with the growth of social networking websites.
According to the Global Employees Index published by Kelly Services, 80 percent of Chinese employees visit social networking websites everyday, 21 percent of which are using these networks to look for jobs.
At present, the platform gathering the most global professional talent is the business networking website LinkedIn, founded at the end of 2002 and publicly listed in 2011. Now it hosts 187 million registered users and 109 million unique visitors per month.
The LinkedIn pattern was copied by large numbers of Chinese professional networking websites after its successful IPO, including wealink.com, tianji.com, dajie.com and wolonge.com.
“Among so many professional networking websites, it’s difficult to judge who will win the appreciation of most users at the moment,” said one analyst.
It was reported that the registered users on professional networking websites have exceeded 70 million and is expected to reach 100 million in three months.
The number of Chinese professionals is huge and is rapidly growing with the development of economy. However, the vertical social service platforms targeting professionals are still in the initial stages, said Han Hui, CEO wolonge.com.
Traditional online recruitment cannot solve the information gap between recruiting companies and job seekers, while professional networking websites can provide a platform for them to know each other more and to respect each other