A random call by yours truly to Vikramjit Singh Sahaye, who was a general manager with Yellowjobs.com, revealed that he had recently quit the recruitment industry.
A random call by yours truly to Vikramjit Singh Sahaye, who was a general manager with Yellowjobs.com, revealed that he had recently quit the recruitment industry.
Sahaye said he had no idea about the current status of the job portal he was with.
But DNA Money learnt from some other contacts that Yellowjobs.com shut down some weeks ago, though the website is still in existence, albeit without being updated.
The exact reason for the closure is not very clear, but people associated with the Noida-based portal say the fund-raising plans of Yellow Media, the Bangkok-based mother company of the portal, failed.
Anand R Iyer, chief executive officer of portal JobStreet.com India, said there are no opportunities left in portals as there is hardly any hiring happening.
“We are not paying much interest to our portal business now and looking at growing our recruitment automation software and recruitment process outsourcing businesses,” Iyer said.
But Sanjeev Bikhchandani, co-founder and CEO of Naukri.com, refutes the argument against portals. “We have over 34,000 clients and they are very much hiring. We launched a campus hiring site called FirstNaukri a few months ago, which is also doing good.”
However, even Bikhchandani is not too optimistic about the near future. “I can’t give any figures on the rate of growth, but the next two quarters will be tough, post which the business would ease out,” he said.
Economic slowdown and the subsequent freeze on recruitments has indeed dented business, say experts.
According to them, the very model on which job portals work is flawed because it comes apart in hard times such as now.
“In good times, any business model works. But now, with hardly any job being created, there is no way for job seekers to find out whether their resume has even been looked at or not,” says Yogesh Saigal, a New Delhi-based human resource consultant.
Several job seekers like Varun Mody appear disinclined towards portals.
“In challenging times like these, expecting a job from a portal is like finding a needle in a haystack. There are very low chances of actually getting a job call, forget an offer,” he says.
Mody has been scouting for a job for the last few weeks, after having lost his earlier job with an insurance firm.
Management graduate Seema Shinde, who has also been job-hunting since her graduation in 2008, has not found any success with job portals.
The Mumbai-based, 24-year-old has not received a single call despite having posted her resume on a top rung portal a good ten months back. “I don’t know whether my resume has even been looked at by anyone or not. I’m in touch with some consultants as well, who say they will inform me of openings,” says Shinde.
According to a recruitment consultant based in Mumbai, who did not wish to be named, companies that are looking for fresh hirings are also relying more on consultants than portals.
“Unless job seekers get a push from consultants, it’s not possible for them to get a job in this tight situation. Portals lack that human push,” the consultant said.
Industry professionals say the job portal industry, which was estimated to have had a turnover of over Rs 325 crore in 2008, up 25-30% from the previous year, is drooping drastically.
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