Get paid for getting information
ClickJobs.com, the job portal, has come up with a new business model that has an incentive for both employers and job seekers.

By Shubhdarshani Mitra
As the worries over persistent job losses and stagnant job market continue, placement agencies are vying to hold on to their businesses. The recruitment industry is facing a slump with negative growth. According to naukri.com, there has been a decline in the overall job index by 4.7 per cent in March’09 to April’09, with most of the industries seeing a marginal drop in the hiring activity as compared to Mar’09.

In such times of economic slowdown, ClickJobs.com has come up with a new business model, which aims to tap the potential market during recessionary times.

“The new model comes from the blue ocean strategy, where we plan to take up challenges in the job portal industry. Currently the scenario is that there are limited number of job seekers and employers who are on job portal. Our current business model is to attract the employers to the job portal. This model has been currently started in India and in the US market and we are hoping that it will become successful,” says Murugavel Janakiraman, CEO, ClickJobs.com (part of Consim Info Pvt Ltd).

As per the new model, you allot a specific amount to a resume, depending upon the profession and experience, among other parameters. If an employer likes a resume which is worth Rs 100, it will pay the amount in that case. Out of which 50 per cent of the money will go to the candidate, and the rest will go to Clickjobs.com. The job postings and responses would be free and the employer will need to pay only if they want to contact the candidate.

A candidate who has posted his/her resume on the job portal also gets paid if his/her friend or a friend of friend, who in turn has posted the resume, is contacted.

The idea is to increase the pool of resources on the job portal. Currently, only a small percentage of the potential employers and seekers post on the job portals.

“The online recruitment space has become so segmented that only around 30,000 employers use job portals out of seven lakh SMEs and private companies in India, which produce Rs 3.5 billion of the job portal market…The new model can translate into a big business opportunity creating a long tail,” says Janakiraman.

ClickJobs.com is trying to get a patent their new business model.

“The new business model is the first-of-its-kind in the world. Nowhere in the world does an individual get paid for getting information. We are trying to get the patent for this in India and in the US market,” he adds.