Contemporary Research in E-Marketing_4

68 Swami These observations helped Bikhchandani figure out that there is a huge frag-mented database of jobs with different placement consultants and jobs are a high-interest category. If someone could consolidate the database of live jobs and put it in one place and continuously update it, that would be a very powerful product and money could be made out of this. Bikhchandani realized this by the end of 1989 and early 1990. He quit his job in October 1990 and along with a partner started the company Info Edge (India) Private Limited. This company was initially into databases, trademark searching services, report writing, and so on. But the jobs database idea remained dormant in his mind. Why the Name Naukri.com? While there are many factors that contributed to making Naukri.com a success story, part of the credit goes to its unique nomenclature. The Naukri.com team had intentions of giving the Web site an English name. A number of names were thought of, such as, jobsindia, indiajobs, employindia, indiaemploy, careerindia, careersindia, indiacareers, employmentIndia, and recruitmentindia. To their disappointment, however, all these names were already registered. Therefore, a compromise had to be made and a decision was made to name the Web site Naukri. Opponents of this name said that this name was down market and had the connotation of “servitude” (naukar) attached to it. But the name was retained because of its memorability and uniqueness. Interestingly, Sanjeev Bikhchandani considers the brand name to be an asset for his company. Bikhchandani says, “It’s turned out to be a great asset for us. At that time, I thought it would be a handicap.” Moreover, he did not believe that the Hindi name would be a handicap in the southern part of India for the simple reason that Hindi movies are released in south India and they are avidly watched there. Why Naukri.com was not Affected by the Dot-Com Meltdown The parent company of Naukri.com is 14 years old. It launched Naukri.com in March 1997 and operated for 3 years without venture capital. Since venture capital funding was not taken upfront, the company had to make money in order to survive. Dot-coms themselves are just about 7 years old and were not fashionable at the time when Naukri.com was launched. Therefore, by the time dot-coms became popular, Naukri.com was already profitable and without venture capital funding too. Venture capital funding was taken merely to scale up an existing profitable model. Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Job Search at Naukri.com 69 Bikhchandani claims the dot-com bust in fact helped Naukri.com. When competitors came to India, they had a high cost model and did not know how to make money because of their unfamiliarity with the market. Naukri.com, on the other hand, was already making money. Naukri.com did not spend its money on advertising. It just put it in a bank, put feet on the street, hired salespeople, built client relationships, and opened new offices. When the meltdown actually happened, competitors could not get a second round of funding whereas Naukri.com did not need a second round of funding. This helped Naukri.com in beating competition. During the meltdown, foreign competitors such as monster, jobstreet, and jobsdb, came to India with the promise of sending Indian technical manpower abroad. The meltdown resulted in a reduced demand for Indian technical manpower. The foreign portals then lost interest in the Indian market. There was additional pressure on them in the United States. Bikhchandani says, “We used the last 4 years of meltdown very, very profitably in consolidating our business, building our brand, moving in a planned manner, not spending our money foolishly, and really strengthening our position. So the meltdown actually helped us because it really killed our competition.” Organizational Structure The organization chart of Naukri.com is presented in Figure 2. Figure 2. Organization chart of Naukri.com Chief Executive Officer Heads of various departments (IT, Marketing, Operations, HR) Regional Manager (North) Area Managers Team Members (Senior Executives) Regional Manager (South) Area Managers Team Members (Senior Executives) Regional Manager (West) Area Managers Team Members (Senior Executives) Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 70 Swami Human Resource Management at Naukri.com The profiles of various management personnel at Naukri.com is presented in Appendix 1. It is clear from the management profiles that Naukri.com has a fairly sophisticated pool of talent in its management. The work environment at Naukri.com is also very open and friendly. According to the HR manager, problems are resolved by discussions. Even if it is an interdepartmental issue, appointments are not required for discussions with the personnel of the other department. For instance, if the marketing team was working on product development, it would need to work in close coordination with technology because technology is ultimately going to deploy the product over the net. If the marketing people have any queries, then they can straight away walk up to the technology people and get the issue resolved. People at Naukri.com are given opportunities to learn even at the cost of making mistakes. In the words of the HR manager, “People here get a lot of opportunity to learn by making mistakes, I would say. Because a lot of responsibility is given and space is given, that you try out things and try to learn on your own.” The management at Naukri.com also encourages idea generation. When a new member joins a team, he/she is only assigned a task. How to accomplish the task is his/her prerogative. This prompts the new team member to formulate new ideas to do the assigned task in the best possible way. Since organizational issues are recognized as one of the major challenge areas that Naukri.com is facing, during recruitment, attention is paid to ensure that the selected candidate has the right kind of attitude that would help him/her fit into the system. Says the HR manager, “If the attitude is right, people will always learn the skills of doing the task.” The regional offices themselves hire employees from campus recruitment for the regional offices, while the head office helps the regional offices when lateral recruitment is to be done. This assistance is provided to them in terms of short-listing the candidates and conducting telephone interviews. The regional offices themselves proceed with the final interview and selection process. Product/Service Offerings of Naukri.com The products offered by Naukri.com are aimed at two broad groups of customers: (1) recruiters and (2) job seekers. The products for each group are explained below. Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Job Search at Naukri.com 71 Products for Recruiters Naukri.com offers a range of services to recruiters. A brief description of each product/service follows: a. Best Places to Work: An exclusive section for top companies, this is the first section that appears on the Naukri.com home page. Naukri.com develops a career micro-site for the customer company with a link from the home page. This ensures maximum branding and visibility to a company’s recruitment requirements. This package provides the Web-enabled Re-sponse Management Software, and e-Apps, free of charge. b. Job Gallery: A listing in this section makes the client company directly accessible from the Naukri.com home page. Vacancy listings may be customized like the vacancies in a newspaper. Client company is seen with other quality organizations and vacancies are highlighted. c. Hot Vacancies: This is the premium job listing service provided by Naukri.com to its clients. This gives the client companies’ vacancies greater visibility in a less cluttered space and they get listed with other quality jobs. Their listing gets covered in the Classifieds section, where free Job Alerts are done for the client companies’ vacancies and a logo is included on listings. d. Classifieds: Designed to be brief and to the point, the format ensures easy access of information. Vacancies are listed in specific and relevant categories, thereby ensuring a higher degree of relevant response. e. Résumé Database Access: RESDEX, for short, this product makes the client company’s recruitment exercise simple, targeted, and focused as an “in your hands” solution. The client may search profiles that are specific to the client’s requirements and access fresh and active job seekers anytime from anywhere. RESDEX contains the highest quality résumés available in India today. f. Electronic Application: This product is also referred to as e-Apps. The e-Apps Response Management System reduces time spent on managing applications by 80%. CVs are collected in a database format, which can be used to filter out relevant candidates from a large pool in a matter of minutes. The first four services are job-posting services. The point to note here is that all of the above services/products offered by Naukri.com to employers are paid products/services. Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 72 Swami Products for Job Seekers Naukri.com offers a range of services to job seekers. A brief description of each product/service follows. a. Résumé Flash: Naukri.com has a database of 1,000 leading placement consultants in India. For the requisite fee, Naukri.com sends the job seeker’s résumé to 800 or 1,000 placement consultants. The choice of the number of consultants to whom the job seeker wants to have his/her résumé sent is entirely his/hers. b. Résumé Development: Naukri.com’s experts help the job seeker to develop a powerful and effective résumé. This service is also rendered for a fee. c. Job Mail: All the jobs posted on the site are first matched with a job seeker’s profile and if there is a fit, the job listing is e-mailed to the prospective employee. This service may be subscribed to for a 3- or 6-month period. d. Job Alert: All the vacancies that Naukri.com receives are mailed to the job seeker. This is a free service. e. Résumé Display: In the Paid Résumé Display option, the job seeker’s CV is visible to all recruiters/HR Managers/Placement Consultants who visit Naukri.com looking for candidates free of charge to them. This service may be subscribed to for a period from 6 months to 1 year. f. Résumé Manager: This is a free service in which the job seeker’s CV is visible only to Naukri.com’s clients who have purchased the RESDEX product from Naukri.com. In addition to the above products/services, Naukri.com also offers certain services such as short-listing candidates and organizing walk-in interviews which no other medium does. This makes Naukri.com an end-to-end recruitment solutions provider. Technology Involved Because the services offered by Naukri.com are deployed over the Internet, it requires a very sound technological backup. The organization has a 20-strong team of technology persons, out of which 16 are on the software development side. This team is entrusted with the responsibility of continuously improving and upgrading existing products and adding new products. Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ... - tailieumienphi.vn