Despite the economic downturn that the UK as a whole has experienced over the last couple of years there have been some positive stories of commercial survival and growth. What is more encouraging and somewhat surprising is the example covered here derives from the employment sector ,which has been hardest hit and has saw unemployment grow and rear it’s head with echoes of the dark old days of the 1980’s and early 1990’s .
The company in question is the independent Scottish Online job board, Scottishjobsonthe.net which operates from the centre of Glasgow and was launched in 2008 by Lorna Robb who had formerly been pivotal in launching Totaljobs.com Scottish office.
Scottishjobsonthe.net was launched at a time when job boards were appearing on the marketplace at a frequency of at least 2 or 3 a month as the economy boomed and demand for staff was white hot as the growth within the UK seemed never ending.
The sector witnessed the demise of numerous recruitment offices and agencies and the trimming down of staff within those that survived. Private companies too cut budgets and put a halt to the hiring of new staff .The market place was diminishing fast. The big media owned job boards saw there vacancy numbers fall by around 50% sometimes more .And the smaller independent online operations which had launched in the hope of riding the boom of employment disappeared overnight leaving homepages with jobs and vacancies long gone filled or redundant or domain names that no longer existed. In stark contrast however, Lorna and her two man team were adamant that Scottishjobsonthe.net was going to survive, evolve and grow.
Lorna explained : “The opportunity which the internet offered was too good a chance to miss with regards setting up something independent and run from Scotland (,sounds like a party political broadcast) but joking aside we think these factors were central. Many job boards did come and go, maybe thinking rich pickings were easy to come by but as were are still in business and have ridden the storm we think we got our model right. We understand the market and being on the ground you get a feel and vibe of how to approach things .Offering an alternative to the larger media backed operations which are fundamentally our competition means we can offer a flexible view on price as we don’t have shareholders needs to be met but also our ethic of going that extra mile was pivotal and is something which big business sometimes misses or doesn’t understand.”
She added.” We realised that times were going to be tough so we worked on the view that that there would be a recovery period but in the meantime we worked on the site and on various marketing strategies which would aid sales and the growth side of the business. We liased with our programmer and developers to maximise the sites search engine attractiveness to increase our presence on the net (basically increase relevant traffic to the site). In addition we have created a 3 year plan for the site which has certain objectives in place for example the recruitment of more staff , this for example should be happening soon. “.Lorna went on to add “We realise our ambitions and if we continue to focus on them we will continue to grow and ultimately increase market share etc. Our revenues have grown in line with what we expected but more encouraging are some of the ‘big names’ now using the site .Their testimonials are going to be important for us in the marketplace as evidence that we are a company that can give agencies and companies good value and that we can deliver what we say.”
So as the economy begins to correct itself and employment shows signs of a recovery the prudent business model of scottishjobsonthe.net augurs well for it’s future .It has not only stabilised itself over the tricky last couple of years but more so has given itself a very strong chance of becoming a market leader in Scotland .Just watch this space.
0 comments:
Post a Comment