Can Google threaten Seek?

Posted by +Tim Cincotta

End of financial year is proving to be the silly season in more ways than one in 2013. Seek are increasing their rates by 5.5% (double GDP) while also limiting how people use their system and MyCareer are now giving away ads. LinkedIn, just continue to be LinkedIn, although with their job board expanding rapidly, don’t expect them to sit on their hands for long.  In New Zealand I eagerly await to see TradeMe’s next move.


The sleeping giant in the Australia at present appear to be applydirect.com.au. Why? While other job board strut their brands around, increase rates/give ads away, Apply Direct fly under the radar and go where the real traffic is – Google. They also work directly with the hiring company, not recruiters and embrace link-outs – not try and shut them down, but that’s another story. 

Over 7 Million job searches started a month in Australia with Google last year.   If you have a careers website are you just relying on Seek to direct traffic to it for applications? Seek are trying to cut the link out, so is it wise to rely on this?

So here’s a question for you. How much do you spend advertising on job boards and how many hits would that buy your careers page through Google traffic? 

If you have a good e-recruitment system, you should have the ability to build a strong candidate database of your own and central to building this database is a strong careers website that can collect this candidate data.

There are things Google won’t pick up as effectively as going on a job board (ie. Specific key words and salary ranges), however with a good database of candidates, you should already have a pool to select from the next time you have a tough role to fill and who know, you may have no need to use a job board.

So why not think outside the square? Are you always keen to hear from good candidates in your industry? Then widen your net and see what you can catch with search engine traffic.

Tim Cincotta is the Sales Director for Talent Propeller New Zealand. Connect with Tim on LinkedIn here or read Tim's other blog posts here.