The Mini-Monsters are Coming

By Jörg Überla, Guest Author

[Note: Jorg reports from Germany on the European Online Jobs scene. Evidently, a lot of Concept Arbitrage under way on the other side of the Atlantic.]

Regarding the marketing and financial power of large recruitment sites like Monster, it seems hard to establish competitors. But the opposite is true, at least in Europe. We at Wellington Partners see tremendous opportunities to invest in young companies who have developed innovative business concepts in the field of recruitment and jobs – something like Jobs 2.0.

For example Experteer, a Munich-based company which focuses on the top 10 percent of job seekers and professionals. This young company puts the traditional business model in this field upside down: Posting a job advertisement is free, job seekers pay a subscription to use the service. A highly skilled, yet completely underserved customer segment has embraced this new opportunity very fast; you can already find here nearly 20,000 job opportunities for the German market alone – and the number is rising.

One can draw three conclusions from this success:

1. The Web business is contestable! With an innovative concept, you are able to establish yourself even in matured markets like the online recruitment business. Another good example for this contestability is the success of vertical search engines or next generation search engines in the home base of Google. I will report on that in my next column.

2. The Web market favors new concepts, not new competition. The best way to gain market share in a specific market is to redefine this market and to offer a new concept, which meets unmet customer needs.

3. In the Web business, you can still find a bulk of unmet needs. This means: It is a great time for entrepreneurs.
Definitely, such great times for entrepreneurs are on its way in the recruitment business – and some of them even go far beyond the classic “9 to 5” job. These new concepts also embrace the shift from employeeship to entrepreneurship in Europe, as more and more people prefer to work on their own account. London-Based OrderWork has built an electronic marketplace for the IT market where freelancers can offer their services to companies of each size, multinationals as well as small shops. After the successful launch in the UK, the team has just started their business in the largest European market, Germany, and is looking forward to gain access to further markets.

You see: The Mini-Monsters are coming.