Jobs are all we need

How many job sites are there on the internet? Well, to come to a rough estimate, I got it from CheezHead that there are around 40,000 jobsites only in the United States of America. Then there are offline agencies and consultancies.

From this figure I was really interested in the number of job sites in India, so I contacted Naukri.com on twitter and had to wait for a week to get the numbers. What came made the wait completely worthwhile. A long list of job sites - not everything, but the most helpful list I could had ever got.The list of jobsites did not have some of the new sites like ours who have jumped onto the hiring scene in India but it was still good to get an estimate. All this got me interested to come out with my own little market survey. I have only taken assumptions and have neglected factors like digital media out reach and literacy and willingness to go online and search for a job.

Also, though this survey might come across as very amateurish, it does serve one purpose - it makes for a good read

So, to start with - India holds 1 billion souls with a population density of 324 persons per square kilometer. There are 31.7% people in the age group of 0-14 years, 63.5% in the age group of 15-64 years and 4.8% 65 years and above.

Now, if we consider only people in the age group of 15-64 look for jobs online and that too not all of them. So, that leaves us with 349,785,804 males and 326,289,402 females. Now, considering the social factor, I assume only 2% of the females will ever be online to look for a job and only 10% of the given male population. Which is:

349,785,804/10=3,49,78,580 males, and

326,289,402/20=1,63,14,000 females

So, this gives us approximately 5 crore people who would come visit job sites. A very inflated figure but good enough for this article.

As we all know that the space is dominated by major players like Naukri, Monster, Times etc:Most of the job sites that cater to similar companies have similar jobs. Apart from job sites, the positions are also handled by offline consultants and agents who work like mercenaries.

So, from the 156 job sites that we have; catering to a wide spectrum ranging from offshore jobs to travel and cruise jobs; they share the 5 crore people between them. Close to 200 sites with 5 major players controlling majority of the market stake between them is an estuary for me - full of food

What I am pointing at is that the market is big enough to absorb the number of people there are and there is place for more players - the only thing we need is more jobs. If there were more companies coming up in different sectors, then there would be job sites concentrated to these different sectors and the growth of the hiring industry will be directly proportional to the growth of the sector and in turn the economy.

A very good example is the VAS sector that took off in India big time. A lot of job positions opened up and consequently a lot of job sites filling these positions. From the information I have accumulated, these sites are doing as well as the sector.

Brave people, who make smart companies doing things that are different are the need of the hour.

The number is definitely more than the 5 crores deduced above and the chance to make moolah is exactly the same. There have been many surveys telling us that the online recruitment space is crowded and others preaching just the opposite. I say, if you can run a job site that concentrates on one sector and have focus, then there is place for a lot of Naukri, Times and Monsters in India even today.