Jobs site faces the big boys

Matt Walker, CEO of jobs.co.nz. Photo / Supplied

Businessman Matt Walker is going head-to-head with big players Trade Me and Seek.co.nz through his recruitment site that recently won him a young entrepreneur award.

The 25-year-old Wellingtonian won a Manukau Institute of Technology Pacific Business Award for jobs.co.nz - a website that uses social networking to promote itself and link candidates to employers.

The site launched in January and directly competes with Trade Me and Seek.co.nz for advertisers and users.

Walker said site traffic was growing steadily - in October it clocked 50,000 unique browsers and had 12,000 registered users.

Compared to the others, jobs.co.nz is a very small player in the online job sector, but Walker is hoping to significantly grow its market share, predominantly through sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked In.

Walker said being the chief executive of his own company at 25 was daunting but he liked a challenge.

"Sometimes when I sit down and think about what we are doing I have a mini freak-out.

"It's amazing what you can achieve when you just give something a crack. I've got a lot of experience around. We have a board of directors who have old heads and a few grey hairs."

He said market research had shown recent graduates preferred to be linked to prospective employers through social networking and receive notifications through text and email, which happened automatically once a person was registered on the site.

Information is collected on what industry a person is interested in, what skills they have and locations they want to work in.

Once a job meeting those descriptions has been posted, notifications are sent out.

Walker said this was what set his business apart from Trade Me and Seek.co.nz.

"As people move more and more of their lives online, I think it's important that jobs are available where people's friends are.

"Social media is the fastest growing trend online. As people move more information online it becomes important those tools are being used for job-seeking."

The company is set to break even by the end of the 2011 financial year.

Before jobs.co.nz was launched, Walker ran a site called the CV bank, which gave employers an opportunity to look through thousands of potential employees' CVs.

Walker provides the same service through the site, as well as providing advice and assistance on how to build CVs.