TimesJobs Claims No. 1 Position; Kicks Off “Everyone is quitting naukri” Ad Campaign

By Sahad PV Apr. 16, 2007, 7:22am 51 Comments

Updated by Rafat: We’re closing the comments on this post….too much mud-slinging.
The battle for the number one position in online recruitment classifieds market has taken a new turn. TimesJobs.com has taken out an advertisement saying “Everyone is quitting naukri”, probably a pun-intended campaign against Naukri.com. TimesJobs claimed 3.075 million resumes which are 0-6 months old, while it said the the nearest rival (read Naukri) has only 2.73 million active resumes.
In a page one article (a plug job for the group company) in The Economic Times, TimesJobs.com has claimed that it is the number one jobs site with 150 million page views a month, while the nearest competitor has only 120 million page views a month. The article quotes Vineet Jain, MD of the Times Group: “We just put our heads down and worked hard. A smartly differentiated product, backed by a great team, cutting edge technology and superb communication did the trick for TimesJobs.com. Our understanding of new media helped us cracking the market in less than three years.”
Now the battle for number one position is being hijacked by TimesJobs. It used to be Naukri versus Monster India earlier. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, MD of Info Edge Ltd, the owner of Naukri.com, could not be reached for comments. However, our sources suggest that Naukri is “reviewing the matter, and will come out with a response in a few days time”. A rival of TimesJobs told ContentSutra that the company has encouraged duplication of resumes.
What are the options for Naukri now: It can either come up with its own campaign with their own set of numbers to counter TimesJobs claim. Or Naukri can take TimesJobs to court for using the phrase “Everyone is quitting naukri”. An industry source told ContentSutra: “The latter option is a possibility but may not be the smartest option, though.” So it’s likely Naukri will come up with a counter campaign. Watch this space.

Sanjeev Bikhchandani, MD of Naukri.com, responds:
1. As per Alexa and Comscore, Naukri remains by far the leading job site in India. On Alexa the three month reach of Naukri at 855 today is thrice that of TimesJobs which is at 257. According to Comscore, Naukri got more than 2.3 million unique users in February as compared to slightly more than 1.3 million of Timesjobs.
2. In fact, as per Alexa, TimesJobs has slipped to fourth place behind Clickjobs.
3. The statistic that TimesJobs is referring to is “Active” resumes in the last six months, not total resumes. Here TimesJobs has a different definition of “Active” as compared to Naukri. In TimesJobs, if you open a job alert email and click on a job in the email to go to the site you are treated as an active user. In Naukri, you are an active user only if you update your CV or apply for a job or are a new registrant. We do not count clicking on a job in a job alert as being “Active”.
4. Finally, TimesJobs is encouraging people to register more than once on their site.

Update: Alexa is not the best of the measurement tool. However, it’s the most popular. See a check done by us below. Naukri is far ahead in page views. And what is also surprising is ClickJobs.com (of BharatMatrimony group) has shot into the top league.