Careerbuilder.com is a pure play model and has influenced other .com businesses like Monster and local employment sites. Careerbuilder is the U.S.'s largest online job site and puts over 1.6 million jobs in front of poised job seekers all over the world. The vision and mission statement reads "We are changing the way companies around the world recruit their most important asset: their people. Our mission is to be the global leader in online recruitment advertising by being an employee-driven, customer-focused organization that provides the best rate of return to our stakeholders." Careerbuilder was founded in 1995 at NetStart Inc. In 2002 they became the industry leader.
Although Careerbuilder now has sales offices in physical form around the country, I am using Careerbuilder as a pure play example because they began as one. Their main business is
still conducted online. I think this is a good example of growth for such a business. A company can start off small with no physical existence and grow to be the industry leader and world influencer. Gannett Co., Inc, Tribune Company, The McClatchy Company and Microsoft Corp all have a share in the ownership of Careerbuilder.com. It also partners with 150 newspapers and leading portals such as American Online and MSN. Careerbuilder and its subsidiaries operate in the U.S., Europe, Canada, and Asia.
Careerbuilder uses both the Affiliate Model and the Advertising Model to generate revenue. One the Careerbuilder site there is actually a section describing their Affiliate Program. Careerbuilder integrates their job search tool and links with other sites in exchange for earnings in commission for the traffic those sites drive to Career
builder.com. According to Careerbuilder there are 3 ways members of the affiliate program can earn revenue. 1.Applications to Job Postings- job seekers can apply to as many jobs as they like, and members are paid for the total applications received. Applying to jobs is free for the job seeker. 2. Job Postings-3. Consumer Products- Products like CB Resume, Resume Direct, and Sure Check help aid the job seeker in their job search process. And members get a commission for each sale as well. Working with so many partners Careerbuilder must also integrate specific banner exchange, pay per click, or revenue sharing aspects as well. Members are compensated for every online job posting that is purchased and posted on CareerBuilder.com through the online form.
Careerbuilder also uses the advertising model with its partners and other companies. Careerbuilder draws in revenue through advertising by convincing other companies to advertise on the site. In the advertising section of Careerbuilder's website it states "we deliver a very 'Internet-Involved' audience with a high propensity to shop, buy and dig for information online, exactly the kind of web users you would want to reach with your advertising message.
Our continuously growing network includes over 1,000 partners, and 138 newspapers and 40 television stations. Our web partners include major publishers like MSN, AOL, USA Today and Google as well as diversity websites such as Equality Magazines and MSN Latino. Because of the wide-ranging nature of our partner sites, CareerBuilder users have considerably diverse profiles and are highly Internet savvy." This is obviously drawing in customers to advertise with Careerbuilder and has profited them well. Careerbuilder has done its own research and provides the demographics and user behavior of its site visitors for advertisers to view. Advertisers get options to advertise depending on specific demographics, geography, categories, and key words. Careerbuilder offers creative placements in banner, skyscraper, leaderboard, rectangle, text link, and email styles. It doesn't sound like a bad deal to me!
Careerbuilder has done a significant amount of research and the results definitely show. In order to evaluate the success of their business Careerbuilder should be measuring its performance by the number of people that actually get jobs because of Careerbuilder. This can be measured in a number of different ways, and a few different aspects can be measured at the same time. Careerbuilder needs to look at the number of qualified people posting resumes, the number and type of jobs they are applying to, the number and types of jobs available, the time period this takes place, the duration of time it takes before a job is offered and taken, etc. I'm sure Careerbuilder has these statistics already but I cannot find the results on the website.
Either way, during my search through the Careerbuilder site I have found some very interesting jobs myself. I will be graduating next December and I now know that I will come back to this site to look for my own jobs. I like the way it is set up with different search options. With the whole economy talk and job loses and blah blah blah, it doesn't seem the same on the website. There are tons of jobs that have been posted in the last day or two, even in a smaller area like Ithaca. I think this will be a very valuable tool for me in the future.
