Home : Newsletters : 2004 : September
Monday saw the announcement of the Hot Group's accquisition of Workthing from the Guardian Media Group for £6 million. The accquisition also includes PeopleBank, the supplier of corporate careers sites to employers including Barclays and Peugeot Citroen. The Guardian newspaper reported that in the year end to March Workthing.com generated sales of £1.5 million and PeopleBank achieved a turnover of £850,000 in the same period.
Tony Reeves, CEO and Chairman of the Hot Group, commented "Today's accquisition makes hotonline the UK's number one online recruitment provider in terms of numbers of monthly jobseekers and by the size of its candidate database". There's currently no independent verification of the traffic levels of the Hot Group's sites, but Workthing and PeopleBank's last ABC E audit gave them 644,000 Unique Users and Workthing feature regularly in alternative measurements such as HitWise. Despite the lack of independent figures there is no doubt that this latest accquisition establishes the Hot Group as a significant player within the UK online recruitment market.
The Hot Group's network of sites includes ten specialist sites and two generic sites - www.jobsearch.co.uk and www.jobsin.co.uk. In addition to adding Workthing to this network the accquisition of PeopleBank gives the Hot Group a presence in the expanding corporate careers and recruitment software market. Add this to their presence in the traditional offline recruitment consultancy market through agencies such as Parkside Recruitment and the result is a growing organisation operating in may different areas of the recruitment market.
One of the keys to the success of this accquisition will be the successful integration of Workthing into Hot Group network of sites. Currently advertisements placed with the group feature on the two generic sites and the relevant sector specific sites. How will Workthing be integrated into this package? Will it become a third generic site within the network along side Jobs In and Job Search? Will all vacancies appearing on the netwrok of specialist sites also appear on Workthing? Alternatively could the three generic sites be integrated to become one larger brand? The answers to these questions should emerge as the integration commences.
While the Hot Group's online recruitment presence has increased the Guardian Media Group's has decreased. Our March newsletter looked at the dominance in terms of ownership in the online recruitment market of traditional media owners. The situation has now changed and the Guardian Media Group are left with the recently re-designed Guardian Jobs and a stake in Fish4Jobs through their regional newspaper group. Many commentators have been predicting consolidation for the last few years and this week's developments are a clear example of that consolidation - resulting in the UK's highest profile online recruitment sites being owned by Reed Elsevier, Associated New Media, TMP, a syndicate of regional newspapers and the latest major player - the Hot Group.
Online recruitment course for recruitment consultancies
We still have a few places left on our 30th September course that is specifically designed for recruitment consultancies.
Attending the course will enable you to effectively target online job seekers using a variety of online marketing techniques, maximise the effectiveness of your own site, learn about advanced techniques that you can use to search the internet for candidates and reduce the number of irrelevant responses you receive from your online activities.
Comments from those that have previously attended the course include...
Best International "Excellent course - found the advanced techniques excellent, especially considering the current market"
RGS "No tech speak, kept it simple and to the point, found the whole day very useful and informative"
Matchtech "Given new ideas and outlook on how to develop an online campaign"
The course takes place in central London on September 30th. Places are available at £450 per delegate.
Please call 020 7801 6266 for more information or to book your place now.