There seems to be a few misconceptions regarding my view of SEEK. It appears that in 2024, you can’t criticise their account management, their communication, the scam that is variable pricing, and take the p*ss out of their awards, without being accused of not liking something. For the record, I genuinely have no beef with SEEK. In fact, I think they do some excellent things, and certainly deliver a strong ROI. However, and maybe this is a cultural clash of being a misplaced pom, I think that we can mostly like people and things, be honest about what we don’t like, and still all be friends. It is a very Kiwi thing to worry what you say for fear of upsetting people. Just look how often we’re all ghosted instead of receiving honest feedback.
I mention SEEK because this week I joined them for an update on what they’re doing in the world of AI. Now I don’t find AI particularly interesting, and what SEEK are doing is more putting AI to work instead of building Skynet, so this isn’t a blog about AI. If you want that, you can ask ChatGPT to write you one. Instead this blog is about the futility of trying to beat SEEK.
History has shown that taking on the might of SEEK in New Zealand is a gallant, yet ultimately financially destructive endeavour. It has been, and is being tried, too many times for me to list here, but some standouts have been; Jobs.co.nz: the original kiwi-own(ed) job board, which was loved by all but generated almost zero placements for anyone. YUDU: An absolute total misadventure from NZME who decided to build a job board without speaking to a recruiter and assumed job seekers wanted to read their latest article on Air New Zealand before applying. Trade Jobs NZ; a newer entry that I noticed spent loads of money advertising on the back of busses, but will probably limp along until it’s eventually put down like a sickly old mongrel. There’s now ZEIL who are early doors (but more on them later), and international players like Indeed and Jora jobs that do nothing. There’s one-man-bands out of Christchurch, and even LinkedIn trying to take our money to post jobs to unemployed strategy consultants. The one thing they have in common is that none of them have ever really worked. The closest anyone has come to breaking this monopoly is TradeMe Jobs, which has every advantage you can imagine; a kiwi success story which everyone uses that lists stuff – houses, cars, stolen laptops…and of course jobs. Even with this amount of traffic and a business model based on listings, it still struggles to compete in the white-collar recruitment space.
SEEK is actually very old. So old that it is only just behind the “invention” of job boards with “The Monster Board”, but older than “Monster.com”. Launching in 1997, it predates my recruitment career and is older than many people reading this. Because it was first to market in this part of the world, and because big money was invested comparatively early on, SEEK was valued at AU$600m nearly 20 years ago. SEEK’S current market cap in a shite market sits at a staggering AU$9Billion. They are the fourth largest staffing and employment services firm in the world. Bigger than Hays. Bigger than Robert Walters. Bigger than Adecco, Page Group, Manpower etc etc. This is one of the reasons I want a boozy lunch and not a branded powerpack. And this is reason one why you cannot beat SEEK. No matter how much money you have, they have more. And more money means a 200 person team working on AI alone. It means destroying you on your google rankings. It means buying a high-growth ATS, HRIS, UB40 and Aswad to seemlessly integrate with yourself. Like your childless aunt and uncle growing up, they are considerably richer than you.
There is a second reason however, and it’s one that the first reason certainly facilitates, but only occurred to me as I tried to zone out from some particularly abyssal questions from the assembled audience. The reason SEEK are unbeatable is that they are fantastic and observing job seeker behaviours, and designing features accordingly, as opposed to deciding what they think will work. This sounds simple enough right? In practice however, every other new job board seems to take a different approach. The example I’ll use was one highlighted to me this week by the AI team. Playing around with how AI could be used in SEEKs search functionality, SEEK realised that with just a few AI generated questions, powered by a billion super computers, a job seeker could be served up supremely relevant ads in a matter of seconds. What an improvement on an old-fashioned search bar. Candidates getting to the good stuff without hours of scrolling, and recruiters only getting applicants from relevant candidates. What a fantastic idea, and I cannot wait for this to be rolled out.
Except it won’t be.
When SEEK monitored user behaviour (not what they said they wanted), it became clear that job seekers want to be presented with jobs straight away. They mostly don’t want to engage in AI chat. We just think they do. And this brings me on to ZEIL.
ZEIL is a welcome addition to the NZ recruitment landscape, especially given the current sentiment towards SEEK (which SEEK still believe is largely positive?!). Established by a Kiwi entrepreneur with both form and money, in theory it should be a banker. With it’s Tinder-esque UI, a big focus on highlighting an employers brand, the ability to quickly build a CV for you, it has everything that a focus group would come up with to build a job board. And I fear this may be its downfall. It is built with fantastic intentions to do what people say they want, but not built for the harsh realities of both recruiter and job seeker behaviours. ZEIL have a massive focus on job ads building a brand story with significant collateral. This raises two issues. Firstly, recruiters are lazy. Not lazy in the sense that they’d rather do less and make less. Lazy in the sense that they want to do the minimum to make the most. Some call it efficient. Anyone who has been a recruiter for 5+ years will know that a beautifully crafted ad is done for the recruiter’s own pride, and not the calibre of candidate it attracts. I wish we lived in a world where beautiful prose attracted better candidates. We’d all be Oscar f*cking Wilde. Alas, no. If the job pays enough, has the right job title, in the right location, you’ll get an application. A beautiful as it is to create a brand story on ZEIL, it takes time, and I’m not convinced it will achieve a better result. Recruiters do not want to spend hours crafting beautiful ads with 15 photos of their colleagues or clients. The second issue is around candidate behaviours. ZEIL, like YUDU, has perhaps placed a bit too much credence on the level of consideration candidates take before hitting “apply”. The world would be a very different place if people stopped to think if the location, salary, brand, and culture was all a good fit before applying. I do not think that this is the world we live in. If I were a job seeker, I would not live in this world. I would just hit apply and see what happens. You can always duck the recruiters call back right?
Anyway, a long one from me today. I wish ZEIL all the best, as I do any other job board. I sincerely hope I’m wrong. SEEK currently have a white-collar monopoly here, which ironically puts them in a unwinnable situation. Even if their ads deliver a return in investment, there will always be the perception that they have us over a barrel on pricing. SEEK will one day be replaced, but it won’t be by another job board. They’re too far in front for that. It’ll be by a total gamechanger that people like us haven’t even envisioned yet.
Please prove me wrong.
^SW
