Media giant hints at possibility of recruiting on television as it launches new website
Goodbye Careerclick.com, hello working.canada.com. CanWest MediaWorks has thrown its old online job board out the door and replaced it with an entirely new site.
CanWest, a media conglomerate that controls 11 major daily Canadian newspapers, including the National Post, Global Television and the canada.com network, has launched a new online job board. The new site joins a market that includes heavyweights such as Workopolis, Monster and HotJobs.
Kim Peters, CanWest’s director of online careers, said the new site — launched at the end of October and known as “working” — is not simply just a rebranding of Careerclick, the company’s old job board.
“It’s an entirely new site,” said Peters, who came to CanWest from Workopolis where she served as president. “It has an entirely new engine, business model and scope. Everything has changed with the exception that it is still a job board.”
Peters said the decision was made to dump Careerclick because the technology was out of date for both the jobseeker and the employer. The technology had been built in-house and, though it had evolved over time, it wasn’t good enough to take the board where CanWest wanted it to be.
So it partnered with Careercast, a California-based technology provider that powers a number of major newspaper sites in the United States, to develop working.canada.com.
“We decided to implement the technology in such a way to build a network of sites,” said Peters. “We really believe that hiring is done in the local market and job searching is done in the local markets.”
Think locally, search locally
What separates working.canada.com from other major job boards is that it’s built from the local level up, said Peters.
“Our research shows that 92 per cent (of jobseekers) are searching for jobs at a local level,” she said. “We think that resonates very well. Employers are looking to hire locally, and search on a local level first and only pay for that local searching. From a job search perspective, that is the fundamental difference.”
CanWest is also rebranding the career sections in its newspapers as “working” and recruiters will be able to place job advertisements in a newspaper and online with a single phone call or click of the mouse.
Peters said there’s a cost benefit in recruiting only at the local level because posting a job locally is cheaper than having it up across the country. For example, if an employer wanted to post a job in Vancouver it would cost $425 to put it online on the local site. If it wanted to broaden the search and make it available nationally, it would cost an additional $100.
“But if you don’t want to do that and have all kinds of national candidates apply, you simply do the local posting and that filters out a tremendous amount of response,” she said. “The Internet drives a lot of responses, but one of the complaints we’ve heard is that it also drives a lot of response that you don’t want, so one of the ways that we help employers with that is to buy our local model.”
Television the next recruitment frontier?
Peters said there is a possibility of expanding recruiting beyond the traditional avenues of print and web.
“I think there is a market for recruitment advertising on television and a market for job information resources, for jobseekers, on television,” she said. “I do think we’ll be seeing some of that (in the near future).”
She couldn’t offer any specific information about the service, such as what it might look like because plans are still in the works, but expects the idea to be finalized in the next few months.
Currently a visit to working.canada.com reveals a national map with the following cities marked from west to east: Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, Windsor, Ont., Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.
Those are the cities where CanWest has daily newspapers and local sites for working.canada.com. But Peters said the job board is not limited only to those areas.
“All across Canada you will find that there are jobs available, even if your city is not highlighted on the map,” she said.
According to CanWest, classified advertising is an $850 million business annually in Canada and the online recruiting market is worth $40 million per year.
CanWest, a media conglomerate that controls 11 major daily Canadian newspapers, including the National Post, Global Television and the canada.com network, has launched a new online job board. The new site joins a market that includes heavyweights such as Workopolis, Monster and HotJobs.
Kim Peters, CanWest’s director of online careers, said the new site — launched at the end of October and known as “working” — is not simply just a rebranding of Careerclick, the company’s old job board.
“It’s an entirely new site,” said Peters, who came to CanWest from Workopolis where she served as president. “It has an entirely new engine, business model and scope. Everything has changed with the exception that it is still a job board.”
Peters said the decision was made to dump Careerclick because the technology was out of date for both the jobseeker and the employer. The technology had been built in-house and, though it had evolved over time, it wasn’t good enough to take the board where CanWest wanted it to be.
So it partnered with Careercast, a California-based technology provider that powers a number of major newspaper sites in the United States, to develop working.canada.com.
“We decided to implement the technology in such a way to build a network of sites,” said Peters. “We really believe that hiring is done in the local market and job searching is done in the local markets.”
Think locally, search locally
What separates working.canada.com from other major job boards is that it’s built from the local level up, said Peters.
“Our research shows that 92 per cent (of jobseekers) are searching for jobs at a local level,” she said. “We think that resonates very well. Employers are looking to hire locally, and search on a local level first and only pay for that local searching. From a job search perspective, that is the fundamental difference.”
CanWest is also rebranding the career sections in its newspapers as “working” and recruiters will be able to place job advertisements in a newspaper and online with a single phone call or click of the mouse.
Peters said there’s a cost benefit in recruiting only at the local level because posting a job locally is cheaper than having it up across the country. For example, if an employer wanted to post a job in Vancouver it would cost $425 to put it online on the local site. If it wanted to broaden the search and make it available nationally, it would cost an additional $100.
“But if you don’t want to do that and have all kinds of national candidates apply, you simply do the local posting and that filters out a tremendous amount of response,” she said. “The Internet drives a lot of responses, but one of the complaints we’ve heard is that it also drives a lot of response that you don’t want, so one of the ways that we help employers with that is to buy our local model.”
Television the next recruitment frontier?
Peters said there is a possibility of expanding recruiting beyond the traditional avenues of print and web.
“I think there is a market for recruitment advertising on television and a market for job information resources, for jobseekers, on television,” she said. “I do think we’ll be seeing some of that (in the near future).”
She couldn’t offer any specific information about the service, such as what it might look like because plans are still in the works, but expects the idea to be finalized in the next few months.
Currently a visit to working.canada.com reveals a national map with the following cities marked from west to east: Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, Windsor, Ont., Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.
Those are the cities where CanWest has daily newspapers and local sites for working.canada.com. But Peters said the job board is not limited only to those areas.
“All across Canada you will find that there are jobs available, even if your city is not highlighted on the map,” she said.
According to CanWest, classified advertising is an $850 million business annually in Canada and the online recruiting market is worth $40 million per year.
