Job Site 2.0?

Sanjeev Bikhchandani of Naukri.com writes on his blog:

When you create a large job site with plenty of aggregation you may have solved one problem for the user but you have also created a whole set of new ones. What do we do with applicant spam, what do we do with recruiter spam, how do I find that one resume I need out of the jungle of millions of resume's in the database, how do I find the three jobs that are relevant for me, what do we do with the fake resume problem and so on.

The next frontier lies in the areas of improving the user experience through better UI, better use of analytics, better and faster search, better assessment of intent of user, better search result ranking algorithms, better matching of intents of the job seeker and the recruiter, compatibility assessment, solving the employee reference check problem, incorporating Web 2.0 features into our offering and also taking the site beyond the Internet and onto the mobile.

And that's what we are working on these days. To lead the market to Job Site 2.0, where we will go beyond mere aggregation to create value for users, and thereby consolidate our leadership.

The interesting thing to observe will be whether Naukri would be successful in doing so, or whether it will be also caught in the innovator's dilemma.

Most of the times changing direction for a large player who has a lot of time and investment in the old order of things is not at all easy. Look at the established auto companies who are trying to go green. Or energy companies trying to move away from dependence on oil. Or snacks companies trying to move to wellness products. Or desktop application providers trying to move to the web.

That's because it calls for a mindset change to make such movements possible, and while the technology part is relatively easier to do, the mindset is the hardest. Yes, IBM made the transition from hardware to services in the 1990s. So there is still hope for Naukri and other leaders who want to change track.