As speculation mounts over the impending IPO of Google, a new type of search engine has joined the race to win the hearts and minds of web users. Jopit (www.jopit.com) breaks the mould of the mass-market search engines by instead focusing on meeting the needs of one group of online browsers ñ the online recruitment audience, comprising both jobseekers and recruiters.
Jopitís founders ñ a team of ex-Management Consultants ñ believe the landscape for mass-market search engines is now fully mature, and market share will be fought out between the major brands already present in the market. By contrast, the market that has yet to be tapped is the market for specific niche searches. In the case of Jopit, candidates are provided with one site that will trawl through thousands of careers pages for them, seeking out their dream job listing from tens of thousands of job postings and job adverts on the net.
The beta phase has proven highly successful, with hundreds of HR managers, recruitment agencies and niche job board owners registering to have their sitesí job listings included in Jopitís search results. Jopit now checks these sites every 24 hours, and includes recruitersí job postings in candidate search results ñ automatically and at no cost to the recruiter.
Candidates have also taken to the idea of a search engine serving only the needs of jobseekers (dubbed a ìjob engineî). The net result for candidates is that Jopit saves them having to undertake hours of frustrating job searches and allows them to focus more time on applications rather than simply tracking down appropriate roles. As a larger and larger proportion of job-seekers start using the Jopit channel, the repercussions for the online recruitment industry could indeed be significant.
Jopit joins the search engine race, targeting online jobseekers
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