Look out for your bottom line! - 04/2001

StepStone is now outsourcing its UK back office to India. What's all this about? Well, its bottom line of course.

Job boards/Online recruitment companies have to look at their bottom line. After all we are all businesses. The heady dot-com days are long over, where just a name and a bit of funding made you successful. Now you have to prove you're financial worth and ultimately at lower cost. The survival and success of Job Internet Recruitment websites will depend on this formula. You have to prove you can provide a professional service at a lower cost.

LegalCV was conceived in December 1999 with the launch on the Internet in April 2000. A job board in the legal industry has been a hard beast to prove, but who says going into business is easy.

Lawyers by nature are cautious suspicious people. When we started our market research most were desperately trying to ignore the arrival of the Internet. I think they rather hoped it would go away. Luckily, the legal profession has been blessed by Richard Susskind, who has become the leading legal IT guru and the person responsible for the breaking down of barriers and the re-education of the legal profession.

It was Susskind's column, which first launched LegalCV into the frame in June 2000. LegalCV initially started as a law student's portal offering vacation, training contracts and pupilage. With over 2,500 law students now registered with the website and obviously a daily increase in those numbers, we have now carved a niche for our selves as the leading law students website.
www.LegalCV.com.

A recent survey by www.legalhitlist.com has nominated LegalCV as the No.1 legal recruitment website in the UK. We have also reached a ranking of 10th place across all legal categories.

Our theory has always been to offer the students a superb service and then once they qualify they will come back to the website for their first and next job. After all you always remember who you first kissed. The job board perse, I believe has its merit but certainly in the legal industry they are struggling with the concept. However we have backed both horses in this two horse race.

To this end we launched our legal people service. This is the job board in reverse, i.e. a people board. Here, applicants register their profile of their perfect job and they are then searched by the law firms and companies. We offer this service at a substantially reduced commission than an offline recruitment company. This is where the wholesome revenue will come through.

Ever conscious about bottom line, we relocated the business to Jersey. Jersey has distinctive advantages to running an e-commerce business. The first and most obvious is the tax benefits. No capital taxes, low corporation and profit taxes and no VAT on sales. The states of Jersey are actively pursuing a flexible attractive e-commerce framework for new business and positively embrace new enquiries. An e-commerce relocation to Jersey is a viable and important consideration to any one in business looking to improve their bottom line.

Over the last year, we have had so many questions about Jersey; we decided to develop an offshoot business that can address this issue. We held a networking event in London in December where various job board founders attended and had the opportunity to be introduced to our Jersey Partners, such as lawyers and IT specialists. Jersey4e-com.com is a new e-commerce business, which specializes, in bringing business into the Island and promoting e-business locally.

www.legalcv.com