Former Daily Express group head named new sales director for ScottishJobs.com

Karen Ronald, the former Scottish Sales Manager and head of classified and display advertising at the Daily Express, has joined Scotlandís independent recruitment website, ScottishJobs.com, as the new sales director.

Bringing over twenty yearsí advertising sales experience to the role, Ms. Ronald has been appointed to assemble the largest online recruitment sales team in Scotland and improve the companyís performance beyond reported growth of 200 % in 2004.

Prior to joining ScottishJobs.com, Ms. Ronald, whose career spans agency and media sales organisations like Barkers Scotland, the Daily Record and Daily Express, was the sales and publishing director for UK-wide recruitment publication, Job Opportunities.

Ronald said: ìIím delighted to be joining ScottishJobs.com at a time when online recruitment activity from jobseekers and businesses alike throughout Scotland is at record levels. We have a clear plan to grow the sales team in line with the companyís financial performance while matching changing client needs in each industry sector. There is enormous room for growth in Scotlandís online recruitment market and we are positioning ScottishJobs.com to lead that market in 2005.î

The company, which went through a major re-brand twelve months ago, including a name change from ScottishAppointments.com to ScottishJobs.com, is now focused on significantly building market share alongside becoming the number one choice for Scottish recruiters.

Commenting on the appointment is ScottishJobs.comís managing director Pat Kelly who says: ìWeíve developed a strong position in the market amongst our media-owned competitors and have appointed Karen Ronald to drive us to the next level. She is the right person for this challenging role and weíre looking forward to seeing another high impact growth year in 2005.î

The development of Internet based recruitment alternatives, which is widely acknowledged to have been spearheaded in 1995 by the creation of Monster.com by Jeff Taylor in the US and Robbie Cowlingís Jobserve website, celebrates its tenth year as an industry sector in 2005.

The UK-wide online recruitment industry is now reported to be worth in excess of 100 million per year, a figure which is expected to double by 2008, while the Scottish market has grown steadily over the last five years to an estimated value of 10 million annually.