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The online recruitment space has grown from zilch five years ago to a Rs 225 crore market today. In the third quarter of 2006 alone, online recruitment site Monster India registered 12.5 lakh new résumés. Online recruitment has become the second most popular option next only to referrals. Migration from conventional to online modes of looking for a job is happening faster in India than the industry had expected, Monster India President & Managing Director Arun Tadanki tells Prerna K Mishra.

Excerpts from the interview:

How has the online recruitment space grown over the past five years?

The online job search category is expected to overtake the newspaper recruitment space by 2008. Presently, the recruitment space of all newspapers put together works out to be about Rs 550 crore. Online recruitment has already touched Rs 225 crore. We have seen 20 per cent of the in-print recruitment advertisements migrating to the net. In the top tier of IT companies, for instance, 30-35 per cent of the total hiring is online. Globally, Monster is expected to become a billion dollar company by 2007-end.
 
The internet penetration in India does not seem to substantiate the optimism of the online recruitment industry?

Even though the industry pegs the internet population in India to be in the 20-25 million mark, we have internally arrived at a figure of over 50 million through various surveys. In the past three months alone, 10-11 million people have visited our site. Given that the English newspaper audience in India is less than 20 million, the odds have already started tilting towards online advertising.

But media planning is also a question of habit. Why would people who conventionally recruit through print advertising go online?

India is a unique market. Most of the top advertisers in India are new economy companies that have come up in last five to seven years. These firms have no habits to break. They have considered the option of online advertising from the time of their inception.  

What is the potential for online recruitment in India?

Interestingly, the world has become a big workforce marketplace. The global market for recruitment advertising is upwards of $10 billion. In India alone, the English newspapers share recruitment advertising revenues of about $125 million. We redesigned out site in April this year to strip off complexity. Since then, the number of resumes posted on the portal has gone up from 1.1 million to 4.1 million.

How do you plan to take Monster to the next level in India?

We will be expanding our sales force from 500 to about 750 this year, expanding to second tier cities like Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Indore, Kochi and the suburbs of the metros.