Have a kid for a boss?

Job portals in India never had it so good. If a professional is fed up with his Hari Sadu-like boss, he ought to log on to naukri.com. If he finds himself caught in a wrong job/line of profession, monster.com’s search engine is his knight in shining armour. And the latest to pile on to the list is the Malaysia-based portal Jobstreet.com, which insists that its offering is different from the rest.

Launched in 2000 in India, jobstreet.com has come out of its shell with two TVCs – a first for the portal in India. Jobstreet.com is priding itself on its search engine, that makes sure only relevant jobs are offered to its visitors and that they get to meet the big guys/big companies only.

In fact, this positioning stemmed from a research that jobstreet.com conducted among online job seekers. “We found out that job portals are inundating these people with numerous but irrelevant job alerts/emails, which is causing dissatisfaction among them,” says Anand Iyer, chief executive officer, jobstreet.com. “However, those registered with us were quite pleased with the fact that our better designed search engine throws up only relevant jobs, where job seekers have the opportunity to meet the big guys from large corporates. We decided it was time to highlight this finding.”

VS Srikanth, director, Temple Advertising (the agency behind the campaign), adds that the trick lies in the details. “If a person has keyed in ‘teaching’ as a hobby, and ‘Chemistry’ as her favourite subject, incompetent job portals may land her the job of a Chemistry teacher in Kolkata,” he quips. “That is where jobstreet.com is different, as it refines the search to a maximum.”

The first TVC, released earlier in August, shows a hungry dog being fed with a cabbage. The super read, ‘Getting irrelevant offers? Jobstreet.com: jobs that fit’.

The same idea was refined in the next TVC. This one opens on the shot of a young man nervously waiting for his turn to meet the boardroom honchos at a job interview. After a while, the man is asked to go into the boardroom. He composes himself and knocks on the door. Walking in, he is shocked to see a bunch of kids seated around the table, instead of company officials. A super flashes on the screen: ‘Not meeting the big guys? Jobstreet.com. It’s where the top companies are hiring. Get what you want’.

According to Iyer, the kids signify amateurish/irrelevant people whom interviewees encounter. These people are not equipped to understand a job seeker’s needs. “Besides, in the case of most portals, jobs come from the recruitment agencies, which is a let-down for job hunters,” Iyer says. “People want to get offers directly from big employers, which is where our portal steps in.”

“Kids are a metaphor for small corporates,” adds Srikanth of Temple Advertising.

According to Iyer, this ad is also different in the sense that while the other portals touch upon job dissatisfaction and hence the need for a switch, the communication for jobstreet.com offers no reference to the previous job. Other portals are make generic statements, Srikanth claims, whereas jobstreet.com’s offering of ‘relevance’ is sharper.

The two films have been directed by Kalvinder Kaur of Tabularasa Films. She reveals that the expression of shock/amazement on the man’s face on seeing the kids was shot 35 times before it was okayed. “He had to have that ‘Am I in the wrong room?’ look, which involved a lot of hard work,” she says. The film has been produced by the "The Cell", creative department of TV18. Kalwinder Singh was the director and the entire pre-production, production and post-production was handled by "The Cell". Two more films are in the pipeline.

According to officials at jobstreet.com, the company is expecting a 100 per cent increase in its registered users and brand recall over the next six months. An elaborate print and Internet campaign, along with user service promotions, will be rolled out soon.

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