Struggling online recruiters JobX and JobsJobsJobs to merge

Troubled online recruiter JobX has announced today it will merge with JobsJobsJobs, as the pair struggle to take on giant competitors SEEK, News and Fairfax.

The two companies, both started in 2007, have struggled to build scale against SEEK, CareerOne and MyCareer.

JobsJobsJobs CEO Guy Sigston, former founder of recruitment company Lloyd Morgan, says it will be a true merger. He says JobX will be renamed JX Technologies and will focus on technology consulting for clients in the recruiting space.

The merged business will power over 100 job boards and provide consulting services to companies and recruiters on their web presence, he says.

Sigston says JobsJobsJobs’s traffic is up over 93% year-on-year. “And most of that is from Australia, saving advertisers considerable time wading through ineligible overseas applications,” he says. “On traffic number we are fourth to SEEK, CareerOne and MyCareer, and on applications per job advertisement we are number two,” he says.

It is expected that the merger will be completed by late April 2009. The two companies combined will have 16 staff. The chief executives from both companies, Guy Sigston and Richard Mare will remain as joint chief executives.

Two years ago, Sigston told SmartCompany that he thought he could create the number-two job board in Australia within 12 months, which meant knocking off MyCareer and CareerOne. That has obviously been a lot harder than predicted.

Sigston will not comment on the revenue of JobsJobsJobs but says it continues to grow and profitability “is within sight”.

But he says the company is very well placed to take advantage of future trends.

He says that increasingly recruiters and corporates want to rely less on job boards as they create their own and populate that with content. “When we come out of the recession, recruiters and corporates will have far more of a voice when it comes to search engine presence.”

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