In recent years, CareerBuilder.com has been gobbling up a number of international job boards in several 
countries, including France, Spain, India, and Greece.
According to Farhan Yasin, President of CareerBuilder’s International Group, each takeover is carefully measured and evaluated. If CareerBuilder doesn’t find a good job site ripe for the taking, an entirely new job board is created behind the CB brand.
“When determining markets to enter, we look at a variety of factors: the number of jobs and labor participation rate, Internet usage, online recruitment adoption, etc.,” Yasin said. “We look at the overall
potential and needs of the market and what we can offer to make a difference.”
Case in point is the acquisition of French site Lesjeudis.com, a job site for IT professionals that also oversees a half-dozen other job boards specializing in sales and marketing, call centers, legal professionals, and engineering.
“Lesjeudis is the leading independent job site in France,” Yasin said. “By joining forces, French employers will have access to a larger, more diverse pool of candidates and French workers will have access to more opportunities.”
CareerBuilder has also purchased Kariera.gr in Greece, Jobbguiden.se in Sweden, and Jobbingmall.nl in the Netherlands.
Yasin cited CareerBuilder’s partnership with MSN as the top catalyst for international growth, which has given CB access to “millions of job seekers in multiple countries.” He added that partnerships with AOL, Lycos, Virgin Media, Sky News, Rogers Media, Tiscali, and Sulekha.com in India have also allowed them to penetrate foreign markets.
While CB’s growth has been steadily picking up steam, it looks like they still have quite a ways to go to pose a real threat to their biggest rival.
Monster.com still remains king of the castle. According to data on Alexa.com, they claim the second most powerful job site in India, MonsterIndia.com, the most popular job board in Canada with Monster.ca, and the most oft-visited site in England, Monster.co.uk.
While Yasin said he can’t share future plans for acquisitions, he did hint at markets that are currently being targeted in Italy, Romania, Belgium, and Switzerland.
“We continue to see growth in both traffic and sales in all of our overseas markets,” he said. “We will apply our learnings that have taken CareerBuilder to the #1 position in the U.S. and learnings from other markets in Europe to build our business.”
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August 14th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Look at what CB has done to Monster in the US… overtook them in market share, revenue, job seekers etc in 3 years and is now the clear leader in North America. It is just a matter of time before CB catches them internationally. The Web is too big to become a job destination site like Monster wants to be – you must partner and CB is clearly riding that wave with MSN – how did Monster lose market share in the US again this quarter??… Salvatore, go back to Brooklyn.