Best Indian Job site ?

In response to my previous post on 30 best job sites in US, somebody asked which is the best Indian one. Sadly there is no survey which points this out. I haven’t come across any kind of survey which rates the job portals based on user feedback. All what I have seen is claims and I will not buy a rating of the sites based on the size of their database alone. As a job seeker that may not be the first thing which I would be looking for. However just for the records this is what some of these sites claim ( Source: Official websites )

• Naukri claims over 12 million resumes
• MonsterIndia too claims 12 million resumes
• Jobstreet says 4 million , but I am not sure whether its only Indian database
• Timesjobs claims 8 million
• ClickJobs says 3 Million “fresh” resume . I don’t know what they mean by “fresh”

The Indian recruitment industry is roughly around Rs 5000 crore and the online business was around Rs 241 crores for the year 06-07. It has been showing around 60% growth rate so by simple extrapolation it should be around 400 crores odd now . That does imply there is a huge potential for the online business to grow. A lot of entreprenuers are eyeing this space and trying to carve out a niche for themselves. In a previous post I had covered referral based hiring. This ain’t anything new actually . There have been a few referral portals in US since quite sometime and they couldn’t create much of an impact. If you look deeply, the entire new generation of job portals seem to be trying to compete with likes of Naukri and Monster and just hope that they can lure away some of the users.

I think we need to apply a little more thought on to how the entire recruitment industry functions now and what can make the various interactions simpler and more efficient. For example ,One thing which I fail to understand is why should I pay to have my job listings displayed. These portals build their database by using it as an attraction for job seekers to upload resume on the portals and then the same database access is sold for a price.

What we need is a more democratic approach to things. We need specialised job boards and the same can be integrated with various online communities , supported by strong applicant tracking system. Just my views , do let me know what do you think of it .