Asia Takes to Net Job-Hunting

Traffic to employment websites has been enthusiastic across most of Asia since the start of 2002, according to new figures published by NetValue. Taiwanese women appear to be particularly keen visitors, closely followed by Korea's students.

NetValue's latest report indicates that most of the Asian markets (with the exception of Singapore) saw booming audience figures between December 2001 and January 2002. Taiwan has emerged as the only Asian market in which more females use employment sites than males. Stephanie Chu, country manager of NetValue in Taiwan, suggests that 'Taiwanese women were more inclined to find jobs online than men in January (2002), which was a trend that none of the other Asian markets saw during the same time period. Korea was perhaps the inverse situation where traffic to this sector was driven by males rather than females.'

Korean students also display a strong propensity to visit employment websites. In this sense, the market saw 58.3 percent of students seeking employment online during the month of January 2002 alone. Max Hwang, country manager of NetValue in Korea, notes "It is quite customary in Korea for students to find jobs before graduation. For instance, young people who graduate in December will usually try to secure employment before January of the following year, so by the start of the next year they can begin positions immediately without needing to continue the job search. In 2002, we are seeing a slightly different trend. Around 58.6 percent of students flocked to the online employment sector in December 2001, which was not much different from the figure we found for January 2002. Perhaps a plausible reason behind this was that job-hunts were not as successful this past December as previous years, and so people had to continue their search for work through the first month of 2002.'

Commenting on the bigger picture, Jack Loo, president of NetValue, added 'On the whole, the performance of employment websites in Asia has thrived quite well so far this year. In January 2002, we saw visitorship to this sector in Korea and Hong Kong leaping by more than a hundred-thousand users, and almost eighteen-thousand in Taiwan. People are now actively using the Internet as a resource for getting a job, therefore broadening their chances of finding opportunities compared to the situation of only relying on offline classifieds to know where the jobs are at.'

Dr Loo concluded by remarking on how several of the Asian markets researched have seen phenomenal growth of visits to job websites. 'The increase of visits between December (2001) and January (2002) in Korea and Hong Kong was nearly 161,200 and 107,120, respectively. In the Hong Kong market, this trend may have been attributed to basic traditional norms of the market. Typically in that country, people will wait until they receive their year-end bonuses-presented to employees prior to Chinese New Year--before starting their new jobs or searching for available job positions. This year, the holiday fell on February-meaning that one month earlier, people were already keeping their ears close to the ground, so to speak, for other employment opportunities.'

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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