Bdjobs, which has turned 24 recently, has been on a roll. The company has launched a series of fascinating features and services. Early this year, it launched Bdjobs Pro, a subscription service for job seekers that aims to radically improve job search experience and career prospects for job seekers in Bangladesh. Its MSME-focused product, aimed at helping MSMEs hire more effectively, has seen meaningful growth, dramatically expanding its market potential.
Bdjobs has also been developing and deploying a host of value-added services to make managing recruitment more effective and efficient for employers. Some of its value-added features such as candidate management tools, video interviews, and online exams are now used by a significant percentage of its employer customers.
In a significant strategic move, the company is now looking to consolidate its universe of value-added services, positioning itself as a comprehensive recruitment management platform. In doing so, Bdjobs is charting a course that could redefine its role in the hiring ecosystem.
This strategic move addresses immediate competitive challenges as traditional job board models evolve with the changing market dynamics and sets the stage for a potentially transformative shift in the company's business model and market position.
Bdjobs, like many of its counterparts globally, began by digitizing a traditional market: the job classifieds section of newspapers. As Bdjobs Bdjobs Founder and CEO Fahim Mashroor explains, "We sort of unbundled the job board from newspapers and offered it as service." This digital transformation of job advertising has been the core part of Bdjobs' business model, with "a large percentage of our revenue [coming] from this source, job posting fees from customers/employers."
However, the digital landscape has shifted dramatically over the past decade. The rise of social media platforms and professional networks has created new channels for job postings, often at lower costs or even for free. As Mr. Mashroor notes, "A small company which was giving recruitment ads in newspapers now probably uses Bdjobs for these job posts but he can also post these recruitment announcements in Facebook and LinkedIn for a small fee or even for free or can boost it for a small fee."
This commoditization of job postings presents a meaningful challenge to the traditional job board model. Bdjobs recognizes that "only connecting with the audience can't be a sustainable business for the long term for a platform like us." The company faces a classic innovator's dilemma: how to evolve beyond its core offering without cannibalizing its primary revenue stream.
Bdjobs' response to this challenge is both strategic and ambitious. Rather than competing solely based on reach or price for job postings, the company is expanding into a suite of value-added services/features that address the entire recruitment process.
This means employers can not only post jobs on Bdjobs, but they can manage their entire recruitment using the Bdjobs platform. Bdjobs has been offering more than five features that allow employers to use Bdjobs to manage their entire recruitment within the Bdjobs platform.
The company's evolving value-added services and features include:
1. Candidate Management Tools: Bdjobs now offers a "recruitment center" where clients can manage applications, screen candidates, schedule interviews, and handle all communication within the platform. The company says companies can import applications received through other platforms or via email and manage all applications within the Bdjobs platform. The integration makes Bdjobs relevant to even more employers regardless of whether they rely primarily on Bdjobs for job postings.
2. Online Recruitment Exams: Addressing the logistical challenges of physical exams, Bdjobs has introduced an online testing feature that allows companies to conduct standardized assessments for large numbers of candidates simultaneously. The company says a growing number of banks now use the feature to run their exams, which saves time and cost for both recruiters as well as for the candidates. Moreover, it makes it easier for candidates who come from outside Dhaka to attend these exams.
3. Video Interviews: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and evolving hiring practices, Bdjobs now offers both live and asynchronous video interview capabilities.
4. AI-Powered Personality Assessments: Through a partnership with an AI company, Bdjobs is experimenting with voice-based personality assessments, offering a novel approach to candidate evaluation.
5. Integration: Bdjobs is looking to create meaningful integration with other social media platforms where employers/clients can post a job announcement on Bdjobs and it will automatically be posted across other social media platforms.
These services represent a significant evolution from Bdjobs' original job board model.
As the company states, "We realized if we provided our clients value-added services, two things happen:
1. It improves the stickiness of a client. By offering a more comprehensive set of tools, Bdjobs gives clients "more reasons to stay with us."
2. Revenue diversification: As job posting fees face downward pressure, value-added services can "compensate for the revenue from some other sources."
The company notes varying adoption rates for its various value-added services, from "over 60% adoption" for basic recruitment management tools to "around 10% adoption" for features like recorded video interviews. Overall, the company says it has been seeing an upward trend of adoption across its value-added features.
Bdjobs' expansion into value-added services is more than just a feature set enhancement; it represents a fundamental shift in the company's strategic positioning. By offering a comprehensive suite of recruitment tools, Bdjobs is evolving from a job board into a full-fledged recruitment management platform.
This platform approach has several strategic advantages:
1. Increased Lock-in: As clients integrate more deeply with Bdjobs' tools, the switching costs for moving to a competitor increase significantly. Clients would also find it unattractive to change given that most platforms lack a comprehensive solution.
2. Data and Insights: By managing more aspects of the recruitment process, Bdjobs can gather richer data on hiring trends, candidate preferences, and employer behaviors, potentially leading to improved services and insights.
3. Expansion of Addressable Market: By offering standalone recruitment management tools, Bdjobs could potentially serve companies that don't use its job posting services, expanding its potential customer base.
4. Differentiation from Social Media Competitors: While many social media platforms can offer wide reach for job postings, they lack the specialized, end-to-end recruitment tools that Bdjobs is developing.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Bdjobs' strategy is its potential transition to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. Currently, the company offers its value-added services as part of a bundle with its job posting fees. It doesn’t charge any additional fees for these value-added services.
However, Bdjobs is laying the groundwork for a significant shift in its revenue model:
"Our goal is that we will eventually make some revenue from these value-added services in a SaaS model. It could so happen that a company might not post their job circular in Bdjobs, they might post to Facebook or LinkedIn or some other platform but they can pull these applications and manage them on our platform, from screening to interviewing and onboarding. Similarly, we may reduce the cost of job posting and instead bundle these features and charge fees based on usage of these features. In these instances, the majority of revenue will come from SaaS rather than job posting, allowing us to serve more clients better."
This potential unbundling of services represents a bold strategic move. By separating its recruitment management tools from its job posting service, Bdjobs could:
Bdjobs' strategic evolution demonstrates remarkable foresight in an industry undergoing rapid change. By anticipating the commoditization of job postings and proactively developing value-added services, the company is positioning itself for long-term sustainability and growth.
The potential future for Bdjobs is intriguing. In a scenario where its strategy succeeds, we might see:
1. A platform that seamlessly integrates with multiple job posting channels while providing superior recruitment management tools.
2. A shift in revenue mix from primarily job posting fees to a significant portion coming from SaaS subscriptions.
3. Expanded market reach, serving not just companies posting jobs on Bdjobs, but potentially any company engaged in recruitment.
4. A rich data set on recruitment patterns and outcomes, potentially enabling AI-driven insights and predictions.
As Mr. Mashroor notes, "At some point, not immediately, of course, we can make job postings free." This statement encapsulates the company's vision – a complete inversion of its original business model, transforming from a paid job board to a freemium posting platform supported by premium recruitment management services.
Bdjobs' strategic evolution from a digital job board to a comprehensive recruitment management platform represents a textbook case of a company adapting to disruptive market forces. By leveraging its existing market position and client relationships to build out a suite of value-added services, Bdjobs is not just responding to a changing market but actively reshaping its role in the recruitment ecosystem.
The company says it has already seen meaningful adoption of its value-added services. Still, the ultimate success of this strategy will depend on Bdjobs' ability to execute on multiple fronts: increasing adoption of its new services, managing the transition of its business model, and continuing to innovate in response to market needs. If successful, Bdjobs could emerge as a model for how traditional digital classifieds businesses can evolve in the age of social media and AI-driven recruitment.
At a time when connecting job seekers with employers is increasingly commoditized, Bdjobs' bet on becoming the operating system for recruitment could prove to be a brilliant strategic foresight. As the recruitment industry continues to evolve, we will be closely following Bdjobs to see how its strategic move goes, potentially setting a new standard for job platforms worldwide.
