The StarJobs Online was launched in late 2005 by Star Publication, the owner and operator of The Star newspaper. From our own research and survey, the website today is visited by an average of roughly between 2000 to 4000 thousand visitors daily. While this may sound impressive to some, for a site with huge marketing and advertising avenues at their disposal, the figure is considered a below average. Perhaps, lackluster is a better word? As such, it will take long before StarJobs can ever think of dominating the local online job market and overtake the leading job portals.

From our own perspective point of views, this is largely due to lack of their power in attracting top employers to advertise with them. A little search done to find top companies like Petronas, DiGi, Ericsson, DHL, Maxis, Genting, Sime Darby, CIMB and Shell (done today at 10:50am) resulted in zero search result. While the newspaper version of the Star Job advertisement projects an astounding success, the online version tells us they still have a long way to go.

To make it more frustrating, many of the jobs are advertised by ‘The Advertiser’. Now, under the usual job market circumstances, these can possibly mean two things:

1. Someone in an organization is to be replaced, or a restructuring is deemed to happen

This often refers to a key position in an organization. For some reason, the board or the management decided to remove someone from the position he is holding, perhaps because of his ineffectiveness in his job and lack of performance. However, the company does not want to make it clear to him that they do not want him, as yet. But instead, they choose to find a potential replacement first. Once a replacement is found, only then this guy is handed the ‘You’re fired!’ letter. Imagine, if the position is advertised under the real company’s name, then the guy who is holding the position being advertised will be left asking, “Why aa?” and will possibly go berserk, resulting a much worse organizational crisis.

2. It is advertised by a third party, or a headhunter, who does not want to be known

For this point, the advertiser does not seem to be interested in branding their company or name. Perhaps the headhunter or agent is a one-man operation, who is more interested in the commercial value of the job rather than reputation.

In our case here, it looks like the ‘Advertiser’ jobs in StarJobs are unlikely to fall into any of the 2 categories. The Payroll Executive and Junior Quantity Surveyor positions are not key positions that wisely grant the company to advertise under the ‘Advertiser’ banner. So the likely case is that they are being created by them as an effort to capture visitor’s interest to register with the website.

So are you saying these are dummy job positions? Some of you ask.

The answer is, we do not know to be exact. One thing for sure, only a few people will be attracted to apply for the jobs advertised by ‘Advertiser’. Top employees are very much likely to stay away from them. First, they never know who the real person or organization. And secondly, what if the advertiser happens to be their own employer? Kantoi.

What’s happening to the Star Jobs is too bad considering that the overall system running for the website is pretty cool and user friendly. The user registration is simple, fast and convenient. You also have an option to complete your resume during the registration or skip it first. I like the registration system better than other job portals.

If they intend to corner the job market away from the likes of Jobstreet.com, JobsDB.com and others, then more aggressive marketing needs to be done to capture the interest of top employers and the imagination of job seekers. Otherwise, they will remain as just another mediocre job site.

Talking about mediocrity, there is this one Malaysia job portal which was established under the MSC flagship in late 90s. They also have a recruitment team supposed to assist the MSC-Status companies, the government-linked companies (GLCs) and corporate clients to capture market talents, especially in the IT and technology market. What sounded like a promising venture eventually faded away as the company’s performance turned from good to bad to worse. The job portal is still running but almost with a non-existent presence. Which job portal we’re talking about here?

This will be covered pretty soon, but if you are a savvy job seeker, you probably have an idea about who they are.