Adzuna, established in 2011 by Andrew Hunter and Doug Monro, has gained traction in the UK with its social job hunting tools, real-time labour market data and search, and has now launched in SA.
The job search engine has over 1.5 million monthly visitors and revenue is growing 50% a quarter, pushing it towards profitability.
Hunter and Monro launched Adzuna in the UK in 2011, after meeting at Gumtree six years earlier. "Through our experience at Gumtree, Qype and Zoopla, we were deeply involved in the online classified ad market and, with the maturing world of social networks and big data, we spotted an opportunity to create a next-generation vertical search engine," says Hunter.
Job ads are fragmented and too complicated to navigate and users want to search all the ads in one place, which is what Adzuna aims to provide - a one-stop shop, explains Hunter. "We then make the search experience better and empower our users to find the right ads for them, by layering on innovations in social and data."
SA is one of the first ports of Adzuna's expansion, along with Brazil, Australia and Canada. Hunter says South African jobseekers are crying out for a better job search experience and Adzuna aims to offer a powerful search, social tool and free market insights.
Social power
According to a survey of more than 1 000 HR professionals by Jobvite, in 2012 two-thirds of companies used Facebook to find recruits, while 54% used Twitter to get information on potential candidates' views and interests. At the end of last year, Facebook launched its social jobs app that collects more than 1.7 million job listings from Monster and other sites, and allows members to share them with friends.
Adzuna is harnessing the power of social media to further enhance the job search reach. "We believe leveraging your network of friends and professional connections is the future of job hunting. The more we learn about our users, the better search results we can provide," notes Hunter.
He adds that Adzuna is one of the few job sites to unite social with search. "Adzuna Connect allows users to connect with their LinkedIn or Facebook profile, and then shows all the available vacancies that they are connected to through their first and second degree connections. This is very powerful when it comes to requesting a referral."
Assist to govern
Adzuna is also behind the Number 10 Dashboard, a free service, which powers British prime minister David Cameron's economic data, bringing together vacancy maps, salary trends and company hiring patterns.
"The app features over 100 data points from a myriad of sources (government and private). In addition to Adzuna's job and property market stats, the dashboard includes search trends data from Google, a daily YouGov poll on the top issues in voters' minds, ONS data and relevant Twitter feeds," adds Hunter.
Adzuna's data powers the "growth" section of the app, which gives the PM and others up to the minute insights into the job and housing markets, and regional growth. Data includes vacancy counts in the UK, average salaries, unemployment data, regional properties for sale and FTSE performance.
Hunter says the company wants to reach out to the South African government and offer to build the app for free. "We're told David Cameron is looking forward to showing off his Adzuna-powered data dashboard at the G8 summit in June, so no doubt president Jacob Zuma will get a look at the app."
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