If we thought the travel space was getting competitive.. then you can surely term the e-recruitment or more popularly known as the Jobsite space to be getting ugly when it comes to competition! Im sure anyone who follows this space would have witnessed the timesjobs and naukri mud slinging around the "Everyones quitting naukri" campaign. We had also blogged about a viral naukri video (not claimed to be posted by naukri) where in TIMES was decoded to be many things that are not so nice.
Now it seems Times has taken the everyone’s quitting naukri campaign a step further by coming out with what they call the "Nauk Out Offer" (a below the belt marketing campaign aimed at Naukri.com). The Nauk out offer bribes recruiters to call Timesjobs sales guys to their office with a holiday package india and abroad!! I am neither a fan of naukri nor of timesjobs but this marketing tactic is surely taking the focus away from what needs to be the focus i.e. "Making erecruitment Better"
Away from the naukri timesjobs fistfights there is Monster which anounced a new feature "Video Resumes". Now video resumes is something that i think can be the future in this space. I had first seen video resume at this website myvideoresume.com and now monster has introduced this feature. I wont be surprised if other jobsites (naukri and timesjobs included) follow suit.
What is an area of concern in this video resume upload feature is the fact that a candidate has to have a recorded video on disk which isn’t the norm. Also not many users would know what to say in the video while recording it. I think something like flixn.com which allows users to record the video through their webcams and upload it instantaneously to the site. Also a format of questions to be answered in the video resume would help recruiters. Also i feel it would be mainly be junior management audience that would upload video resumes and we would see hardly any middle and top management guys. If these portals can tieup with cybercafe’s chain like sify and reliance web worlds for a mass video resume upload exercise they surely would get a lot of interested recruiters attracted to them. Part of the reason i feel so strongly about this feature is because my own company has been working on it for quite sometime now 
Here’s hoping that Times takes a leaf out of monsters book and focus more on what its site is suppose to do "Make erecruitment better, faster and cheaper!"
Good post. But i think one should realize that this jobsite market is huge with naukri making above 100 crores in revenue and hence the fierce competition. Similar marketing were also seen in the cola wars in India again because the market was huge.
I am surprized, I own an international jobsite since 2004. I always looked for quality of services not competition.