AskSaurabh, a portal set up by Pune-based Mr Saurabh, talk about inspiration for a name. Saurabh recently lost his job in Yahoo, has started this portal along with his friends Mr Anthony, Mr Iqbal Gandham and others. It is a job portal where users can post CV and jobs in a wide range of areas such as design, engineering finance, general, HR, quality assurance, testing and software development, among others.
Businessline quoted one of the founders Iqbal saying, “Our philosophy is simple, if we can help one person get back into a job, our Web site would have done its job.” Apparently Asksaurabh doesn’t allow recruitment agencies to post, while at the same time there is no charge for posting. According the report, 60 companies posted their requirements in the last 20 days while over 500 job seekers signed up for posting their CVs and finding prospective employers.
To me this seems a venture just to showcase the skills of the people involved with this project. At the footer of the site, they have prominently displayed a hire us link, which leads to a web development firm’s site. In that way more than AskSauarabh it seems a promotion for Sapna solutions, with Ask Saurabh acting as a case study in my opinion. In that case it puts serious doubts on Ask Saurabh as a project. How long will it run? What is its business model? Will it end if Saurabh gets a job?
Now the about page of the site clearly suggests it as a fun, non profit initiative. While that point is taken one wonders how long can such a project last really, which to a certain extent mind run on the minds of the users.
Such questions apart, the site itself is quite a neat piece of work and has a very different look to conventional cluttered job sites that most Indians are used to seeing. The fact that they don’t seem to rake in any advertising revenues either means the site is …well free of ads (how obvious was that). Most of the jobs seem to focus on tech and web related from the postings we see on the home page as well as through features like the tag cloud. Personally I feel they could have come up with a better tagline, though the group of European friends using the Indian flag’s color scheme certainly adds the desi dose to the whole project.
Check out the website if you have recently been laid off or if you are looking for people to hire, you might find them cheap here.
What a brilliant idea! Could it be that we are going to see the end of recruitment agencies in the near future? Certainly there are far fewer of them around now than there were this time last year. Job seekers are not happy with the service that 90% of recruitment agencies provide and employers are sick of getting multiple duplicates of CVs and being dragged into squabbles between agencies about who is representing them.
I would have thought that the free service would have been a popular idea even if it were not free! There will always be a place for recruiters who are specialists in their field and actually make the job of a company easier in selecting candidates and provide good information and assistance to job seekers.
Unfortunately the current market just can’t support the number of recruitment agencies in existence. There will have to be a cull and the remaining agencies will have to up their game if they want to stay in business.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Sarah
http://www.craigslistsimplified.info
pl refer their about us… it says the site has been started by Shardul, Anthony, Iqbal
Hey, thanks for the writeup!
I’m glad people like it, generally the response is very positive, and as far as I know, many people have already found a job through AS!
Btw, the site is not developed by Mr. Saurabh – but by Mr. Shardul – Saurabh was our friend who inspired us to do it.
We might add some more interesting features to the site – depending on what the general feel is, so keep watching this space!
Anthony
the Economic Recession has been pretty hard on us. some of my friends lost their job because of the massive job cuts. i just hope that our economy becomes better in the following years.