Post Publishing owns the Bangkok Post and Post Today newspapers. Six-year-old Red-match claims to be the only job-matching search engine available.

The new site is jobjob.co.th.

It intends to take on other employment websites with "sophisticated technology of online compatibility-matching services directly to the human-resources community".

"We offer different features than other job-search engines. Redmatch is the only job-matching engine in the world," president and CEO Daniel Avidor said.

He said the company's technology combined the concept of "matchmaking" with sophisticated software algorithms for a corporate recruitment system.

It matched the characteristics and interests of candidates and employers to produce a "reciprocal match". It allows candidates to remain anonymous and find jobs in any language.

Avidor said Redmatch was present in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and now in Thailand. It plans to ex-pand to Vietnam, the Philippines, India, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan by the end of the year.

"We want to create a Far East network with all countries connected. Our aim by the end of this year is to have more than 1 million jobs offered through our websites in Asia, with about 2-1/2 million candidates registered," said Avidor.

China is the biggest market

in the region, with more than 600,000 jobs and 1 million candidates on its Big J website.

Post deputy chief operating officer Supakorn Vejjajiva said jobjob.co.th would strengthen the company's classified business, which made up about 15 per cent of advertising revenues. "It will be a significant part of our online strategy," said Supakorn.

He asserted the company's two titles controlled 30-40 per cent of total newspaper classified ads.

"Big companies already use our classifieds for job recruitment. We want the online service to become a new choice for existing clients. We also want small- and medium-sized companies to use our job-matching engine to find qualified candidates," said Supakorn. The site is expected to attract 100,000 job-seekers. The company is looking forward to significant profits.

The site charges an additional Bt500 for existing classified advertisers who want both an online and a hard-copy ad.

New corporate customers will pay Bt5,000 per ad.

Supakorn said less than 5 per cent of company revenues were from its digital business.

"We expect to increase the contribution of our online business to 15 per cent in the next five years," he said.

He noted classified ads in newspapers in the US declined almost 50 per cent over the past five years as advertisers went online. Supakorn said Post Publishing was taking its current newspaper content and repackaging it for its website.

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

The Nation