U.K. online recruiter set to snag JobShark

SIMON TUCK

OTTAWA / TORONTO (Dec 19, 2006) - One of Canada's leading online recruiters is set to be acquired by a bigger British rival as one of the dot.com era's few healthy surviving niches undergoes consolidation.

Ottawa-based JobShark Corp., a nine-year-old firm with 10 employees, is expected to announce today that it is being bought by JobServe Ltd., which has been on a shopping spree in recent months, expanding its international footprint. The two private firms did not release the value of the all-cash deal.

The deal would be JobServe's fourth acquisition in North America this year, including its purchase three weeks ago of Atlanta-based Computerjobs.com. JobServe also used acquisition to enter Australia.

This latest deal will also mark the first recent acquisition of a major Canadian online recruiter by a foreign buyer, but industry officials say it is unlikely to be the last.
Matt Kim, a mergers and acquisitions adviser on the JobShark deal, said the industry's biggest firms are growing beyond their national or industry niches to become broad-based global players. "This is now a global marketplace." Other sites, he said, continue to focus on specific niches, such as specific industries, regions or countries.

Peter Weddle, editor and publisher of Weddle's Guides of Stamford, Conn., which tracks Internet job sites, said specialized boards make up about 70 per cent of North America's roughly 40,000 job sites on the Web, up from 50 or 55 per cent of the sites in 2001.

He said the industry's estimated revenue for 2006 is $2.2-billion (U.S.), with broad-based sites attracting about 75 per cent of the revenue. Most of the money comes from advertising and posting fees.

Industry experts say online recruiters, whose postings allow employers and workers to find each other, survived the dot.com meltdown because their services are natural business models for the Internet. The biggest players in Canada's English-language sector include JobShark, Workopolis.com, Working.com, and the Canadian arm of U.S.-based Monster.com.

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