AsiaXPAT (www.asiaxpat.com) is something of an online community, a pool of resources that reaches across the vast Asian plains and brings together expatriates who are all swimming in the same waters, so to speak. It could safely be said that AsiaXPAT unites expatriates across Asia; from relocation and rental apartment information through to socialising and entertainment, AsiaXPAT is the No. 1 place people look for information. AsiaXPAT’s next evolution, according to founder and Managing Director, Paul Luciw, is the online job market.
With the growth of Hong Kong and the mainland, the demand for international calibre employees with English and Chinese language skills is huge. No doubt this has a tremendous impact on salary demands with top managers commanding premiums. But regardless of salaries there are only so many candidates available that are able to bring to the table the skill sets that are necessary to function in a globalised work place.
The key advantage that AsiaXPAT has over standalone job sites is that they are the portal of choice for this key demographic, whether the candidates are overseas university educated Asians returning to the region or highly specialized expats, they are able to reach these difficult to target individuals.
AsiaXPAT has 8 full time staff – but they outsource a great deal of their work including design work for the main site, technical support – for the new job site they work with the service provider to support the site – they only have to handle the sales – they have used the third party technology provided by Now Hiring (http://nowhiring.com.au).
In addition to providing technology, Now Hiring actually operates one of the largest job sites in Australia. So they have refined their platform through years of working with major recruiters, employers and candidates and they feel what they offer is the most user-friendly from all perspectives of any technology on the market.
The real key to delivering results to employers is quality traffic. Without this traffic you do not deliver high quality candidates and you fail. AsiaXPAT is established as the platform of choice for professionals, expats and executives – basically high-income individuals who speak English (and often Chinese) for a wide range of online services – they already have 500,000+ unique visitors per month so without a doubt they will deliver the best CV’s to their advertisers. Refer to the attached ad in their website that includes a testimonial from one of their job advertisers – this is the result their clients are getting from their primitive job site.
AsiaXPAT also aggressively targets the local population with intensive marketing activities – for instance they distributed thousands of AsiaXPAT mouse pads by post to virtually every lawyer, accountant, and doctor in Hong Kong in the first quarter of 2008. They also handed out an additional 200,000 AsiaXPAT mouse pads in the main business districts of Hong Kong during this period. In January they had marketing staff go floor to floor in every major commercial building in Central handing out 400,000 Dining Loyalty Cards to employees and management. Their demographic would be quite similar to one of the most popular local English newspaper but likely more affluent and larger.
Mr. Luciw mentioned, “At the end of the day online is simply a better way to attract top job talent because it’s easier for the candidates to search for a position online. I think that within the next 10 years print will be considered a dinosaur with respect to job advertisements – its already happening in the US as job seekers migrate online. Combine that with the fact that online advertising is far more cost-effective than print and a tipping point will be reached where employers will eventually discard print. In our main business we are seeing many of our blue chip advertisers using online for branding – I am certain this will also occur in the recruitment industry.â€
