Our Competitive Advantages

Due to technology advances and the low-cost appeal of Internet job advertising, the market is highly segmented. Since 47% of the market comes from Internet search advertising, which is available to any company or person in the world, opportunities for newcomers to the market are limitless. Combined with the growing demand for healthcare professionals facing the United States healthcare industry, eCareer Connections is poised to rapidly increase its market presence and secure high profits for its shareholders

Trends Characterizing the Competitive Landscape of the Internet Healthcare Job Advertising Industry

While search engine advertising is concentrated on less than five big players (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc), job advertising is a hugely segmented market when it comes to the healthcare job postings. Relatively small privately owned job boards and very specialized niche verticals are more successful in the job searches. That drives more candidates to post resumes and more healthcare facilities and recruiters to pay for job postings.

Another fact is that advertising on the main search engines is the most expensive solution. It is not a viable answer for small to medium healthcare facilities, doctor’s offices, healthcare recruits and private clinics. This is the reason for which they address their hiring needs through job boards and job boards aggregators, which are able to purchase better “space” in the Internet for more competitive prices.

At the same time, specialized advertising job boards are gaining momentum specifically due to the search engine advertising. They are able to craft niche domain names and job descriptions, as well to offer less expensive service than the giants in the industry – CareerBuilder, Monster, etc. That means of marketing attracts more revenue from all type of healthcare facilities and medical recruiters, including the small and medium ones.

Because of the relatively small investment to create a job board and the easy technology to maintain it, the current competition landscape is populated with thousands of small job boards. As research shows, nearly 1,000 job boards are created in the U.S. monthly, contributing to the fragmentation of the market.

On the other side, healthcare job advertising is a very specialized field. Only experts in medical recruiting can create the appealing job board descriptions, which would justify the high cost of search engine ads. eCareer Connections is extremely well prepared to become the leader in the Job Board field due in particular to its long-time presence in the medical recruiting business.

Another factor in favor of eCareer Connections is the company’s profound commitment to innovation. While social network advertising and mobile advertising offer endless possibilities to capitalize on niche interests, there is no evidence that too many big players have taken advantage of these possibilities. With the advancement from Web 2.0 to the Semantic Web, individually targeted job advertising will bring more results and revenue for the companies dedicated to provide the service.

Competitive Landscape

eCareer Connections faces competition from several services on the market. These are large, medium and small job boards, general job boards, job posting aggregators, classified advertising websites, print advertising (newspapers), search engines and other social media websites such as private networks, blogs and micro-blogs. The barriers to entry into the Internet job board business are relatively low and a hoard of new competitors increase the pressure on the market. Professional and social networks increase their appeal to employers targeting niche candidates, such as nurses, physical therapists, etc.

JOB BOARDS & JOB BOARD AGGREGATORS

Job boards and aggregators are the most direct competition to eCareer Connections. The following companies represent the biggest players on the market:

Monster Worldwide, Inc: (NYSE: MWW) parent company of Monster.com, is one of the largest public companies for online job advertising. With a local presence in key markets in North America, Europe and Asia, Monster works for everyone by connecting employers with quality job seekers at all levels and by providing personalized career advice to consumers globally. Through online media sites and services, Monster delivers vast, highly targeted audiences to advertisers. Monster Worldwide is a member of the S&P 500 index. With revenue of more than 1.3 billion (2008) and 6500 employees, this is one of the largest job boards in the world.

Career Builder.com: Owned by the Gannett Company, Inc. (NYSE:GCI), Tribune Company, The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) The company's CareerBuilder Network consists of its flagship site careerbuilder.com, as well as affiliated career sites including the Los Angeles Times and MSN Careers. CareerBuilder.com allows job seekers access to the Mega Job Search to peruse more than 1 million job openings, and more than 300,000 employers tap into its database consisting of over 30 million resumes. The company also conducts surveys and polls through the Web paneling of its vast database CareerBuilder powers the career sites for more than 9,000 Web sites, including 140 newspapers and leading portals such as MSN and AOL. In 2007, the company revenue was $768 million.

With dice.com entering in the healthcare job posting business, it is clear that competition is increasing due to the growing market.

JOB SEARCH ENGINES

Yahoo! HotJobs.com, a division of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is an Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! HotJobs is also the largest job search engine in the USA. It increased its users by 143% in the 2007/2008 periods alone, and has more than 140 million of unique visitors per month. Since 2009, Yahoo! HotJobs.com has introduced two new products aimed to increase the advertising revenue of the company, coming from job searches. The first, Yahoo! HotJobs Smart Ads, is a platform that transforms job listings into highly relevant display ads that are tailored to active and passive job seekers across the Yahoo! Network, and the second, Premium Company Profiles, showcases company employment brands using rich media and company-specific content from the Yahoo! Network.

Indeed.com is a privately held job search engine, established in 2004. Their engine performs searches on thousands of company websites and job boards. As the leading pay-for-performance recruitment advertising network, Indeed.com drives millions of targeted candidates to jobs in every field. Indeed.com is among the top 10 job advertising websites. It also provides free job analytics for employees.

Artemis HR, Inc (Beyond.com, Inc.) Beyond.com is the world’s largest network of niche career communities, providing access to thousands of top-tier industry and local web sites. The company provides career search services, networking tools, and portal software based around its network of more than 15,000 niche job sites. Niche Web sites connect job seekers with employers based on industry or geographic region. Beyond.com's offerings extend past simple job boards; the company also provides a variety of resources, tools, and services to create career communities. Corporate clients also receive the benefits of applicant tracking systems, fraud prevention software, background checks, and database marketing services. The Beyond.com network has 128 medical and healthcare job boards and thus serves as a healthcare vertical and aggregator. The company currently has 30 employees and $2.4 million of sales.

Simply Hired, Inc. is an online job search engine and recruitment advertising network that features over 3 million jobs, gets 20 million unique visitors a month and has more than 5,000 partner sites. The company's website is one of the top-five job search sites in the United States. Simply Hired's site is now a network that includes social networks, media outlets, niche sites and blogs. Organizations that are all part of the company's job offerings include LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Plaxo, BusinessWeek, Twitter, US News & World Report, CNN Money and The Washington Post. The site also features 30,000 local job portals for U.S. cities, which outline the history of the city, provide an overview of the city's economy and describe top companies, top careers, salary information and job trends.

Other big competitors to eCareer Connections are free ad websites and portals, which do not require a fee for posting jobs online. Such companies, as Craigslist.com and others are very serious competition to eCareer Connections, especially if Craigslist.com goes public and secures more funding for larger operations.

In order to successfully compete with the big and small players on the market, eCareer Connections will offer free-of-charge job posting at all its 150 job boards for the first six months. In addition, cutting-edge technology and a sound marketing strategy will help the company to offset the effects of competition.

One of the most important ways to quickly overcome the competition issue is the use the multiplier effect of the various job boards. That means that with one click, a job posting can be automatically posted to all job boards of eCareer Connections, which will be additionally multiplied by the job search engines, which automatically scan the Web and re-post the same job. That will insure a fast and efficient exposure of the company and thus shorten the period of entry to the market.