The SGEnterpreneurs.com reported that CareerBuilder just entered Southeast Asia market by acquiring, JobsCentral. JobsCentral has a strong presence in Singapore among college students, and a growing presence in Malaysia. The site does more than just have job postings, there’s a growing community with lots of tools, tips and blog posts for job seekers.

What does this mean for India? I don’t think sites like Naukri, or even the smaller players like Shine.com has anything to worry yet. They both have a strong brand presence in India. Shine is backed by Hindustan Times. Plus, CareerBuilder seems to be more focused on the very south of South Asia. Their India site CareerBuilder.co.in doesn’t seem like there’s much activity going on. However, that might change dramatically over the next couple of months to come. As an observer, I’m somewhat excited.

I really believe that this is a wake up call for sites organized in India to start thinking about building up the job seeker community. Major job sites here tend to have outdated or syndicated content, rife with spammers harvesting databases of candidates with no one stopping them. (I kid you not, I was in fact encouraged to just get an account and harvest the database by a sales person!) I told him I wouldn’t do that because it violates our own privacy policy. Anyone registered in one of these sites can tell you, they’re bombarded on a daily basis with job offers that are totally irrelevant. Read my post on that here.

What do you think should these sites be doing in order to improve their image and get a higher quality of candidates?

Photo by: supertobor