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WHEN online recruitment firm JobStreet.com set its sights on the competitive Australian market, it quickly decided it couldn't go it alone. So last week the Singapore-headquartered startup announced a tie-up with Seek Communications, which owns the top employment site in Australia, Seek.com.au. The tie-up will create a pool of more than two million registered jobseekers, of which 1.5 million will come from Jobstreet.com. This is in line with JobStreet.com's strategy to extend its reach.

'We are intending to expand regionally without re-inventing the wheel, without competing head-on with existing players,' said marketing vice-president Malek Ali in an interview with BiziT. 'We admit that in some countries, we don't have the necessary capabilities . . . So we do it by alliances. Why repeat the same thing? Why compete with an Australian player in their own market when they've already built a franchise over five years?'

The partnership will allow posting of job listings at each other's sites and expand clients' reach to the new markets. 'This is particularly useful as different countries have manpower with different skill specialisations,' said Mark Chang, chief executive officer of JobStreet.com. 'The cross posting arrangement also benefits our individual members who may wish to work outside their home country or to return home after study or work stints.'

Apart from Singapore, from where it spearheads its marketing and finance operations, JobStreet.com has a presence in Malaysia, India and the Philippines. Of the four countries, the offices in Philippines and Malaysia are already profitable. 'We had initially forecast group profitability by the end of this year,' said Mr Malek. 'Now, we're looking towards, maybe, the end of the first quarter next year, in terms of overall group profitability.'

Staying focused in the recruitment sector has helped the company remain relevant even after the Asian economic crisis in 1997 and the dotcom crash in 2000. JobStreet.com - ranked number five in this year's Enterprise 50 dotcom Awards - originated as one of the many online businesses the founders had in 1995. In June 2000, they sold all the other businesses to a conglomerate and reinvested the funds into JobStreet.com. 'If we didn't jettison the rest, then we'd have to diversify resources to do all kinds of other things,' explained Mr Malek. 'And we might end up being the jack of all trades but master of none.'

Right now, the company is a master in recruitment. It not only offers the Internet as a channel for jobseekers and hiring companies, it also owns a complete suite of technologies covering job matching, candidate selection, resume searching and personalised notification.

Recently completed, JobStreet Impact is a browser-based tool for human resource departments to manage the company's career sites, track resume databases, and consolidate recruitment records. 'In India, this service contributes more than 50 per cent of our business there,' said Mr Malek. 'The market over there is such that there are so many applicants for the jobs posted, so this (tool) is really in demand.' Services like JobStreet Impact are being rented out to companies on an ASP (application service provider) basis. That way, revenues generated can be more stable since companies pay an annual fee for maintenance, he added.

Last month, JobStreet also went beyond its online audience to extend opportunities to all the needy jobseekers out there. At the job fair organised by Manpower Ministry and Tanjong Pagar CDC, it set up a 'brick-and-mortar' booth displaying 182 positions that it actively sourced from its clientele.

Said Mr Malek: 'Yes, that's not Internet, for sure, but it's a way of building goodwill. If there're any jobs out there, we want jobseekers to know about it, whether they are members of JobStreet.com or not, it doesn't matter.'

Imbued in the company culture is the desire to help people find the jobs that they want, he says. 'We know that for some people, jobs are stressful things. When you don't have a job and have got mortgages and bills to pay, it can be a life and death thing . . . For some, when they don't have a job, they feel their self-worth is not there. We just want to do our bit to make sure the market is more transparent.'