Welcome to Internet Marketing Plan

An Internet Marketing Plan


for UJobs.com Company Limited

(An online career consulting company)



submitted to Mr. Paul Chan, 

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the course 

Internet Marketing CM20183




Course : Internet Marketing CM20183

Lecturer : Mr. Paul Chan

Tutor : Ms Mandy Chan

Members : Ms Jessica Chan Wai Shan 50157668 (HDEPC)

Ms Helena Cho Wan Yee 50156985 (HDEPC)

Ms Michelle Man Lai Yin 50154107 (HDEPC)

Ms Tina Tsang Sin Ting 50158038 (HDEPC)


Date : Dec. 31, 2000 (Semester A, 2000)

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1. Executive Summary

1.1 Company Background

UJobs.com Ltd. was established on January 2nd 2000 and the website was officially launched on 3rd April 2000. Our initial focus will be developing the city of Hong Kong. Our target audience will be based on Hong Kong college/universities students and its fresh graduates

1.2 Services

UJobs.com is well positioned to take advantage of the growing online recruiting market by being one of the first companies to focus its services in Hong Kong and even around the world by providing the most advanced recruiting/job searching site.

We believe that our site is competitive comparing with others in terms of functionality, personalization and privacy.  We have a very friendly interface, a good control over database, including the job advertisement and resumes and a high level of privacy.

Through our web site, job seekers can search the jobs database, apply for jobs online, submit and manage their resumes, find company or career-related information and personalize their needs on salary/location 

Our subscribing companies can post available positions, search and view selected resumes, control and monitor the status of their jobs from their personalized recruiter home page and manage a resume database.

They might also enable a resume agent to automatically receive daily emails of newly submitted or modified resumes which match their pre-defined criteria.

1.3 Market Analysis

UJob.com is a Hong Kong based on-line job-search/ recruiting portal, connecting the most progressive companies with the most qualified career-minded tertiary graduates. UJob.com intends to offer the most innovative and advanced technology with superior services that give job seekers and our member companies more control over the recruiting process.

1.4 Strategies

Our business strategy is based on three key success factors:

    -- Create High Brand Awareness

    -- Attract and Retain Recruiting Subscribers (Member Companies)

    -- Maintain Superior Web Site

Hence our strategy is to expand rapidly to head off the competition and establish our brand regionally; spend increasingly larger budgets on advertising and public relations activities to build a strong brand identity for UJobs.com; continually invest in our site’s technology and content to maintain our advantages and retain our customer base; aggressively market and sell our services as quickly and efficiently as possible; develop mutual partnerships/alliances with potential companies that will effectively enhance the value of our online service and positively promote the UJobs.com brand.

1.5 Finance

To expend the subscriber base and to achieve market position as the No.1 online recruiting and job searching resource in Hong Kong, UJobs.com will likely incur losses for the next few years and require significant amounts of external investment capital.

UJobs.com is looking to initially raise up to HK$1,200,000 in financing, in exchange for an equity stake in the company, to cover expenses related to expanding our sites regionally and building our brand identity. This includes massive advertising campaigns, rapid increases in personnel, and technical infrastructure expansion costs. A further capital investment of HK$4,000,000 will be needed around March 2001 to take us into our second year.

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2. Company Background

UJobs.com Ltd. was established on January 2nd 2000 and the website was officially launched on 3rd April 2000.

2.1 Company Mission

UJobs.com delivers service to our customers (recruiters) and job seekers by empowering them with relevant information.  We provide a lower-cost, more controllable alternative for recruiting staff and provide more immediate and diverse alternatives for finding a career.  Our initial focus will be developing the city of Hong Kong.  Our target audience will be based on Hong Kong college/universities students and its fresh graduates, as well as for those companies which seek for caliber from UJobs.com.

2.2 Company Locations

UJobs.com is headquartered in Hong Kong.  It is located at Suite 3701-7, Shell Tower, Times Square, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong.

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3. Services

We have provided different quality service to both job seekers and recruiters. For the job seekers, we put the focus on Hong Kong students, no matter they are studying in college/ university, about to graduate or just graduated.  But we do also welcome those target groups who are studying in other countries.  We offer career assistance to students who seek for permanent jobs, part-time jobs and temporary jobs.

    The current services available to job seekers include:

    1.        Direct Access to a Large and Growing List of Employers

    2.        Privacy

    3.        Personal career management home page

    4.        Detailed, Current Information

    5.        Job Search Tools

    6.        Career Resources

    The current services available to member companies (recruiters) include:

    1.      Direct Access to a Large Number of Job Seekers

    2.      Posting and Management Tools

    3.      Personalized Resume Tracking System

    4.      Distribution of Job Postings

    5.      Flexible Pricing Model

Future Services

Ujobs.com intends to continue to devote more resources to enhancing its current development.

The may include:

Innovative Pricing Model

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4. Market Analysis

Market Opportunity:

Nowadays, job seekers have still been limited to newspaper advertisements, job fairs and local recruitment firms to search for available positions, usually within a limited geographical region. Thru companies and recruiters had a choice between classified ads and search agencies, but the cost are relatively high. Through the growth and popularity of Internet, job market has broken down these limitations and provides significant opportunities for more immediate, focused and low cost means of career management and job fulfillment.

Competition:

So far, there is no leader or recognized brand name in the online recruiting market in Hong Kong. As of this moment, there is only five geographically within Hong Kong.

The quality of some of these sites is generally very poor. Several are simply an informational front-end for a recruiting agency with no actual jobs or resumes and others have only links to other job related sites.

The ones that could be considered as “real” job search/recruiting sites are generally deficient in terms of features and functionality, privacy, security, language and user personalization-particularly on the recruiter side. For example:

SWOT Analysis of the Market:

1. The Market Opportunity

The online recruiting market is relatively new and rapidly evolving. It is growing very quickly and is projected to be more than a US$ 1.7 billion industry in the US alone by 2003. We believe Hong Kong as an international financial center to follow a similar trend and aspire UJobs.com to lead that market.

The adoption of online recruiting and job seeking, particularly among those that have historically relied upon traditional recruiting methods, requires the acceptance of a new way of conducting business exchanging information, advertising and applying for jobs. Many of our potential employer customers may have little experience using the Internet as a recruiting tool, and only select segments of the job seeking population have experience using the Internet to look for jobs. However this situation is changing rapidly.

We believe that the recovery of Hong Kong economy driving a once-again vibrant job market, combined with the rapid proliferation of the internet, will attract progressive companies and qualified career-minded individuals to use online job search/recruitment web sites. UJobs.com has the exciting opportunity and potential to be the best, regional site in Asia.

Job search / recruiting Market

This market includes three main groups: the traditional print classified ads in newspaper, magazines, trade journal: recruitment or job search firms which actively match job seekers with employer requirements and online job search/ recruitment portals similar to UJobs.com.

Both the print classified ads and recruitment firm industries are quite well developed in North America, Europe and even in most areas of Asia. However, online recruitment industry is just getting started. The global market for job classifieds, including online ads, was projected to over US$31 billion last year with US8 billion in the US alone.3

All indication shows that this will grow rapidly over the next couple of years as Asia catches up in terms of internet usage and companies realize the value of online recruiting The successful players will be those that can effectively build a strong brand name in key markets, provide the best valued for their subscribers and effectively manage exponential company growth.

2.Market Needs

The limitations of traditional job search/ recruiting

Nowadays, most employers relied on four traditional recruiting methods to recruit suitable University graduates into their companies. These methods include newspaper classifieds and other print advertisements, traditional job fairs, on-campus recruiting, recruitment agencies.

However, each of these methods has its limitations.

-Newspaper and other print advertisements

Time inefficient, employers have to wait up a long time to collect all the resumes and job seekers have to wait a long time to receive feedback from application.

Relatively high cost, cost prohibitive to provide a full description of either the employer or the job opportunity and to advertise jobs nationally.

-Traditionally Job Fairs

Recruiter have limited time in choosing the right applicant for the post. Applicants have to visit a great amount of booths to determine the specific jobs that are available.

-On Campus Recruitment

The number of candidates requesting interviews exceeds the employers' available time slots. Employers have to visit multiple campuses with limited amount of time in meeting all qualified candidates.

-Recruitment Agencies

Placement fees or costly, while employers only have exists to limited applicant pools. Limited information is given to jobseekers about the companies or post they requests. 

Online recruiting and job seeking advantages over traditional methods:

Online services enable users (job seekers) to rapidly and more easily conduct job searches and gather related information of the company or post. The Internet allows individuals to access information from many different sources and view job advertisements form several countries and industries thus permitting them to define their specific job needs and be contacted automatically when jobs that match their needs become available. Moreover, online recruiting enables job seekers to compare and evaluate job opportunities and apply job electronically and further increase the speed and accuracy of finding the right job.

Job seekers nowadays tend to take more control in their own careers. Searching and managing one's job through the Internet is an excellent method to satisfy these needs. According to a study conducted by J. Walter Thompson's Specialized Communications Group, over 70 percent of active job seekers prefer the internet to other methods of job seeking.

Another study, by SBC Internet Services, estimates that this summer 82% of college graduates searched for careers and employment information online. 66% of those graduates seeking employment emailed their resumes to employers and an estimated 55% of graduates posted their resumes on an online job service site. The study also found that 75% of college students graduating in the spring and summer semesters of 1999 researched a specific career or job online, with 79% researching information on would-be employers online. Moreover, study found that 74% of graduates would use the Net to search for a job in a defined geographical location.

For recruiters, online recruiting enables increased breadth, speed and more effective targeting of recruiting efforts. Employers using the online recruiting service can get in contact with the best talented target within a short period of time.

Nowadays more economical recruiting channels to satisfy their increasing staffing needs. Internet recruiting has been shown to be a more cost-effective alternative to traditional recruiting methods with estimates indicating that online recruiting represents approximately 20% of the cost of recruiting an employee through print media and approximately 8% of the cost of recruiting an employee using a recruiting search firm.4

Source 4: Logos Research Case study, 1997

3.Market Growth:

Theoretically, the market available to UJobs.com consists of all companies within the region who need to recruit employees and where we have sites. There is only a small percentage of those companies will actually consider using and paying for an online recruiting service.

In the US Forrester Research, study estimated nearly 24000 companies are using online recruiting services in year 1999. The study also forecasts by 2003, most companies, 60% of medium sized companies and 20%of small companies will use the Internet for recruitment purposes. A separate survey from the American Management Association reports that in 1998, 70% of companies in the U.S. were actively using the Internet to advertise jobs and recruit employees, up to 51% in 1997.

Another measure of available market size is the total classified advertising market and the growing percentage of that market spent online. Forrester estimates that the total US market size for total classified advertising is expected to steadily increase from just over US$8 billion year 1998 to nearly US$10 billion in 2001. However in 2002 and 2003 there is actually a decrease in the total market size as use of the lower cost channel of online recruiting replaces the more traditional and more expensive prints ads and recruitment firms.

As the Internet usage became more widespread, most companies from a broad range of industries are expected to do at least a portion of their employee recruitment over the Internet. In 1998, Forrester estimated that US$105 million was spent online recruiting will account for $US 1.7 billion or 19.8% of the entire print classified advertising market.

4. Market Trends

Two major market trends will contribute to the rapid growth of the online recruiting and job seeking market both globally and in Asia, increased internet usage and employment tends:

Internet Usages:

The number of Internet users is a key driver in the usage of online recruiting and job seeking market. However, statistics on Internet usage vary greatly depending on when how and who is conducting the research.

Computer Industry Almanac reported that by the year of 2000 327million people around the world would have Internet access.

Nextlook Designs Inc. estimates that globally for 1998 42% of Internet users were between the ages of 18-25, 17% between 26-35

EAsia Report estimates that Asia will have 61 million net users or 22% of the world's total by 2002.

Source Computer Economics, July 1999

Suffice to say that the number of tertiary students Internet users in Hong Kong is already significantly large and thru the economic crisis has dampened early forecasts, Hong Kong is expected to be the fastest growing region in Asia. A combination of customer interest and government imperative is driving demand for the Internet.

The other factor driving the Internet growth in Hong Kong is the growth of personal computer sales and people owning a computer. Generally speaking almost each tertiary student owns at least one computer. Not including some have a few computers at home. Moreover, due to the ever changing / modifying computer world computers have to update their computers constantly in order to use all the programmes available in the market.

Unemployment's levels are also an important consideration for the success of the job search/ recruitment market. For example, a recovering economy with a high unemployment rate should have both an increasing number of available jobs and plenty of job seekers.

Asia's general economic situation has been steadily improving over the last year: currency values have remained stable and regional stock markets have been producing strong gains since the end of 1998. It now appears that the regional markets recovery is well underway.

However, the general unemployment situation in several countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, Korea and Japan can still be considered relatively high. As a result there is a large available lab our market and an apparent favorable market for job searching and recruiting of fresh graduate tertiary students.

Forrester Research estimates that unemployment among “ Knowledge workers” is less than 1% relative to overall unemployment. Because of the shortage in highly skilled job seekers, qualified candidates must be hired quickly or they may be lost to competitor. The ability to quickly hire qualified employees may have a significant influence on the future success of a company.

5. Competitive landscapes

As discussed, only newspaper/ print ads and recruitment agencies generate substantial revenue and are therefore considered competition for online recruiting services such as UJobs.com. We understand that online companies such as UJobs.com will not be able to replace traditional print ads or recruitment companies in the near future. However, we do expect online recruitment companies will steal an increasingly significant share of the overall market and that UJobs.com will compete with the other online companies for that share.

The popularity of online job search/ recruitment portals in the US has grown incredibly over the last couple of years and this has spurred the establishment of hundreds of similar startups around the world. Most of these startups, though are focused only on a single country and provide very simplistic services and functionality with little thought for security or personalization. One of the major US players has started to expand its services geographically starting in Europe also coupled with the regional expansion of three other European startups. As of this moment, only tow startups have begun to branch out geographically within Asia, and only within the last 6 month.

Each country in Asia typically has anywhere from 3 to 10+ country specific recruiting web sites. However, the usefulness and quality of these sites is generally not high.  The few that could be considered “real” job search/ recruiting sites are generally deficient in terms of features and functionality, privacy, security, language and user personalization. And they are not specifically for tertiary graduates. The group of qualified job seekers. For example, on most sites:

UJobs.com provides all these features and many others.

Competitive Patterns:

Our analysis is based on some of the largest and most mature online job search/ recruit market in the world, the US has shown several key patterns and features which have made the major players successful. We are following several of their best practices in our planning and strategy. We have incorporated many of their best features into the design of our UJobs.com.

Major trends of strategy used in US market:

Main Competitors:

In Hong Kong there is approximately five online recruiting / job searching websites.

They are CareerTimes.com, JobsDB.com, JobAsia.com, Pandaplanet.com, Jobmarketsingtao.com.

Source: PC Magazine, May 25 1999,

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5. Strategies

UJobs.com's business strategy is based on the three key success factors of our business:

I. Create High Brand* Awareness

(* A brand is a sign, symbol, design, term, name or combination that allows for easy recognition of a product or company. Products/Services with well-recognized brand names often give assurance to customers because customers believe that the risk of using a brand-name product/service is lower.)

II. Attract and Retain Recruiting Subscribers (Member Companies)

III.  Maintain Superior Web Site (in terms of functionality, security, ease-of-use, content)

Therefore, we have divided ours strategy into 4 components which are Geographical, Launch, Marketing, and Sales.

5.1  Geographic Strategy

An expeditious and methodical rollout of our sites is necessary to most effectively build our brand identity in the region and counter the existing competition. UJobs.com's geographic strategy, therefore, controls much of the overall direction of the company and determines how fast we can expand our operations in terms of technology, people, and financial resources. It also determines the format of the site from language considerations to country specific career-related content.

Our current strategy is to launch an English-based site in Hong Kong. Using English as the only default language because it is easier and less time consuming for rolling out the site. Besides, the high penetration rate in Hong Kong indicates a generally sophisticated online community, and therefore a good existing or potential market for online recruiting. We have also launched sites globally including in the US, the UK, Canada, China, and Taiwan for the purposes of building relationships with potential companies who may also interested in posting jobs in Hong Kong to obtain valuable market data from already mature markets to build brand awareness and market presence for a possible entry into those markets in the future, and to potentially gain supplemental revenues.

5.2        Launch Strategy

UJobs.com is going to follow a two-stage operational strategy: Soft Launch and Hard Launch.

Prior to the Soft launch date, we will have prepared the site and database in terms of structure, layout and language, and the servers and network architecture as required in our technology plan. Additionally, we will have collected a database of companies to use in our direct emailing campaign.

On the Soft Launch date, the site will be made active and we will begin our direct emailing campaign to a determined group of companies each day. These companies will be able to become free-trial members and post jobs immediately; however, the resume search feature will not be active since at that time there will be few or no resume in the database. During the Soft Launch period we will also provide support as required to all members, and we will begin developing an initial advertising/promotion campaign.

Prior to the Hard Launch date, we will have accumulated a determined number of jobs and member companies in our database and the advertising/promotions activities will be fully prepared and ready to execute.

On the Hard Launch date, the advertising and promotions activities will begin, starting with press releases and selected media coverage. When the resume database reaches a selected level, the resume search feature will be enabled and the site will be fully functional. Other activities conducted at Hard Launch time include:

5.3  Marketing Strategy

UJobs.com's marketing strategy must successfully satisfy our most important key success factor – to quickly promote our brand name and services within market of operations to either minimize the first-mover advantage of our competition, or to quickly build our own advantages in Hong Kong.

Our marketing strategy consists of a product positioning which emphasizes our competitive advantages over both traditional recruiting methods and other online job searching/recruiting sites. This strategy also consists of a competitive pricing plan based on a customer-centric, easy-to-use web site, and an aggressive advertising and promotion plan which uses a strategic combination of print, TV, radio and online media to build and manage the UJobs.com brand.

5.3.1 Target Market Segment Strategy

Our strategy is to provide services to job seekers with tertiary educational background and all recruiters without targeting on a particular industry.

UJobs.com's target visitors can be generally divided into two groups: job seekers and recruiters. Each of these groups can be further divided into sub-segments.

Job Seekers

1.        Fresh Graduates: typically with tertiary educational background; looking for their first professional jobs, i.e. entry level positions; requiring assistance in resume writing, interviewing techniques, career advice, etc; very Internet savvy; will use university career centre and job boards, classified print ads and friends/family to find jobs.

2.        Final Year Students: typically with tertiary educational background; planning to find their first professional jobs, i.e. entry level positions; requiring assistance in resume writing, interviewing techniques, career advice, etc; very Internet savvy; will use university career centre and job boards, classified print ads and friends/family to find jobs.

3.        Non-Final Year Students: typically with tertiary educational background; looking for summer jobs or part-time jobs; requiring assistance in resume writing, interviewing techniques, career advice, etc; very Internet savvy; will use university career centre and job boards, classified print ads and friends/family to find jobs.

Recruiters

1.        Larger Company Employers: typically large corporations who hire well over 50 people each year on a continuous basis; offering full time, part time, temporary and summer jobs; seeking wide range of staff from entry level positions to upper management, technical and non-technical; having offices in multiple countries; currently using print ads and recruitment agencies; having substantial recruitment budgets.

2.        Small-Medium Company Employers: typically smaller companies who hire up to 50 people each year, possibly several at one time; offering full time, part time, temporary and summer jobs; seeking individuals with tertiary educational background; having offices in one or two countries; currently using print ads and recruitment agencies; having modest recruitment budgets.

3.        Large Recruitment Agencies: typically place more than 500 candidates each year; deal with large corporations; working with entry level to upper level management positions; often use print ads on behalf of large clients; having international operations or networks and well-established international reputations.

4.        Small-Medium Recruitment Agencies: typically place fewer than 500 candidates; deal with wide range of clients from large corporations to small and local companies; working with wide range of positions from administrative to upper management; sometimes use print ads as a supplemental channel; have operations in one or few countries globally; have mostly local reputations

At present, we are targeting all the Recruiter segments since we need to build a critical mass of jobs in our database to establish ourselves as a significant presence in the recruiting marketplace. In the future, we may decide to focus on certain market sub-segments or filter out all Search Agency jobs. This will depend on our market analysis, competitive positioning, segment profitability and job seeker feedback.

As the UJobs.com site develops, we will begin to add and customize further content and features specifically focused on these segments. This will be based on our market research, visitor feedback, and competitive analysis.

Note: For any company or recruitment firm looking for a more expeditious and economical method of finding the best people for their available positions, UJobs.com offers the best most personalized service. For job seekers, UJobs.com offers the most functional, secure and personalized career tools to find the best job.

5.3.2  Pricing Strategy

UJobs.com offers two flexible pricing plans for our members.

The member companies can choose to post a certain amount of jobs (1-40 job increments) for a 1, 3, 6 or 12 month membership term. They can:

The price will be set according to:

The cost per job decreases as the length of membership and quantity of jobs increase. If a member company posts 10-20 jobs, the cost per job decreases by 5%. If a member company posts more than 20 jobs, the cost per job decreases by 10%. That means the cost per job decreases if more jobs or longer duration of the membership term purchased. This pricing method is comparative, flexible and more suitable for employers' needs.

The subscription fees are as below:

Recruiting companies which choose to post individual jobs onto the system for 1-month, have the ability to manage their job postings and receive resumes via email. But they will not have access to a private resume database or to the UJobs.com resume search engine.

5.3.4  Promotion Strategy

The most important key success factor for UJobs.com will be successfully building our brand image and creating massive brand awareness. Therefore, the creative and effective marketing, advertising and promotion of our services are absolutely critical to our online recruiting leadership goal.

Initially, we are offering 6 months free trial membership to the first 50 joining recruiters/employers and 3 months free membership to the next 100 joining recruiters/employers. By trial and observation, companies lower the risk of adopting a new innovation. As our trial memberships gain greater experience with UJobs.com's services, they are increasing their amount of posting jobs online. This will build a sufficiently large database of companies and jobs from which to launch our general marketing campaign and allow member companies to familiarize themselves with the UJobs.com site features.

For job seekers, we should consider the powerful communication network between tertiary students and fresh graduates (our target groups). Once a job seekers gain experience with the services provided by UJobs.com, they may act as opinion leaders and communicate with others about their experience. The interaction of an early adopter (the second adopter category, following innovator) with an innovator lowers perceived risk. Once early adopters gain experience, they communicate to the early majority (the third group of adopter). This process continues down through the fourth adopting category, the laggards. We should take advantage of this word-of-mouth system to attract new customers by engaging in viral marketing. (Viral marketing occurs when a customer promotes something through use of a product or service such as a Web site or e-mail.)

We will rely on professional marketing and public relations firms to coordinate our advertising campaigns and media buying to the general public. Our initial target audience during out Hard Launch will be the job seekers since we need to populate our resume database as quickly as possible. Following that, we will target both job seekers and Recruiters/Employers.

We believe our most effective advertising channels will be through traditional print media and TV. Special promotions such as giveaway contests or further free trial-memberships will be considered. We also plan to use press releases, seminars, forums, speaking opportunities at trade shows, magazine articles, and newsletter publishing to promote our services.

5.3.5  Distribution Strategy

UJobs.com is committed to providing an extremely secure web site which is also easy to access and use. This means we will need to provision a relatively high-bandwidth* network with multiple servers for operations to minimize download and access times. Additionally, we have to continually incorporate the latest technology and visitor feedback to improve the site’s usability.

(* Bandwidth indicates the amount of digital information that can be carried over a line. The basic rule in developing multi-media (combined text, images, sound) is that the richer the media, the larger the file, and therefore the higher the bandwidth needed to deliver the content in a given amount of time.)

5.3.6  Strategic Alliances*

In order to insure the highest quality and largest breadth of services to our visitors, which in turn drives a high volume of traffic, as well as gain maximum exposure and brand awareness in the marketplace. UJobs.com will target a number of strategic alliances and partnerships with other reputable Internet and industry-related service providers. We believe that these strategic alliances and partnerships will be critical to the success of UJobs.com.

(* Alliances are formal or informal relationships between independent companies that work together for a common purpose.)

Below is a list of potential partners in Hong Kong:

Internet Related

 Professional Services

 Academic

 Media

The nature of these alliances could range from simple banner ad exchanges, to full mutual link and search capabilities, to joint press releases and announcements, all the way to combined advertising campaigns and equity investments.

5.4 Sales Strategy

UJobs.com's new subscriber membership sales will come primarily through telemarketing directly to employers as well as leads generated from online inquiries and referrals. In addition, further dales van be generated from promotional emails and other off- and on-line advertising. For this reason, we expect to rapidly grow our sales and service staff to conduct telesales and answer customer inquiries and subscriptions.

Customer loyalty is extremely important for UJobs.com since it drives repeat subscriptions and retention of key member companies. Loyalty in this business can be achieved through two methods: successful position filling (due to a large database of quality job seekers) and superior customer service.

Most customer inquiries should come via email and we have committed to answering all emails within 24 hours. However, our plan is to also provide toll free customer service numbers in other countries of operation which will be directed to our sales staff in Hong Kong. This process will continue until UJobs.com has established and operated for 2 to 3 years.

This strategy will require significant amounts of capital and will likely mean losses over the next few years in order to achieve the desired subscribers base and market position as the number one online recruiting and job searching resource.

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6. Management Team

The initial management team of UJobs.com consists of its founder and President, Ms. Tina Tsang; and Management Advisor, Michelle Man.  They are responsible to supervise the 4 teams: Operations, Marketing & Sales, Technical and Administration.

6.1 Organizational Structure

UJobs.com's current organization consists of 16 full time employees distributing as below, and with temporary, part-time accounting and administrative support from other CityU Ltd.


6.2 Details of Management Team

Ms. Tina Tsang, President and CEO

Ms Tsang is responsible for the gerneral vision and direction of the company.  She has coordinated the information of the company, the development of the site and hired the initial consultant.  He will continue to oversee the development of the company and its financial status.

Prior to starting UJobs.com, Ms Tsang worked for 10 years in Management Department of Hong Kong Telecom and 3 years in Electronic Commerce Division of America Bank.  Before that, she completed her MSc degree in Information Engineering at Chinese University of Hong Kong while obtained her MBA degree at Stanford University.

Ms. Michelle Man, Management Advisor

Ms Man is responsible for giving advice on the operation of the company.  She is the President of CityU.Ltd currently and worked for Senior Financial analyst of Morgan Stanley Investment Company in 1984-1994. She obtained her BBA degree in Economics & Finance at Harvard University while completed her E-Commerce Master Degree at UCLA.

6.3 Personnel Plan

The staffing plan for UJobs.com closely follows our aggressive operational strategy. In order to catch up with the rapid business development, we forecast that apart from 16 current permanent staff, extra 20 staff will be recruited in the coming year (2001). According to financial forecast, there will be totally 70 employees in 2002 and grow to 138 employees in 2003.

We have divided the personnel plan into four teams: Operations, Marketing/Sales, Technical, and Administration.  Following are the key responsibilities of each team:

6.3.1 Operations

6.3.2 Marketing/Sales

6.3.3  Technical

6.3.4 Administration

The estimated expenditure on human resources will be HKD$4560,000 for 2001 while HKD$9,120,000 in 2002 and HKD$18,240,000 in 2003.

Personnel Plan

2001

2002

2003

Operations

12

24

48

Sales/Marketing

8

16

32

Technical

10

20

40

Administration

4

8

16

Total Headcount

34

68

136

Miscellaneous (medical benefits…)

$60,000

$120,000

$240,000

Total Expenditure

$4560,000

$9,120,000

$18,240,000

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7. Financial Plan

We have planned extremely rapid expansion of our web sites and services in Hong Kong in order to gain a critical mass of subscribers and quickly build a strong brand identity. This strategy will require significant amounts of capital and will likely mean losses for the next few years in order to achieve the desired subscriber base and market position as the No.1 online recruiting and job searching resource in Hong Kong.

We are looking for external investment to finance our growth until such time as we can achieve our goals. Therefore, an investment of HK$1,200,000 is needed immediately to build up our basic operations, launch subsequent marketing campaigns, and make further technical capital investments. A further capital investment of HK$4,000,000 will be needed around March 2001 to take us into our second year.

Once our position in the market has started to develop, however, the value of the company should be sufficient for UJobs.com to either merge or be acquired by a major foreign firm, or for us to become the No.1 Asia Pacific Career portal to go public.

The financial plan depends on important assumptions, and shown in the following table. From the beginning, we recognize we will not be generating revenues until our free subscription period is over and we have gained sufficient brand awareness in Hong Kong. Interest rates and personnel burdens are based on conservative assumptions.

We expect that we will need to continue to improve our financial and managerial controls. However, we will also need to continue to expand and maintain close coordination among our technical, accounting, finance and sales and marketing departments.

7.1 Projected Balance Sheet

The balance sheet in the appendix shows the company's financial position.

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8. Conclusion

As we all know how powerful Internet is in today's business world, providing online job searching and recruiting services to job seekers and recruiters are feasible nowadays in Hong Kong. 

Our first year of operations will focus on aggressively growing our brand identity and services while rapidly building our management and staff. We will roll out services over the first few months, and spend the second half of he first year stabilizing the site and strengthening our marketing positioning. Subsequent years will involve establishing a stronger presence management and staff, and executing aggressive sales programs.

Although our strategy will require significant amounts of capital and will likely mean losses over the next few years, we strongly believe that this marketing plan is able to achieve the desired subscribers base and market position as the number one online recruiting and job searching resource. 

In conclusion, this marketing plan is feasible and valuable that has a great potential to be worked out.

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9. Appendix

Projected Balance Sheet (HK$)
Assets Financial
Year 2001		 Financial
Year 2002		 Financial
Year 2003
Short-term Assets
Cash -$  4,530,803 -$  4,239,753 -$  4,087,052
Total Short-term Assets -$  4,530,803 -$  4,239,753 -$  4,087,052
Long-term Assets
Capital Assets  $      287,123  $      618,923  $   1,033,673
Accumulated Depreciation  $        40,116  $        98,272  $      170,968
Total Long-term Assets  $      327,239  $      717,195  $   1,204,641
Total Assetss -$    4,203,564 -$    3,522,558 -$   2,882,411
Liabilities and Capital
Long-term Liabilities  $      160,735  $      160,735  $      160,735
Total Liabilities  $      160,735  $      160,735  $      160,735
Paid in Capital  $   2,097,607  $    2,097,607  $    2,097,607
Earnings -$   3,523,193 -$    3,094,542 -$    2,825,586
Total Capital -$   1,425,586 -$      996,935 -$      727,979
Total Liabilities and Capital -$   1,264,851 -$      836,200 -$      567,244
Net Worth -$   5,468,415 -$    4,358,758 -$    3,449,655

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10. Acknowledgement

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