Finn.no : Interview Christian Larsen, Sales Manager FINN Job

Jobboard Finder has recently had an interview with one of the leading media in Scandinavia and more particularly in Norway: Finn.no. Christian Larsen, Sales Manager at Finn.no shared the keys to success and gave his opinion about the e-recruitment market of today and tomorrow.

Can you briefly present Finn.no?

FINN.no is Norway’s biggest marketplace, with over 3.7 million unique users every week. FINN.no is where Norwegians buy and sell their cars, buy and sell their houses, book their travel, sells used furniture, and finds their new job.

How is Finn.no going in terms of visitors and customers?

FINN.no is owned by Schibsted, one of the world’s biggest media houses. We are the 2. biggest national webpage and #1 when it comes to page views. We cover 85% of the job market today in Norway. We have over 550.000 unique visitors on FINN Job every week, and the numbers are growing.

Given that Finn.no is at first a classifieds website, how is the job section highlighted?

The classified ads are our building blocks, and this also applies for our job section. We offer a wide range of additional products, such as Norway`s biggest CV database, classified ad on products, display ads and more…

What are the Finn.no strengths? How the company managed to remain one of the major players in the Norwegian job market for so long?

Our strength is that we are innovative, we took lead online in a very early stage, and we have kept growing for the last 14 years. We have always put the end user in focus. We have the lowest cost per applicant in Norway compared to other traditional media, and we are also one of Europe’s best on target group advertising. Since we have a large percentage of the population visiting every week, we are able to make really wide and narrow target groups. In addition to this, we have our own user panel that consist of over 22.000 people. We track their behaviour and make very precise target and behavioural target groups.

More generally, how is the doing the Norwegian e-recruitment market today?

We, as the rest of Europe, are driven by conjuncture. The oil business is a huge industry, and when this industry is hit, a lot of companies surrounding the oil industry are hurt. This was the case in 2014, where a lot of people starting to lose their work in this sector. But, whit an unemployment rate under 4%, the market is still a very good one.

What has changed in the last year or so? New trends? Technology?

Programmatic bidding, increased focus on behavioural targeting, Big Data and Global transformation. In 2015, FINN.no is being handed the task of establishing a new team that will sell across all sites and media in Schibsted Norway. This gives us the possibilities to reach 90% of the Norwegian population in 24 hours. Our customers are more focused on getting in touch with the “passive” candidates, those with good skills, nice positions in their job today, rather than the people that active search for new jobs.

Which major challenges the e-recruitment will face in the coming years? What do you predict for this area in the future?

The challenges are many, but we see that if you really want to be the winner in this market, you need to be the best at effect based products and sales, data driven technology and algorithms. I think that many traditional media sites and newspapers will lose the battle, due to the fact that they lack the technology driven framework that FINN.no has today.

What are the next steps, plans and projects for Finn.no?

We launch a new product this spring, called “Matching”. This product is unique in many ways. First of all, if you use FINN.no to look on a classified ad, we can show you ads and jobs just like the one you saw on other webpages in Schibsted. We can also show you ads in our entire network based on your digital profile and your digital “footprint” in such an accurate way that tests show 12 times the clickrate that of an ordinary banner.