Recently, Jobboard Finder had an interview with Piet Derriks, the CEO of YourCareerGroup GmbH. YourCareerGroup GmbH is a German job board group which composed of three specialty job boards: HOTELCAREER for the hotel industry; GASTRONOMIECAREER for the catering industry; and TOURISTIKCAREER for the tourism industry.
Here are more details of the interview:
- How is doing YCG? Visitors? Customers?
The job boards of YOURCAREERGROUP are doing very well. In October we counted 1.65 million website visits – the highest number ever. Also, we increased the number of activated jobfinders (job agents in StepStone vocabulary) from about 7.000 in April 2014 to more than 60.000 in November 2014. In terms of postings, when comparing September 2013 and 2014 YCG has grown with about 25%. In one year time, the number of active customers has also grown from ca. 3.700 to ca. 4.500.
- Are the 3 brands, HOTELCAREER, GASTRONOMIECAREER and TOURISTIKCAREER, experiencing equivalent success in all countries where YCG is implemented?
All three job boards started on the German market where they are almost equally successful in the hospitality, catering and tourism industries. In Switzerland, Austria and Poland, we only focus on HOTELCAREER, so the hospitality market.
- Step Stone made the acquisition of YCG beginning of this year. What conclusions can we draw from this first year?
Through to the acquisition of YCG by StepStone, YCG is now part from the well-known Axel-Springer Digital Classifieds. Especially in the traffic, marketing and sales departments YCG profits from synergies, expertise and StepStones long experience in the job board business. Together, YCG and StepStone can make sure that we will continue improving our services and candidate delivery to our niche clients in Hospitaly, catering and tourism.
- What has brought YCG to Step Stone, already leader in Germany?
YCG operates some of the leading job boards for the hospitality, catering and tourism industries in Germany – industries StepStone did not have a focus on so far. By acquiring YCG, StepStone reaches new target groups
- What benefits for YCG?
The integration into the StepStone/Axel Springer Group has been a milestone for the further development of YCG and a big step for the recruitment in the hospitality, catering and tourism industries. Due to the combination of YCG’s sound industry knowledge and technology as well as the StepStone’s wide range we can increase the offers/services to our customers. Moreover, YCG can profit from the international orientation of StepStone.
- What are the Recruiting Days? Why is it so important for YCG?
The Recruiting Days are our career fairs for the hospitality, catering and tourism industry. The events have been established in five German cities since 2008. Next year -for the first time- we will also organise the career fair in Austria and Switzerland. With the Recruiting Days we offer our customers an additional channel for their employer branding and applicant marketing strategy. On our Recruiting Days we create a platform for top employers of the mentioned industries as well as students, graduates and young professionals looking for a job. Companies can present themselves, their culture and job offers to potential new employees. They can use the personal contact and show their career opportunities. For more information, don’t hesitate to have a look at www.recruiting-days.de.
- What are the next steps, plans, projects for YCG?
Generally YCG plans to expand their business in the core markets Germans, Austria and Switzerland. For the upcoming year, one of our plans is to soft launch our business to France and French speaking Switzerland. We already separated the hotelcareer.fr and fr.hotelcareer.ch job boards to enable us filling both with localized, suitable content and to improve traffic optimization. To increase the French vacancy content part, we have created a special offer for new customers in France to test HOTELCAREER during 3 or 6 months. We are also testing a language recognition system on the site to offer our visitors the possibility to filter vacancies on language. This is very important for the hospitality sector as we need to offer candidates an easy access to vacancies all around Europe/The world. As off today, about 600 vacancies online are for countries outside Germany, Switzerland or Austria.
