Chinese job board Zhaopin is working to roll out educational services across China over the next 12 months. The company is also looking to export new technologies and ­services that have been successfully introduced in Australia into its Chinese product offering as the business expands into new geographies, reports theaustralian.com.au.

Jason Lenga, Managing Director of SEEK International, which owns 67% of Zhaopin, commented: “We see education as a pretty significant opportunity for Zhaopin. We think Zhaopin is a great platform for jobseekers to find great educational courses.”

“If we can leverage what we have done in Australia and other parts of the world in China, where there is a very significant and growing ­education sector, we are excited about that complementary ­service. We are working on that now. I would like to see us build something in the education space in the next one to two years.”

Mr Lenga added that, while competition for the provision of ­educational services was very competitive in China, “in terms of the platform that can deliver the distribution of students into courses we see that as pretty fragmented and not that competitive right now.”

The group raised USD 75 million following its listing in New York in June.

“We believe we have a good ­investor base in the business now, a good listing venue, and a bunch of new corporate governance standards we are pushing through the business as a result of that ­listing. So overall we are feeling pretty good about the outcome,” Mr Lenga explained.

In Australia during the past nine months SEEK has replaced its old search technology and integrated two new features into its JobSeeker Profile product to allow hirers to make targeted and more personal connections with job candidates.

Analysts have seen the move as a response to the growth of rival offerings such as LinkedIn.

Mr Lenga said such applications could be easily adapted for the Chinese market to improve Zhaopin’s competitive offering: “There is a lot of thinking we are doing in Australia and globally that can be exported into the China market. The direction of where we think the market is going and the technology services we can help them with to deliver a much better experience for a job seeker. And therefore capture more of the value.”

“Zhaopin is trialling things; they are doing things that we can learn from ourselves. They are making some changes to functionality and services. We will give them ideas and share with them our thinking on the direction we are seeing the market go, but what we are not saying is ‘You must do it this way’. There are some case studies in China in our space and others where trying to force our thinking around platforms and models just doesn’t work,” he added.

The Chinese market is very competitive, the top three job-­listing and recruitment sites in the country being 51job, Zhaopin and ChinaHR. LinkedIn also entered the Chinese market in February while other competitors include Liepin, an executive recruiting platform, and RenRen Headhunting, a crowdsourcing recruiting app.

Shanghai-based 51job, which is also listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has consistently traded at a higher multiple than Zhaopin, prompting some fund managers to question how the Australian-backed company could close the gap.

However, 51job’s shares were hit hard last week after it revealed that revenue increased +13.1% in the April-June period, weaker than the growth rate in the prior two quarters.

Analysts are concerned about the impact the slowing Chinese economy may have on online recruitment.

Mr Lenga, however, remains unconcerned: “We don’t obsess about the valuation in much detail. We believe that if we focus on the right things in the business the valuation will look after itself. 51job is predominantly focused on delivering to employers services within the recruitment value chain. They have businesses outside of online employment. We have been very focused on the jobseeker side. That doesn’t mean we won’t also focus on employers. But there is some differentiation emerging there.”

He added that 51job was also stronger in the southern part of China while Beijing-based Zhaopin was focused in the north: “There are significant penetration opportunities in what we would call the tier-two, three or four cities in China where online is still taking hold and where jobseeking is still largely done in an offline capacity. We see that as a big penetration opportunity for Zhaopin.”

He said Zhaopin’s growth would still largely be driven by volume growth: “Pricing has been secondary for us. We have really been focused on how we build the marketplace. It is all about getting the customer on-board and giving them the experience and retaining them.”

Mr Lenga also revealed that acquisitions would be considered if they made strategic sense: “We still primarily see the story as organic growth. But if there are capabilities out there that we would like to bring on board and businesses that make strategic sense for Zhaopin to own, we would consider buying them.”