Netcenter adds job boards
Netscape will announce a career section for its portal site, the latest addition in its rush to offer content and services.
Netscape will build the career site in conjunction with TMPW, whose properties include job sites the Monster Board and Online Career Center.
The career site, to be launched in the next six weeks, will give Netcenter a valuable resource that will not only make it competitive with more established Net gateways like Yahoo and Lycos but also will help fill out the business offerings that help differentiate Netcenter as a portal.
The career site will serve both of Netcenter's targeted constituencies: individual Netizens and business.
"This is part of our ongoing Project 60," said Netscape's senior program manager Henry Hall in reference to Netcenter's two-month-long buildout, announced last month. "We intend to turn Netcenter into a major destination portal for consumers and businesses, and in dealing with those two groups we have to provide a service that relates to recruitment."
Other recently announced additions to Netcenter include free Web-based email in conjunction with USA.net; Netscape branded search engine and channels developed with Excite; and the Small Business Source channel for small business information and services.
Netscape is late to the online recruitment and job search game, but it's going in during the tightest labor market in the brief history of the Internet. The company also is partnering with two of the oldest and most high-profile job sites on the Web.
Monster Board and OCC, which list jobs both within and without the high-tech industry, have partnered with other portals, including Yahoo.
Under the deal to be announced tomorrow, TMPW will pay Netscape an up-front fee in addition to a cut of the revenue it receives from recruiters who post job listings. Job seekers will use the combined databases of Monster Board and OCC for free.
Netscape will situate the career site alongside its other business offerings, including the recently announced Small Business Source, its Professional Connection for business networking, and its Business Journal.
"Every major portal has some kind of career offering," Hall said. "But what we've done to differentiate ourselves is to recirculate our offering through these three programs."
In related news, Netscape today announced that Netcenter had acquired more than 4.7 million members since launching in September.