Online recruitment company saongroup.com, the largest Irish employer in China, today announced the acquisition of Jobinhe.net, a recruitment website in the Hebei Province. This latest announcement marks saongroup.com’s further expansion into the Chinese online recruitment market. As a result of the acquisition Saongroup.com has become the third largest online recruitment company in China. The amount of the transaction is undisclosed.
Jobinhe.net has a current market share of 35.3% in Hebei Province making it one of the most influential online recruitment platforms in North China. The website has 35,000 corporate clients, daily traffic of 100 million and over 620,000 CV’S on its database. On a daily basis up to 3,000 companies use Jobinhe’s website to recruit. Saongroup.com through Jobinhe.net will also provide companies with a full range of human resource services including headhunting services, personnel recommendations and professional HR training and talent assessment. Currently, Saongroup.com has in excess of 1,800 employees in China which is expected to grow to almost 3,000 by the end of 2012, including 20 Irish managers.
In March 2012 the company announced a further investment in China of €25 million during a visit by Mr. Richard Bruton T.D, Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, to the company’s Chinese headquarters in Beijing.
Ciaran McCooey, Group CEO, saongroup.com, said: “Saongroup.com is delighted to be expanding further into the Chinese online recruitment market. In six short years we have become a major player in mainstream online recruitment in the Chinese market, which we believe has real potential for major growth in the short to medium term.”
Since saongroup.com expanded into the Chinese employment market the business has enjoyed rapid growth. The company was attracted to the market by a combination of low internet penetration with high GDP growth. Saongroup has more job sites and is in more cities than any other online recruitment business in China.
The Chinese market represents enormous future potential for saongroup.com. In 2011 China surpassed Japan as the second largest economy in the world and has 460 million Internet users or 33 per cent of the population.