随着互联网的发展，网上招聘以其信息传播范围广。不受时间和地域的限制、方便快捷、成本较底等特点正受到越来越多企业的欢迎，有数据显示，在《财富》500强企业中，使用网上招聘的已占88%，而国内的企业采用网上招牌的越来越多。采用网上招聘被企业的广泛应用带来的是招聘网站的迅速兴起，据不完全统计，目前，全国正式登记注册的招聘网站已达到500多家，然而，运作得比较成功的并不是很多，在市场上较为活跃、影响力比较大的，当数中华英才网、前程无忧和智联招聘网三家，据统计，每年全国的网络招聘有五六亿元的市场规模，中华英才网、前程无忧、智联招聘就占了其中的一半 ，而有意思的是，这三个招聘网站在很多服务内容和营销方式上却是针锋相对，从服务内容到市场推广等方面都有自己的手法和个性的特色。
路径不一，目标相同
中华英才网、前程无忧、智联招聘目前在业务上直接竞争的关系，市场定位也颇为相似，而三个公司创建网上招聘平台的路径却不完全一样。
中华英才网（(ChinaHR.com)成立于1997年，前身是1995年成立的猎头公司—E-Channel顾问公司，此前为外商独资企业、合资企业、国有大中型企业提供高级人才访寻服务，，2000年完成从传统猎头公司向“基于网络技术平台，提供全方位人力资源服务的专业公司”的转型。
智联招聘（www.zhaopin.com）的路径和中华英才网同出一辙，同样是成立于1997年，而前身是1994年创建的猎头公司智联（Alliance）。智联招聘面向大型公司和快速发展的中小企业提供一站式专业人力资源服务。
而前程无忧（www.51 job.com）路径则有很大的不同，1998年9月，前程无忧通过推出招聘资讯媒体《前程周刊》而进人人力资源服务领域，1999年1月，《前程周刊》电子版career-post．com在上海开通，1999年9月，网站独立发展，易名.51 job.com（无忧工作网），开始网上招聘。
不难看出，不管这三个公司的路径如何，他们之所以能在目前的网络招聘市场异军突起，其实和他们自身的核心优势和有效的业务延伸是紧密相连的，中华英才网和智联招聘依靠的是过去猎头服务积累的客户资源，从而通过建立平台来实现业务拓展，而前程无忧走的则是一条从传统招聘媒体到网络招聘媒体的道路。但是，三个公司本身都有自身非常鲜明的特点，中华英才网和智联招聘拥有获取优秀人才的运作经验，而前程无忧则有招聘传媒的运作经验，这样充分验证了每个公司在进行业务拓展的时候，一定要和自己当前的核心竞争力相吻合，的这样才可以发挥出独特的优势。
市场推广，各施绝技
为了吸引用户的注意力，三个招聘网站都使出了浑身解数来吸引客户。以“信息量大”自称的中华英才网在成立之初就设置了免费广告栏，允许临时会员3个月内在布告栏张贴招聘信息，这一招使他们目前每日页面浏览量已增长到每日12万。据了解，中华英才网目前每日页面浏览量超过600万，每天提供超过20万个有效职位需求，拥有超过280万个人会员；拥有超过200万个人简历，并以每周一万多份的速度增加，累计超过20万家企业会员；中华英才网还通过创办《人本管理》和《英才E讯》电子刊物来对企业人力资源经理和求职者提供最新的人力资源理念和职业成长技巧等知识，让客户通过对一些知识的了解来感受中华英才网。中华英才网也和IBM等公司合作开展毕业生招募计划，继续稳守其校园招聘的阵地，同时还展开声势浩大的全国招聘行动，并策划定期推出“英才就业指数”、“英才薪资指数”、“HR Club”“最佳雇主调查”等多项人力资源调查结果，在人力资源领域引起较大的反响。
和中华英才网的稳健和低调相比，前程无忧和智联就显得比较惊天动地，前程无忧通过把网站和报纸进行了紧密的结合，使招聘的信息覆盖面非常广。前程无忧的负责人认为，现在中国的网站大多是停留在电子杂志的推广层次，很少发展到实际报纸的推广，连阿里巴巴也没有这样去做，但是根据人才市场的特点，网站和报纸的结合推广是再好不过的办法，因为每个地方都是有人才报纸的，前程要想跟本地的人才报纸进行竞争的话，不得不发展自己的人才报纸。于是，前程选择了一个聪明的举动，那就是和各地已经小有名气的报纸进行合作，搞一个人才版块，这样前程就省去了花在报纸上的推广费用，并直接借用别人的品牌和平台以及顾客优势，以低成本的方式直接增加了前程的利润点，这样的操作模式显然非常成功，在很短的时间内，前程无忧就渗透到了全国很多个城市；前程无忧还针对人力资源领域的目标群体，创办了《人力资本》杂志，并将杂志实行独立运营，堪称是人力资源传媒的整合专家。
当然，智联招聘也毫不示弱，并屡屡出招，首先，推出了俱乐部会员专业刊物〈〈智联HR观察〉〉，并面向人力资源领域的专家、研究人员、企业人力资源专业人士群体征稿，接着，智联还仿照前程无忧的模式，从2003年末开始在3个城市开展报纸招聘业务，目前已推广到15个城市，速度之快让前程无忧始料未及。
综合分析来看，三个公司的市场推广各具特色，中华英才网采用的是针对直接目标群体的小众传播，前程无忧利用的是整合各地传媒资源，搭建平台并采用网站+报纸的互动推广模式，智联招聘则借助强势的媒体平台，三个网站都取得了较好的效果，由此可见，大众传播和小众传播对于招聘网站都能起到作用，关键在于是不是有效的传达给了目标消费者，并借此能够提升网站的知名度和品牌。
译文:
The Different Marketing Operation of Recruitment Websites
Thanks to the advancement of the Internet, online recruitment, with its wide spread, easy and quick operation, lower cost, and with no time or area limitation, is gaining growing popularity among all kinds of enterprises. According to some statistics, 88% of Fortune 500 enterprises have adopted online recruitment while the number of that in China is also roaring. All these have led to the mushrooming of recruitment websites. Meanwhile, there are also some incomplete statistics showing that currently in China, the number of recruitment websites that have officially registered is more than 500, of which only a small portion is soundly operating. The relatively dynamic and influential recruitment websitesin the human resources markets are undoubtedly ChinaHR, 51job. and Zhaopin Ltd. Records show that these three giants account for half of the 500,000,000 or nearly 600.000.000yuan total in China’s market every year. Interestingly, these three recruitment websites, each with its unique strategy and character, stand toe to toe with each other in terns of the services they offer and their marketing operation.
Different Paths, Same Destination
ChinaHR, 51job and Zhaopin Ltd are impediment competitors with similar marketing positioning. However, the paths through which they build up the platforms for online recruitment do not resemble each other exactly.
ChinaHR was funded in 1997, and its precursor is E-Channel Consulting Firm—a head-hunting company which was set up in 1995. Before that, it had been offering services to wholly foreign-owned enterprises, joint ventures, large and medium-sized state owned enterprises, helping them hunt for high-level talented persons. In 2000, it finished the transformation from a traditional head-hunting company to a “professional company offering all-dimensional human resources services based on a platform of network technology”.
Zhaopin Ltd shares the same evolution with 51job, both of which were funded in 1997. The forefather of Zhaopin Ltd is Alliance Head-hunting Company, which was set up in 1994. It provides professional all-in-one HR service to many large enterprises and fast-developing small or medium-sized companies.
51job, however, has a totally different history. In September of 1998, 51job set foot on HR service area by launching the recruitment information medium 51job Weekly. In January of 1999 in Shanghai, the online version51job Weekly was opened to the public on career-post.com. Later in September, the website began to develop independently and changed its name into 51 job.com, thus embarking on the online recruitment services.
It is not hard to find that whatever the paths of these three companies to development are, the fact that they are able to stand out in the current online recruitment market owes so much to their respective core advantages and effective extended services. ChinaHR and Zhaopin Ltd establish platforms to realize the extension of services with the customer resources accumulated in the previous head-hunting services. Meanwhile, 51job transforms its path from a traditional recruitment medium to an online recruitment medium. Nevertheless, all three companies have their own distinctive characteristics. ChinaHR and Zhaopin Ltd have rich operation experience in acquiring talents while 51job possesses that in recruiting media. These are sufficient evidence for the principle that only by highlighting the core competitive strength of one’ own can any individual company give full pay to its distinctive advantages in service extension.
Marketing Operation with Distinctive Strategy
These three recruitment websites do all they could to attract the attention of customers. As early as the beginning of ChinaHR’ foundation, bragging about its “large amount of available information”, it set up a free Ad Column to allow its temporary members to publish recruitment information on the board within 3 months. This practice has helped those members get currently 120.000 page views every passing day. It is known that today, ChinaHR has daily page views of more than 6.000.000, with over 200.000 vacant position offers and over 2.800.000 individual members. Furthermore, it has received more than 2.000.000 resumes and that number is going on climbing up by over 10.000 every week, together with its 200.000-plus enterprise members. In addition, ChinaHR offers latest HR ideas, vocational advancement technique and other related knowledge to enterprise HR managers and job-hunters, enabling them to know more about ChinaHR. ChinaHR, while conducting cooperation with IBM and other companies in graduates recruitment plan to consolidate its campus recruitment front, it has also launched large-scale recruitment campaigns nationwide, and planned to conduct surveys in ChinaHR “employment index”, “salary index”, “HR Club”, “Best employer” and other HR matters, thus producing an immediate reaction in the human resource area.
Compared with the stability and low profile of ChinaHR, 51job and Zhaopin Ltd seem to be more world-shaking. 51job combines websites closely with newspapers to cover a more extensive area. Its officer maintains that today most of China’s websites, including Alibaba Group, are confined to exploring their E-magazines alone, leaving the newspapers market lagging behind. However, with reference to the characteristics of the personnel market, we can find that the wisest practice is to integrate the both. Since newspapers is available every corner, 51job, if wants to compete with local personnel newspapers, has to develop its own newspapers in this field. Therefore, 51job made a right choice by cooperating with newspapers which has already enjoyed a sound reputation in the local area. Through opening a personnel section, 51job successfully reduces the marketing cost and increases the profit point by availing itself of others’ brands, platforms and customer advantages. Obviously, this kind of operation mode is quite rewarding in that 51job opens its markets perfectly in many cities of China It also launches the magazine HR Capital for its target groups in HR area and runs the magazine independently, becoming an expect in integrating HR media.
Of course, Zhaopin Ltd is nowhere behind and has also taken various measures. First, it launched an exclusive publication Zhaopin HR Observation for its club members and solicited contributions from HR experts, researchers and other professionals. Then, it followed in the step of 51job and developed its newspapers markets in 3 cities at the end of 2003. Its newspapers section has kept moving forward at an unexpected speed and covers 15 cities nowadays.
From an integrated perspective, three companies have their own features in marketing process. ChinaHR adopts the Narrowcast practice; 51job integrates the media resources in various local areas and builds up the mode of interaction by combining websites with newspapers; Zhaopin Ltd perfectly avails itself of the successful media platforms. All of them have yielded a lot. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that both mass media and narrowcast can play their roles and the key is to spread the information to the target customers in the real sense and thus to upgrade the reputation and brand influence.