Line Thailand is seeking to make its online jobs platform, Line Jobs, the biggest in the country by the end of this year, with over 10 million users.
The company plans to expand into the semi-skilled labour market for jobs such as manufacturing labour, service workers, salespeople, clerks and general staff, which are estimated at 42% of the Thai job market.
Taniya Triwanata, head of Line Jobs, said semi-skilled workers have a high turnover rate, up to 300% a year, meaning these positions constantly need filling.
She said no other job search platform seriously targets semi-skilled labour, so Line is keen to take the lead in the niche.
Line Thailand launched Line Jobs in May 2018 and has attracted 7 million followers with over 390,000 positions on offer from more than 18,000 corporations. The platform has taken over 1 million applications and attracted 200,000 connected candidates.
"This year, the company expects over 1.4 million applications to come through Line Jobs, resulting in no fewer than 240,000 connected candidates or a 40% growth rate of applications and connections via the platform," Ms Taniya said.
She said Line Jobs' goal is to fix the pain points found in the typical job-listing experience of older systems.
In the past, getting the right person for the job was difficult. Many online platforms still provide slow service, charge high prices and require registering and filling out unnecessary information -- resulting in fewer than 2 million people using such services.
This shows that many employers and applicants still go through the process offline, Ms Taniya said.
Line Jobs helps corporations reduce operating costs for job recruitment and boosts the efficiency of human resources management, especially at corporations that have many branches or production business agents.
Line Jobs lets corporations post job recruitment listings with no limit on the number of positions. The company pays a fee to Line when accessing information on its applicants.
Companies can also prioritise a list of applicants who would be most suitable for the job.
Ms Taniya said that unlike older online systems in Thailand, companies pay less in upfront fees to post jobs before finding out if the listing is successful. The normal online job-seeking helper site does not allow the corporation to add administrators to monitor applicants' information, or it charges a fee to add more administrators.
Line's user base of over 44 million users gives it an advantage over other jobs platforms, Ms Taniya said.
Jaruwan Ngampisutpaisarn, senior vice-president for human resources at Central Restaurant Group, said the company began recruiting employees via Line Jobs last August and hired 3,281 employees via the service in 2018.
The company hired a further 2,000 workers via the platform in the first two months this year, despite recruiting employees from a variety of channels.
"Line Jobs helped us reduce operating costs for job recruitment and shortened the procedure efficiently," Ms Jaruwan said.
