Media in Focus - Lifestyle Careers

Welcome to Media in Focus where we regularly highlight a media opportunity by asking the owners/founders how they started their business, the features and benefits of their advertising offer and how they manage their advertising sales process.

Lifestyle Careers is not yet a year old but Leah Gibbs is already making strong inroads in to this vibrant niche market.  She shares her story......

Please see Lifestyle Careers MediaScope directory listing

Name of Website:  www.lifestylecareers.com.au
Owned by:  Sole Trader – Leah Gibbs
Target Market: Australian & New Zealand Professional Job Seekers
Launched:  6 July 2009
Staff: 1 (4 contract)

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Can you give us some background information about Lifestyle Careers?

Lifestyle Careers is an online recruitment job board. Our niche and specific focus is the advertising of flexible employment and work at home positions. By specialising in these groups, we provide Employers with access to a motivated group of job seekers who are looking to work flexibly and in less traditional ways. These people have made a decision to seek employment with elements of flexibility and are driven to work for organisations with a more modern outlook.

You can advertise any type of job that features employment flexibility or that promotes a work life balance. We feature full time, part time, casual, job share, flexible hours, work at home jobs, temporary/contract, volunteer, home based business, self employment, and  freelance opportunities.

Lifestyle Careers was developed with the aim to provide a direct connection for individuals seeking flexible opportunities and employment promoting a work life balance and for employers or recruiters seeking candidates for flexible or home based employment.

Tell us how & why Lifestyle Careers started?

My path to self employment led me from being a successful business professional, to a frustrated, tired and stressed-out mum looking for the type of work which allowed me to stay home with my daughter while still making my mark in the professional world.

When I had my daughter, I had a strategy when it came to motherhood, just like I had when it came to my career and the rest of my life. However, as any parent will attest, sometimes babies have other ideas. A traumatic birthing experience, long recovery, bout of postnatal depression and, of course, falling head-over-heels in love with my baby girl led me to a complete philosophy turn-around.
I had no desire to go back to full-time work outside the home, but financial realities meant working was a must. I wanted and needed a job that could fit around my family commitments, so I began researching work from home options.
 
The frustration I experienced in my search for legitimate, work from home opportunities led me to establishing the Work At Home Mums website as a hobby in 2007. I wanted to help other mothers find a genuine home-based job, work-life balance and a supportive network to help them.
 
I recognised that there was a huge gap in the market. There were mothers and fathers, carers, mature age workers and those with disabilities and others who lived in remote communities. They were all searching for home based work or flexible employment. There appeared to be nothing much to connect the supply with the demand. After being made redundant twice in one year during the GFC, I decided to go ahead with the dream I had envisioned which led me to develop the Lifestyle Careers Online Recruitment Job Board, I came up with the name brainstorming by myself it at 3am in the morning.
 
Can you outline your current market position and your forward plans?

We are still going strong after 10 months of operation. Australia is a tough market to crack for new job board entrants. We relaunched the site last week to a new job board platform and we now have a fabulous Australian Support Team. We spent time listening to the feedback from our website users who wanted a cleaner and simpler way to search for positions. The re-launched job board has made it easier for job seekers to search and apply for jobs with new functionality including SMS job alerts and Face book Connect integration. The advertisers section has also been updated to streamline job posting and integrated with multi-posting systems. Advertisers are also provided with valuable statistical tools including advertising analytics.

Currently, we have over 3,000 people registered, a number that is growing every day, averaging 100 new sign ups. In terms of audience figures, we are attracting around 7,500 unique visitors per month according to Google Analytics. Hundreds of unique visitors per day browse and apply through the job advertisements, not bad for a site only 10 months young.

We also have one fabulous achievement to date. A nomination and finalist in Recruitment Extra’s Recruitment Excellence Awards in 2009, received in just a few months after the job board first launched which was very exciting, I could not believe it. We did not win but it was an absolute honour to be recognised this way up amongst some established and recognised brands

My forward plans are to enter the New Zealand job market later this year. We have some exciting plans for expansion.

What benefits does Lifestyle Careers offer advertisers?

Traditional forms of advertising, such as print, have become expensive. Aside from the cost savings, there are a number of other key benefits to recruiting online. Using a niche online job board is the quickest and most cost effective way to get your vacancy in front of thousands of flexible job seekers.

A niche online job board is much more cost effective than a larger, generalist job board.  Generalist job sites cover lots of jobs across many sectors, they attract all kinds of candidates, the good, the bad and the ugly, and as a consequence, advertisers often suffer job seeker overload.

Our aim for Advertisers that are open to flexible working options is to provide a talent pool of professional Job Seekers that can provide your business with the skills you need quickly.  This saves you time by not having to pour through hundreds of unqualified resumes so you can then focus on hiring the best talent for your role. The end result is reduced costs and increased quality of overall recruitment efforts.

We offer a valuable statistic tool. We record how many times your advert is printed and also how many people have used our email job details and SMS to a friend facility. As an Advertiser you can log in at any time to see the statistics for any jobs you currently have posted on the system.

Receive qualified applicants directly to your inbox. Your company will also receive additional exposure in our daily and weekly jobs email alerts to job seekers.
 
What is the best & worst thing about being an independent web publisher?

The Worst - Trying to educate Advertisers that there is an alternative online recruitment solution other than using the large name big brand generalist job boards. People don’t like to change or to try new products. Even offering free trials to some, they will not attempt to change their ways. It is really frustrating and you often want to bang your head on a brick wall.

The Best - The most rewarding aspect is having a work life balance and working from home around my family within my own business. I get a thrill and a huge sense of achievement when a job seeker emails me to say “thank you” they found a job through my site or an Employer phones me to say they had a fabulous response to their advertisement and they had filled the role. I am passionate about playing the role of Career Cupid and providing the connection between Employer and Flexible Job Seeker. It is certainly a challenge but I absolutely LOVE IT.

Tell us about your advertising sales structure?

I have a fabulous mature aged employee, Lyn, who works from home for me on a flexible basis as the Advertising Online Sales Executive. She and I are the ones responsible for selling the job board product to Advertisers. At the moment our target market is the SME Sector and we will be expanding our reach in months to come to market to Recruitment Agencies.

I have had some good discussions this week with well known large scale private and public Employers who will be coming on board soon.

I will also be introducing Business Development Managers who will then lead a team of Advertising Sales Executives to help grow the business and expand the brand next year.

What are some things you have learned when dealing with advertisers?

Nobody wants to pay you. Everybody wants something for nothing.

What is some advice you would offer to anyone starting a new commercial media business?

The most difficult aspect would be website development. I really wish I had the budget to hire a web developer that was based in Australia to begin with. As I was on extremely limited funding I chose to go offshore and hired a developer based in the USA. World clock issues, short work weeks and I being their first Australian client proved to be extremely difficult. I learnt a very expensive and valuable lesson. I nearly the towel in but positive feedback and wonderful testimonials have driven me to build a bigger better product.

My advice would be to research all available options in Australia, obtain lots of quotes, talk to people, get testimonials of previous customers, get all of your ideas down on paper and choose a web developer wisely. Price shouldn’t be an issue if you want the best. If you run an online business you need your site to work from day one of launching. Without a website you have no business.

My only other advice is to spend you marketing and advertising dollars wisely in getting your name out there. 

Where do you get your advertising and marketing information from?

• Media Scope
• Online Networks, Blogs, Forums & Social Networks
• Industry specific magazines and websites

Other Pages of Interest:

See Lifestyle Careers MediaScope directory listing

See other Media In Focus Profiles

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