Saongroup continue their impressive growth - opportunity knocking on recessionary times!

It's not something you hear a lot of people in the Irish press talking about to often but Denis O'Brien and Leslie Buckley have been consistent and tenacious in their vision of creating one of the biggest job board portfolios in the world. Since there acquisition in Irish Jobs from John Feeley in 1995 they have been growing and diversifying ever since. The list of acquisitions they have made and the number of current opportunities they have in their own company are interesting and caused me to dig a little deeper.

On their own web site they state: "saongroup.com is now one of the fastest growing Irish owned online companies in the world, with offices in 10 countries across 4 continents. saongroup.com has its head office is Dublin, Ireland and employs more the 1,700 people across the globe".

Being one of the fastest growing Irish owned companies in the world may sound a bit "quixotic" but it's very much true! Looking from afar and having studies closely what Career Builder and Monster have done and tried to do over the last number of years what Saaongroup has done has been very impressive in comparison.

The portfolio consists of, and this is only some of it:

Candidate Manager
CaribbeanJobs.com
IrishJobs.ie
Job001.cn
Job1998.com
Jobs.ie
Jobs.lu
JumptoJobs.co.uk

MyJobGroup Ltd
myJobsinPune.com
NIjobs.com
MaybeFriends.com
PNet
RecruitGulf.com
SHjob.cn

The company is currently expanding aggressively in India with the recent launches of http://www.myjobsinpune.com/  in Sept 07 and then a recent second expansion in http://www.myhyderabadjobs.com/. I've checked and http://www.mybangalorejobs.com/ and http://www.mydelhijobs.com/ are functioning job boards as well so maybe they've gone ahead and registered the domain and got these set up already. Maybe these are simply target looking companies that the group may go after. Get ready for Goa, Jauiper, Cochin and the other big hubs to follow. Basically, anywhere there is a concentration of 5 million or more people on the planet where internet penetration is growing Denis and Leslie will want a job board. Get ready next for Nanjing, Dalin and Shenzhen in China.  Actually, it seems like that is exactly what the company is planning by the looks of some of its  vacancies on its career site. Interestingly, they have a regional CEO/COO job in China where they are looking for an individual with 10+ years experience, willing to travel and who can speak Madrin and English. The role will report into the regional CEO and will have control of P&L, expansion and employee motivation. Having been to China myself 3 times now and about to go again in February to train Microsoft's recruiters some deep sourcing techniques I've had a chance to immerse myself in the China recruitment industry and study it from afar. It certainly fits into the emerging market category that Saaogroup have targeted for expansion.

Sales Executive Cayman Islands Caribbeanjobs.com	Cayman Islands
Business Development Executive - Dubai UAE	Dubai
Sales Account Manager Luxembourg	Luxembourg
Sales Executive Trinidad Caribbeanjobs.com	Trinidad
General Manager RecruitGulf.com	Dubai
Group Finance Director Saongroup China	Beijing
Business Development Manager Abu Dhabi, UAE	Abu Dhabi
Regional Finance Manager - Saongroup (China)	Shanghai
Sales Executive Jamaica Caribbeanjobs.com	Jamacia
Management (Online Recruitment) - Worldwide	Worldwide
Financial Accountant – CaribbeanJobs.com	Trinidad
Regional CEO - China	Beijing (travel involved)
Sales Account Manager Dublin (OTE €70,000+)	Dublin 2

The downturn in the global econonomy presents fantastic opportunities for those companies that have a strong balance sheet. Anne Hegarty in CPL, Brian Murphy in Premier Group and all at Saaongroup must be looking forward to 2009 and the acquisition trail ahead!