Inc42 in a candid chat with the founder of IIMjobs.com – Exclusive job portal for MBA’s

It’s not always easy to catch up with successful entrepreneurs and ask them their secrets of success. We were fortunate enough to have a conversation with Mr.Tarun Matta, founder of IIMjobs.com.

Here are some excerpts from our chat with him.

We have monster.com, TimesJobs.com and even Naukri.com. What made you feel the need for another job site?

When I graduated from a top MBA college, I realized that as a potential jobseeker, these traditional recruitment sites didn’t offer the right opportunities for me and my peers. Whatever high quality jobs that were out there were being advertised via unstructured channels such as alumni cells and mailing lists.

So I initially started this as a blog to aggregate jobs that I found interesting for my network and friends. There was never any real intention of starting this as a business but since there was a need in the market for such a portal, the idea really took off. People liked the concept, told their network about it and within 5 years, iimjobs.com has become the largest player in our segment!

Any special reason the website is called “IIMjobs.com”?

The portal was intended for high quality candidates who had passed out of the Top Business schools in India such as the IIM’s. That said, over a period of time, we’ve grown beyond the name iimjobs.com and now, we see a large number of mid-senior management professionals coming and applying through the site.

What is unique about iimjobs.com as a service?

We are very exclusively focused on the premium end of the recruitment space which is essentially providing amazing job opportunities to graduates from premium Business schools within the mid-senior management hierarchy level.

No other traditional recruitment company has such a focused approach nor do they have the high quality job opportunities that are advertised via our website. You’ll find super high quality candidates on iimjobs.com that you would not find through other channels.

Also, our key focus is on building a great platform for jobseekers because no other job portal in India is working for the benefit of the jobseekers. That’s why our focus has always been to build an amazing product keeping the candidate in mind.

That’s why we’re revolutionizing this industry in India through some amazing innovative offerings that are not present anywhere else such as the ability to follow relevant job opportunities via tags or building a comprehensive recruiter dashboard system that aims to notify jobseekers the minute a recruiter views or downloads their profile.

That sounds like an impressive idea, executed with “IIM” proficiency. But is this what Mr Matta always wanted to do?

Funnily enough, No! I never intended to start this as a business and initially worked on it part-time along with my day job. I started working on this full time only after 2008 because the initial traction and uptake among both jobseekers and recruiters was so amazing.

Mr Matta has thoroughly impressed us so far, iimjobs.com is a novel concept with scintillating results so far, but we wanted to add another perspective here.

If I’m a recruiter, would it be easier for me to work with iimjobs.com than its contemporaries?

Absolutely, provided you post jobs that cater to our segment! We handpick and moderate every job before posting it on the site to ensure the highest quality and the best experience for jobseekers.

We’ve also built a comprehensive recruiter dashboard system that offers recruiters a snapshot of all applications received along with additional options of short listing candidates and viewing and downloading resumes.
And the best part is, it’s absolutely free to post unlimited jobs on iimjobs.com

We thought from a recruiter’s point of view. Our biggest reason to surf iimjobs.com would be to get an incredible workforce. For the job-seekers, we found an interesting option, “Jobfeed.” Mr Matta tell us more:

That’s one of the most interesting options on the portal and it makes job searching extremely easy for candidates. We allow candidates the option of “following” tags on the website and similarly, every job that we post also carries the relevant tag(s).
For example, a job posted for the requirement of a Sales Manager within the FMCG industry will normally be tagged with “FMCG Sales”, “Distribution” and “Channel Management”. This job will then show up in the jobfeed of all those candidates who have followed any of the above 3 tags.

Hence, a candidate’s jobfeed will only consist of those jobs for which he’s interested in based on the tags he/she is following. The candidate then has further options of filtering his/her jobfeed based on location and years of experience.

Mr.Matta, the entrepreneur has won our respect with his incredible venture he’s rightly confident of. But things may not have been this easy since the beginning eh?

What kind of issues have you faced while establishing iimjobs.com? How did you overcome them?

It’s been a really fun and interesting journey till now with a lot of roadblocks, stumbles and key learning’s along the way. One of the biggest problems we’ve faced is that we’re present in a highly competitive category that has a lot of big name players (backed by media houses) with really deep pockets.

As a startup, we can never play their game of advertising and spending big money so we’ve gone about quietly building our brand the old fashioned way – that of word of mouth advertising. Our belief is simple – build a great product/service and people will recommend it to others and that’s been our primary driver of growth over these past few years

We’ve hardly spent any money marketing or promoting our services because we’ve never felt the need to do so. Our users have been our biggest evangelists and they’ve proved that word of mouth advertising coupled with the power of personal recommendation is far superior to any other form of marketing.

We’re now aiming to replicate the same success with hirist.com, which is essentially a job board for Tech jobs in India

Could you share with us an experience while raising seed funds that may help all the aspiring entrepreneur readers?

Well there hasn’t been any experience as such because like I said, my primary aim was building an amazing service with the belief that all else will follow. There were no initial investments that I made but since then, we’ve raised a small seed round from a bunch of investors – The Morpheus, One97 Communications, India Venture Partners, India Quotient, Seeders and few other angel investors.

You, the reader will agree with Inc42 that Mr.Matta is surely an entrepreneur worth emulating. He has been running a widely successful venture with relative ease. This respect stimulated a few thought provoking questions in our minds, which we consider ourselves inadequate to answer at least at our current level.

We live in a world of constant innovation, many ideas of ours may havexisting similar ideated concepts. How can an entrepreneur ensure a difference?

I think a lot of people confuse innovation with building a new product. In my view, innovation is also present when you bottle an existing product in a new way with the aim of delighting consumers and I think iimjobs.com falls under the latter category.

A lot of people have new ideas but more important than that, is acting on those ideas. The picture might not be very clear in the beginning but if your idea is sound, then over a period of time, you’ll figure out the innovation that the market is seeking.

How is an entrepreneur different from a businessman?

Personally speaking, I feel that an entrepreneur is a person who is innovative, revolutionary, and unfazed by the idea of failing. The journey is more important to him while failure is just a stepping stone to success.

What would you prefer to be – A high paying executive at an MNC or have a significantly low paying job at your own enterprise? Could you provide the reason to it?

After experiencing the highs and lows of creating my own startup and learning so much from the journey, I don’t think I can ever fit into the corporate culture again!

Spoken with a true entrepreneurial passion! Inc42 wishes you all the best!

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