South Asia's biggest specialty media house, CyberMedia and US-based Dice have announced the launch of their JV CyberMedia Dice, a job board that purely focuses on the technology and engineering industry. Speaking on the need for such a service, Dice Senior VP and CFO, Michael P Durney said, "Our customers in the US kept asking us when we would plan operations in India. We went with CyberMedia because we felt that like us, CyberMedia has the biggest reach to tech professionals in India. It is also the largest provider of technology specific content in South East Asia." The JV involves a 51%-49% partnership between Dice and CyberMedia respectively. However, both companies did not reveal the investment details.

This is Dice's first foray outside the US market. Michael said that he expected to acquire significant market share and become the market leader in the online recruitment industry for tech jobs in India.

Some features of the job board www.cybermediadice.com include, emphasis on technology-focused content and services, availability of practice tests and assessment products and skill assessment through the CyberMedia Dice-MeasureUp index. These would help to test a candidate's domain knowledge in specific areas.

Michael that CyberMedia Dice is unique to the market since it would link its specific proprietary assessment -MeasureUp to candidate profiles. "This is something we don't offer even in the US," he added.

CyberMedia CMD, Pradeep Gupta added that with the launch of the job board, there would be a common yardstick in the industry for assessing candidates through MeasureUp.

CyberMedia Dice would tie up IT companies, recruiting companies and consultants. "It would aid recruiters in both pre-recruitment and post recruitment, since we also offer assessment solutions," said President CIOL and CyberMedia Dice CEO, Abraham Mathew.

On the issue of competition from other job portals, he said, "With our focus on the IT and tech area and our practice tests and assessment products, we offer better quality than our competitors." Michael added that the cost per hire from CyberMedia Dice would be less than that incurred from other broad horizontal competitors.

He further said that though Dice focused on the gamut of jobs across the tech and engineering space like IT, aerospace, bio-pharma and biotechnology, the initial focus of CyberMedia Dice would be on IT jobs. Dice is the largest technology site for recruitment, which attracts 1.4 million unique visitors a month and 16 million job views a month. It also has 1.6 million registered users.

DQC NEWS BUREAU

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