France: Newspapers to launch job classifieds supplement

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on February 27, 2007 at 11:31 AM

As many newspapers in the US complain about Craiglist and online portals ‘stealing’ their jobs classifieds, two French newspapers have partnered and are about to launch a whole print supplement of job classifieds. Le Figaro and l’Express will distribute over 800,000 copies of the supplement, starting March 12.

Réussir – ‘Succeed’ – will be jointly published on Monday in the Figaro and on Thursday in l’Express, and is designed to reach over 3 million readers, to offer “the most powerful print employment classifieds platform in French press,” said the newspapers in a communiqué.

Interestingly, while many newspapers long for past classified revenues and focus on building online databases, Le Figaro and L’Express are counting on the traditional quality service of paper.

“If the Internet developed itself as a job classified platform, the qualities of print press remain unequivocal to defend the value of a company and attract the best employee profiles,” says the communiqué.

Yet the companies aren’t launching into a blindfolded venture. The supplement will carry popular job ads coming from Express.fr and Figaro.fr, but also from specialized job ad websites Cadremploi, Keljob.com and Cmonjob. These websites combined represent roughly 3.4 million unique visitors per month.

Le Figaro and L’Express’ supplement will be an interesting example of newspapers’ return to print platforms, using the help, expertise and convenience of online specialists.

Source: Le Monde through IFRA