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The German-speaking business platform is looking for new ways. It relies on the competitive job placement market.
The exchange groups are gone. The personal network of the users is hidden. The Xing homepage has transformed from a “Facebook for everyday working life” to a job placement portal.
And that is exactly what the business platform wants to be in the future. Managing director Thomas Kindler says in an interview with SRF: “Due to demographic change, we firmly believe that the employer market will become an employee market.” Xing wants to “make companies transparent so that employees can choose every day which company they want to work in in the future.”
What should help: The Kununu platform, which belongs to the same parent company New Work in Hamburg. Employees rate their companies on Kununu. These opinions flow into the new Xing.
This is how Xing came about
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Young entrepreneur Lars Hinrichs founded the Open BC platform in 2003. From 2006 it operated under the name Xing and went public.
This is followed by takeovers, such as the rating portal Kununu (2013). As of 2019, the company is called New Work, and Xing is one of its brands.
The share price has largely been falling for around three years. This summer it fell to its lowest level since 2014.
Xing or New Work, once traded as a unicorn with a market value of more than 1 billion, is now still worth around 500 million euros.
Xing claims to have 22 million members. In the long run, the portal cannot compete against the overwhelming competition from Linkedin. While Xing has always focused on the German-speaking market, Linkedin is active worldwide and claims 850 million members.
Human resources expert Matthias Mölleney says that Xing’s realignment has a lot to do with this competition: “I think that Xing has noticed: Linkedin is really a leader in this exchange, this networking, because they are more international.”
Thomas Kindler from Xing says Linkedin does a good job, but can’t hold a candle to them when it comes to recruiting: “A job market is always local. Despite the home office boom, it will always remain a more local market for tax, political and personal reasons. By specializing in this and providing the relevant information, we can differentiate ourselves – even compared to Linkedin.”
Today, personal approach leads to the goal
Matthias Mölleney does not want to judge whether Xing will be successful with the new strategy. Mölleney heads the Center for Human Resources Management & Leadership at the Zurich School of Economics. Many providers are currently working on addressing applicants as specifically as possible.
Those platforms that job seekers trust with the most accurate data have the greatest chances. Matthias Mölleney: “The prerequisite is that you and I – all of us – have stored up-to-date profiles in which everything is explained in detail. Because that’s the only thing the system can process. It can’t capture what I know about myself but don’t reveal.”
Declining numbers
The New Work media office writes about the positive development among members over the past 20 years. In Switzerland alone, around 75,000 new members are expected to register every year.
Paid memberships are down 16 percent this year. According to the announcement, this was expected given the realignment.
After a positive result in 2022, the parent company New Work announced declining sales and profits for the first half of 2023.
New Work announced in March that it would lay off 68 employees. The seven employees of the Zurich office also fell victim to the austerity round. The Swiss market is now mainly served from Munich.