According to the latest financial report of the U.S. recruitment website Monster.com, ChinaHR.com made losses of CNY175 million in 2008.

This is the first financial report published by Monster after it wholly acquired the Chinese recruitment website ChinaHR.com on October 8, 2008. The report shows that in the first quarter after ChinaHR.com was acquired, which was from October 8 to December 31, 2008, the website made losses of about CNY49 million and its losses for the entire year of 2008 reached CNY175 million, which is a further increase compared with its CNY143 million losses in 2007.

The Chinese online recruitment industry is facing a grim outlook. On one hand, the price war among Chinese recruitment websites led to the profit decline of these companies and will continue to do so. On the other hand, these companies continued to invest huge resources in marketing. In 2008, the two Chinese leading recruitment websites ChinaHR.com and Zhaopin.com were listed as the top 50 advertisers in China's Internet industry with advertising costs of CNY300 million and CNY270 million, respectively.

In addition, the financial crisis affected the performance of recruitment websites. The total revenue of China's Internet recruitment market in 2008 was CNY1.1 billion, an increase of 13.6% compared with the CNY970 million in 2007, but the growth slowed obviously. Due to the global financial crisis, the number of companies who used the Internet recruitment method decreased and those who adopted this method also cut their budget for recruitment.