zug4you.ch: Local entrepreneur behind new online job portal

A new online job portal known as “JANZZ.jobs”, launched in January by the Zurich 4uGroup, intends to revolutionise the labour market, according to managing director Stefan Winzenried.

The name “JANZZ” has been chosen for its similarity to the word “chance”, which the company hopes to provide for all those seeking the right job or the right employee. Financial backing has been provided by Peter Ohnemus, a member of the board of the 4uGroup and Swiss entrepreneur of the year in 1999. He also set up the local IT company Fantastic, which produced the software for the transfer of large amounts of data into company networks.

At the time Ohnemus foresaw his Baar-based company as “the new Microsoft” and indeed, within a short time his company was worth CHF 10 billion. However, it crashed in 2000, with shareholders losing everything. Ohnemus allegedly profited by selling off a large amount of shares while the company was still booming.

The 4uGroup is hoping to attract 20,000 users by the end of the summer, after which the company plans to expand initially into the countries around Switzerland and then worldwide. “With its different languages and regions, Switzerland is the ideal test market,” said Winzenried. The company hopes to have several million users by 2014, to which end it is advertising on Swiss TV at a price of CHF 14,000 for 30 seconds.

“Companies spend a lot of time and money in acquiring new staff,” said Winzenried, “and we are expecting a lot of proactive applications from job-seekers.”

Janzz is offering its services free of charge to the under 25s with older job-seekers charged CHF 60 per year. Large companies and headhunters will be charged CHF 8000, but Winzenried promises to achieve a high success rate and a simplification of the whole job application service. “In fact,” added Winzenried, “it is not unlike a partner introduction agency, with supply and demand for jobs no longer determined by searching and finding but by consensus. Users will be put in touch with each other according to their own selection criteria.”

The Rieter AG engineering company, Credit Suisse and another large bank have allegedly already expressed interest in using the portal as a recruitment tool.