A new Taiwanese jobs site gets funding, plans first step in Asian expansion to Malaysia

Taiwan-based jobs portal Job178 launched in June this year, and today the startup has revealed it’s attracted seed funding for growth and eventual pan-Asian expansion.

What’s different about Job178 is that it follows the lead of the jobs board on the Japanese web portal Livesense in that it doesn’t require companies to pay an upfront fee for posting vacancies. Instead, Job178 – as JobSense did before it – only requires companies to pay once they’ve hired someone; plus, the newly hired worker gets a cut of the fee as a sort of celebratory gift in the new job. It might be only 10 to 15 percent of the fee that the jobseeker gets, so it’s not a massive ‘golden handshake’, but it’s better than nothing.

Job178’s seed funding – the amount cannot be revealed – comes from two Japanese sources: Inspire and ICP. In case you’re wondering, ‘178’ is a play on words in Chinese, and sounds like “be together”.

Yasuo Yamao, Job178’s founder, tells us that the team is planning on taking the job site and its rewards system across Asia, with the first step in expansion being Malaysia.

(Editing by Anh-Minh Do)