This job portal boasts over 120,000 vacancies, but none apparently for its own staff.

KUALA LUMPUR - Online recruitment service Jobpilot.com has shut down operations in Malaysia and Singapore and regrouped in Thailand.

"Due to consolidation we have decided to centralize our Asian activities in Thailand, which has always been our strong arm in Asia," said Stephan Lindenfeld, a spokesperson for site operator German-listed Jobs & Adverts AG in an email response.

He added, however, that the company was still "staying in business" in Asia, and was not withdrawing from the market. "All sites will stay online, supported by an even more effective structure than before," said Lindenfeld.

Jobpilot.com's country-specific sites in Asia include jobpilot.com.my, jobpilot.com.sg, jobpilot.co.th and the regional site jobpilot-asia.com.

No one was picking up calls at its offices in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore yesterday.

A Singaporean public relations company representing Jobs & Adverts confirmed that its contract was terminated in mid-October.

Lindenfeld refused to confirm how many staff had been laid off or whether any retrenchment benefits were offered but simply added: "I don't think that this information is necessary in the context I explained to you."

Founded in October 1995 by current chairman Dr Roland Metzger, Jobs & Adverts claims to be the leading career portal in Germany and Europe. It expanded to Asia with the set up of the Thai office in 1997, followed by regional operations in Singapore last year, and Malaysia in May 2000.

After its launch in Malaysia, the company's Asia Pacific regional director Lim Zhong Yue had spoke of grand plans to attract quality applicants through various offline activities including career guidance seminars and workshops.

But Jobs & Adverts entered the Malaysian and Singaporean markets faced with battling already entrenched homegrown players Jobstreet.com, JobsDB.com and RecruitAsia.com.

In the US, online job sites, although popular, have found it difficult to scale up operations and remain profitable because of too many players fighting for a piece of the same pie. One example was the merger of troubled Careerpath.com with CareerBuilder.com.

The Jobs & Adverts consolidation exercise comes on the heels of similar cutbacks and restructuring of pureplay dotcom players in the region such as Asiacontent.com and Catcha.com, desperately seeking to stay afloat, rein in their high burn-rates and find new sources of revenue.

Listed in Frankfurt's Neuer Markt in April, Jobs & Adverts (WKN 514 170, Ticker: JOA) operates 15 European sites and has 490 employees worldwide. It recently announced group revenues of 22.3 million Euros, mainly out of its Germany operations, on losses of 18.9 million Euros for the first three quarters of this year ending Sept 30.

The stock dipped to an all-time low of 10.6 in on Oct 12 after its purchase of U.K. software maker Virtual Village. On Monday, it closed at 16.70 down 2.34 percent from previous close.