This is the financial results briefing session for Q3 fiscal year ending February 2025. Thank you so much for your participation despite your busy schedule. I'd like to start from toward enhancing corporate value. This year's theme is innovation. We've been taking on new challenges. We've been working on various initiatives. First one is the new business, Spot Baitoru. Let us talk about the progress we're making with this new product. Spot Baitoru, we have released, and on December 12th, we have expanded on a nationwide basis. Simultaneously, we have started our TV commercials. We are a latecomer. We are already strong in part-time shift market. We already have a strong customer base. We have a lot of users. We are going to leverage the existing asset to promote this new product.
We do have a unique function service, which is called Good Job Bonus, which is highly appreciated, especially by users. Next, let me talk about Baitoru Talk. This is about managing shift. It will make the task easier. This is an app connecting our clients with us. When they have need for spot positions, they can easily place orders, and if they find an opening, they can easily access to our salespeople. We're still under trial period, but we've been introducing this new service to multiple companies. Enterprise companies, they have been saying that this is exactly the service they've been awaited for. The service is highly appreciated by our customers, which should be a promising service. This new service, Spot Baitoru, is going to be quite important for our future.
We have appointed Mr. Takamasa Nagae, who used to work at Recruit and then worked at JT to promote Ploom TECH, which is an electronic tobacco product. He has been responsible for this product. I believe the situation is kind of similar because JT, at the time, they had to compete with Marlboro IQOS. JT was a latecomer, and that's exactly the situation we are currently facing with. There is already a major player in this field, and as a latecomer, we are entering into this business, and we are aiming to win the business. We are expecting Mr. Nagae to leverage his experience and grow our business. Next is about DIP AI. Let me talk about the progress. This is a new format of hiring, finding new job positions using AI technologies.
Person who is searching for a job can find the right job. We are not expecting this service is to have visible contribution to our earnings in a short-term perspective. However, we are going to leverage AI technologies, and through conversations between us and job seeker, they should be able to find the right job easier. Finding job using AI technology, we want to make sure that is the firstcomer. We are finding that satisfaction level amongst those job seekers who have already used this service is very high. The illegal job position is one of the social programs at this moment, and this DIP AI technology is good for that situation as well. Well, this new business, this new service to make this innovation successful, we are going to drastically change our organization.
The scale of the change is going to be unprecedented level in our history. Till now, our sales organization was based on region. There are territories where regional markets, by region, we've been assigning our sales teams. That has been our main style. What has been happening as a result is, for example, at Machida office, we ask people to find opportunities in Machida. One salesperson is going to take care of companies whose jobs are light duty and another company who are in food industry and another company who are in another industry. If that's the case, our salespeople can now become industry specialists. They can sell light duty product, should have difficult time to have deep discussions. We're going to revisit our organization. Our organization is now going to be industry-based, we're going to shift towards solution sales organization.
Our salespeople, we believe they are consultant for our customers to hire people. In that sense, to further enhance their skills, we believe it is better if they can become industry specialized, they should be able to consult with various situations. As a result, we believe that our salespeople or productivity can become significantly higher. This is going to be a major organizational change, so we need to have enough preparatory period. In that sense, we are expecting to make it happen from June this year. We already announced this change in fall last year, and we've been hearing voices from our employees, and we're making sure that all of our employees are fully convinced before we make it happen. Our employees, they have very positive impression on this change because they see their market value can be enhanced.
They are willing to study more about specific industries to improve their productivity. Of course, as a result, they're expecting their salaries should become higher. They are highly motivated. Next is about our marketing activities. The baseball season is done. We miss it. Last year, at the Dodgers World Series victory, Japanese population were paying strong attention to these games. The view rate was quite high. At games, including World Series, our advertisements, these were virtual or advertisements, but backstop advertising when games were being aired at Japan, including NHK. Mr. Ohtani was contributing a lot to these games, and we could enjoy very big advertisement effect. It's also motivated our employees. Actually, Dodgers won. When our salespeople were visiting our customers, our customers were welcoming our salespeople with applause.
That was a very good news for us, and it also increased our people's motivation. Next is about Conference. Labor Force Solution Conference, we held two years ago. That was well accepted, and people were expecting us to hold it again. We did so at the end of October last year. The conference was held on October 29th. The satisfaction level became even higher than the previous time. The theme was AI, and also we discussed Spot Baitoru. We also conducted a survey with as many as 10,000 people. This was a marketing survey. The focus was what make you more satisfied when working. Survey results were well accepted by our customers. They showed great interest in those results. Especially Spot Baitoru. It seems that the Spot Baitoru job positions increasing job satisfaction among workers significantly.
That is why we are getting even more motivated to further grow our Spot Baitoru business. Next is about leveraging AI technologies. This year, our target is to reduce 500,000 working hours by using more AI technologies. We are making a good progress. As end of Q3, we could reduce 380,000 hours already. Details you will find on the right-hand side. That's it from me. Thank you.
This is Shiraki speaking. From my side, first of all, I would like to present about the consolidated data results for the third quarter. For the third quarter on a consolidated basis, the sales are up by 3.8% compared to the previous year, and OP was down 6.2% on a year-on-year basis. The reason why the OP was down on a year-on-year basis was due to the investment in corporate advertisement using Ohtani and also by enhancing the advertisement to increase the awareness of DIP AI. These were already included in the initial forecast. The year-on-year decline in OP is already in line with the initial plan.
For the Personal Recruiting Segment, the OP is negative, but that is because the Spot Baitoru due to P&L has been included in the Personal Recruiting Segment starting from the third quarter this year, and that was the reason. Next, I would like to talk about the sales trend of media services compared to the market. The job-to-applicant ratio is generally linked to the market growth rate, and this has improved slightly to - 4.6% in the third quarter. From third quarter to the fourth quarter, the market is gradually improving. That is my impression.
Although the growth rate of media sales declined slightly in the third quarter compared to the second quarter, we expect the growth rate to be better in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter. DIP's media sales growth rate is better than the market growth rate. We think that the market share is growing. Next, moving on to SG&A expenses. As I explained earlier, the advertisement expense ratio rose 5% from 18%- 23% due to the increased investment as I explained. As Tomita explained earlier, the effect of this investment is reflected in increased awareness and trust in our services.
We think that this will lead to sales expansion in the future. Personnel expenses were flat against the previous year. The number of new graduate hiring has reduced from 600 last year to 300 this year. The freeze of mid-career hiring and a temporary increase in resignation caused the number of employees to be lower than last year. On the other hand, we have been working on improving the employee compensation, so the level is similar to last year. I would like to add some discussion about the temporary increase in resignation. We don't think this is a unique issue to DIP.
The high number of resignation among the new graduates are known as the COVID generation is happening in many companies. In fact, according to the statistics from companies with more than 1,000 employees show that the three-year resignation rate of new graduates who joined in 2019 and those who joined in 2021 is several percentage points higher than that for the so-called COVID generation new graduates. In case of DIP, the percentage of employees who joined DIP during the COVID is higher than that of other companies, which is why the resignation rate, I think, is higher.
The more companies switching from remote work back to office, the resignation rate tends to increase. In April, we have decided to bring everybody back to the office. I think that is one of the reason why the resignation has increased tentatively. With this in background, I think the resignation has increased. On the other hand, in order to reduce the number of resignation, DIP has been taking measures such as improving the office environment or enhancing compensation and also incorporating remote work depending on the nature of the work.
Furthermore, we believe that the shift to a solution sales structure will improve the expertise of our employees and increase their sense of contribution to client companies as a group of professionals, thereby reducing the resignation rate. We hope that these efforts will reduce the resignation rate. In addition, we plan to hire about 50 mid-career sales reps between this fiscal year and next year. The increase in other expenses, as we explained at the second quarter results announcement, is due to an increase in land rent following the opening of the Yotsuya office and the expansion of the head office. Next, I'm moving on to the whole year forecast.
There is no change from the numbers that we announced at the April. There's no change in the thinking, so I will not explain the details. Next I would like to talk about the progress of the DX business. The KOBOT series lineup are shown here, but there is no update here, so I will skip the explanation. Here is the third quarter results for the DX business. Sales increased by 12% year-over-year. As we explained in our last financial results meeting, in the third quarter, we were able to return to an upward trend. For both flow and stock products, we were able to increase sales.
The next, I'm moving on to the number of companies who are subject to billing, we were able to increase as well. Breaking it down into, you know, KPIs, growth in sales, are driven by an increase in the number of companies subject to monthly billing. The increase in the number of companies is mainly driven by the steady sales of KOBOT for MEO. We have high targets for in fourth quarter, for both our sales and the number of companies, but, we will do our best to expand sales of products in the HR and recruiting and sales promotion areas, that so that we can achieve our targets.
I would like to talk about the progress in third quarter and topics in fourth quarter. In the area of recruiting and HR, we had conducted a discount campaign, but because the campaign has ended, the sales has gone back to an upward trend. We have introduced Baitoru Talk, and the number of companies have increased. We are in the feasibility phase, so we plan to reflect the customers' feedback into our product development and plan to launch the product in full scale in spring of this year. In the area of sales promotion, MEO KOBOT continues to steadily increase the number of companies. In addition, we have completed the installation of Patronage KOBOT web membership card function into MEO KOBOT.
In the fourth quarter, we plan to reduce the churn rate by supporting a series of processes from acquiring new customers to converting to regular customer by bundling MEO KOBOT with Patronage KOBOT. We also plan to release a report that will show the effectiveness of the web membership card function that I mentioned earlier. There are no changes to the four-year plan. I will skip the explanation of this page. Now I would like to talk about the progress of the personal recruiting segment. The media sales growth was 2.9% year-on-year. The fixed sales growth rate for the second quarter was 3.6%. The growth rate has slowed down.
However, as I mentioned earlier, we hope to increase the growth rate in Q4 compared to Q3. I will explain the breakdown, the sales growth by number of companies and unit price. A number of contracted companies growth was 0.4% year-on-year, which is a slowdown. This was mainly due to the decline in sales reps. But we are already taking actions to reduce recognition. As I explained earlier, and also, we are hiring sales as mid-career. We are also working to improve productivity. Through these efforts, we will try to increase the number of contracted companies in Q4 and onwards.
On the other hand, the unit price per client has been below the previous year's level, but that business turned to positive to in the third quarter to 2.9% compared to last year. This was due to an increase in unit price, mainly among our major client companies and human resource companies, such as temporary staffing agencies. This page I will explain. I will skip the explanation. Next is related to the app downloads. We are continuing with number one app loads, and the KPI on the job seeker side continues to be very solid.
As we explained before, the MAU level, this is a different trend to the aggregation sites, but that is different because of the difference in the targets. Now, I would like to talk about the progress of the media service and the topics for the fourth quarter. First is the improvement of the productivity of our sales staff. We are promoting the use of dip-kun, which is a tool to reduce the time spent on drafting job applications and a tool to improve the efficiency of proposal preparations, which enables sales staff to collect data by talking to generative AI.
In the fourth quarter, we will expand sales by cross-selling existing media and Spot Baitoru, taking advantage of our strength in providing both shift and spot services. We have been challenging the cross-sell in media and DX in the past. Although these are different business model, we are working with our customers so that we can sell spot and shift as we did with the media and DX, and we think this will be a unique strength for DIP. As our President mentioned, the solution sales structure will start. Once all this starts, we think the efforts will accelerate even more.
The second growth business, continuing with the third quarter into fourth quarter, we can continue focusing on expand sales in the logistics office and medium medical nursing care fields. In the third area of increasing market share in suburban rural areas, we have made steady progress in expanding our agency network. We are currently working to increase the sales amount of the newly contracted agencies. Now I would like to talk about the permanent placement service. The sales were down 2.3% compared to the last year. As already mentioned, the second quarter result, this was mainly due to the impacts of the low number of new graduates hired this fiscal year.
In the fourth quarter, we expect that sales growth to turn positive, driven by better productivity. This is the progress of the permanent placement service and the topics for the fourth quarter. First one is the improvement of productivity of career advisors. We have completed the improvement of the job search screen UI, and that is used by the career advisors. In the fourth quarter, we will promote the use of CAs to improve the productivity. The second and the third strategies are continuation from the third quarter, and so I will skip the explanation.
Finally, for the overall personal recruiting service, combining media and permanent placement in the third quarter, the sales increased by 2.8% year-over-year. This is for your reference, there's no change to the full year plan. That is all for me. Thank you very much.
Year-end dividend, no change with our expectation. Year-end dividend will be JPY 48, and full year basis, JPY 95, as we have been expecting for. Shareholder special benefits program. Mr. Ohtani designed QUO card , which was highly appreciated by our shareholders. It's going to be presented this time again. That was it. Finally, we'd like to show you a short video focusing on our solution sales organization, which should be hot topic for our business at this moment. This is a video for the opportunity we provide explanation to our employees. This year, we have announced two innovations. I believe everyone fully understands how crucial these two innovations are for the future of DIP and how they will influence the future of our company. I am always thinking how to successfully implement these two innovations. For sure, what is important is the organization and the team.
Can our team and organization succeed in its current state? How can we further improve our sales performance and productivity? What should we do to significantly enhance our productivity? What kind of salesperson is valuable to enhance productivity? What makes customers wanting to see you? Solution ability. Customers should want to see a salesperson who has the ability to solve the problems they face. What skills are necessary for that solution ability? I believe the answer is industry knowledge. A person who has a deep understanding of the industry, who also knows about the competitors, and who also understands our work well. This should be the person who can be relied upon. Thinking about another reason. Employees are wanting to develop their skills.
Some employees, when leaving our company, they say they leave because they have already developed their recruitment skills enough, or they can no longer further develop their skills working at DIP. I do not believe so, but some people feel this way. What is the way to further increase the value of individuals while working at DIP? Ultimately, it is about becoming a specialist. A person who can say, "I am a specialist in this industry," I believe this will raise their value. You might think if their value increases, they may leave for another job. I think it is the other way around. When employees join our company, their value will keep increasing, their skills will keep improving, and their market value will keep growing. That is why they feel they want to keep working with us.
I believe this is what we can offer to ensure that they stay with us for longer- term periods. DIP has introduced various products and services to the market, including Hatarako.net, Baitoru, and many others. To grow these products as big as possible, we have built our structures. As a result, we have become the leader who enjoys the biggest market share in the fixed-term employment media market. Looking into the future, we are transitioning into a solution company. We are starting this project with a vision of becoming a labor force solution company. This has been enabled by the evolution of the company. Based on the media business, DIP has been expanded into Spot Baitoru, DIP AI, and DX. We have been able to develop an environment in which we can contribute to solve our customers' labor force challenges from multiple angles.
Moving forward, our sales organization will become industry-specific. To increase market share in each industry, we will devise strategies, equip ourselves with the right tools, and work to deliver solid results. That is how our organization is going to be. This is the concept behind the solution sales organization we are aiming for. DIP is undergoing a second founding, a transformation, an evolution. The company itself is taking on this kind of challenge. I hope you take it that way. This is what I myself experienced when I was a salesperson. When you are specialized in an industry and acquire a lot of industry knowledge, you become highly trusted by customers. They will consult with you about anything. Your sense of self-efficacy increases a lot, and when that happens, your motivation for work rises significantly. As a result, performance also improves.
In solution sales organization, specializing in an industry and accumulating knowledge and information is not just about changing the structure. It is more about your own working style and the joy you can derive from your work. I believe that enhancing your expertise means becoming a partner to the executives of companies in that industry. What does it take to become a partner? From my years of experience in sales, I have learned that without industry knowledge, you cannot become one. If the discussion is limited to recruitment, you will only be able to talk with the recruitment department. However, to get in front of top executives, you need to discuss things like competitive movements, market trends, and regulatory changes. Once you reach the top, you will see many more challenges beyond recruitment, such as financial concerns, competitive pressures, and regulatory issues.
As I did in my sales days, when you help solve challenges beyond recruitment, you expand your scope of work and the gratitude you receive from customer increases. The more problems you help solve, the more rewarding your work becomes. The cumulative satisfaction of solving customers' problems is what I believe brings fulfillment in work. With solution sales organization, I think this cumulative satisfaction will continue to grow, which connects to the idea of solutions we are discussing today.