Who's Afraid of a Monster? Not Many any More

Monster.com was once one of the best examples of how to make piles of money on the web. Founded by Jeff Taylor in 1994, he sold out to TMP Worldwide just a year later, and stayed on until now to run the job search listing company. Times are different now, reports Scott Kirshner in today's Boston Globe.

"But the news is not good for this once powerful company. New, more innovative websites are finding a better way to attract job prospects, "One problem that first generation websites like Monster and Hotjobs don't address, said Auren Hoffman, owner of KarmaOne a referral site, "is that their audience is made up entirely of people who are actively looking for a job. A vast percentage of the people who aren't looking are the people you want. It's extrememely hard to get to the people who aren't actively looking, and generally, that pool is much better."

The hot new competitors are SimplyHired.com and Indeed.com, who combine the listings from all of the job sites and then sell ads like Google does, next to the listings. So a graphic artist position may have ads for art supplies, and for graphic design courses. Google has paved the way for these 'contextually relevant ads," figuring sensibly that relevance increases results. "The market is moving toward a performance-based offering," said Simply Hired's Gautam Godhwani, so employers only pay a fee when the posting results in a hire.

But the big buzz, once again, is about Google. If and when The Big Guys unveil a job search function of their own, this could blow them all away. Because a company, like Google, with $7 billion in the bank can put fear in anyone--just ask Microsoft.