Some Kind of Monster

It's nice work if you can get it. Monster Worldwide (Nasdaq: MNST  ) padded its resume after posting a 75% spike in second-quarter earnings. That $0.14 a share showing is commendable given that back in April the company had projected the bottom line to come in at $0.12 or better. This is better. A lot better. The job site leader also grew its revenues by 26% during the period to hit $209.4 million.

Things have been going well for Monster lately. The shares received a gutsy upgrade from Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MWD  ) just hours before the company posted its quarterly results yesterday. Also, earlier this month NetRatings waxed favorably on the niche, claiming that traffic to employment sites shot up by 30% in June. The NetRatings report found that Monster was trouncing its nearest competitors -- Gannett (NYSE: GCI  ) and Knight-Ridder's (NYSE: KRI  ) CareerBuilder and Yahoo!'s (Nasdaq: YHOO  ) HotJobs.com -- in the major metrics that matter such as registered users, traffic, and site stickiness.

That's significant because that parallels the rival-thumping traits of Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY  ) in a similar scalable model where size matters. Just as auction buyers flock to where the sellers are (and vice versa) the same can be said of personnel recruiters and job hunters.

Monster is looking for the good times to continue as it sees sequential top-line improvement while earnings for the September quarter should come in at $0.16 a share. That would signal a 45% gain over last year's $0.11 showing.

After spinning off its executive search and eResourcing business as Hudson Highland Group (Nasdaq: HHGP  ) last year, and with promising audience-attracting acquisitions, Monster won't need to brush up on its interviewing skills. Drawing the hired, the fired, and the tired, the numbers say it all.

Monster? You're hired!

Have you been checking out the job sites such as Monster.com this summer? Need a new job? How do you nail a difficult job interview? All this and more in the Ask the Headhunter discussion board. Only on Fool.com.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz thinks that any honorable work is good work. He does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story.