When I last wrote about Monster.com (Nasdaq: MNST), I remarked on its continued opportunities internationally, and concluded the article by saying the future looked bright. Well, don't look now, but there may be some clouds on the horizon for the company and competitor Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) in the form of job boards set up by some popular technology and software bloggers at GigOM, TechCrunch, and 37signals.
This is particularly interesting since blogs often cover highly specialized topics, and can draw a tightly defined audience as a result. Expanding into offering a job board is a natural fit for some of the larger blogs as they try to develop new revenue streams other than advertising.
Obviously, there is not going to be much of a near-term impact on Monster's business, but the long-term impact could be substantial. This is because some recruiters are growing frustrated with trying to find high-quality talent on Monster, where a job posting may get hundreds of responses, but few responders may actually be qualified for the job.
Recruiter Scott Teger made this point in a discussion at 37signals: "Monster.com is playing the numbers game. In my experience, we've probably posted 15 jobs on Monster.com, received probably close to 1000 applications, and found NOT ONE qualified person. I'm sure it works for someone, because they are around and profitable, but it seems when you're looking for a position that requires talent (not just knowing how to do something), it's the wrong place." The problem is the same for prospective job seekers -- the huge amount of jobs offered makes it difficult for seekers to find jobs that fit their skills and more importantly, their interests.
These new job boards fill a void for carefully targeted job postings geared to the specific site's audience, increasing the likelihood that a single job posting might bring in several high-quality candidates. For recruiters, the icing on the cake is that many of these prospective employees will turn out to be passionate about the job and its responsibilities just by virtue of being the blog's target audience. We at The Motley Fool take advantage of this phenomenon by advertising jobs to our vibrant discussion board community via an announcement box. Monster may have the advantage of sheer scale, but the niche job boards can carefully target their audiences. Recruiters are then reaching their ideal candidate -- someone who cares about the work they do, and more importantly, cares about the work the company does.
There has been some substantial discussion in the blogosphere about whether to combine these various niche boards into a meta-board of sorts. However, I think that would open the door for Monster to open a specialized site for, say, "MonsterTechJobs.com" -- it has already done something similar for recent college graduates -- and destroy the fledging newcomers. The blogs would be better off playing to their valuable, carefully defined audience, and charging extra for the privilege, rather than trying to obtain scale and playing into Monster's hands.
Newspapers such as The New York Times (NYSE: NYT), The Washington Post (NYSE: WPO), and the Gannett (NYSE: GCI) family of publications should all take note: Your classifieds may have just become obsolete . again.
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