What is Monster doing now? And will it work?

Once, in a world far, far away (i.e., the 1990s), Monster beat its chest and claimed to be the biggest and best source for online jobs in the world, bar none.

Then, last week, Monster - diminished, no longer for sale, and facing significant declines in revenue - once again beat its chest and said that it would be number one, again. Per Sal Iannuzzi, CEO President: "This is disruptive to every one of our competitors.”

So what does disruption look like? Well, kind of like what Monster's competitors are already doing:

Increase the number of jobs on Monster by tenfold
Aggregate content on candidates from everywhere on the web (no doubt through recent acquisition TalentBin) - and increase the number of candidates
Move to cloud-based solutions for employers
Add PPC

The result of this 'disruptive' behavior? More money. More stockholder value. And...Monster, once again king of the online recruiting world.

Wow.

So, back in the real world, what does this actually mean? If you're an employer of any size, expect to see some serious sale efforts from the Monster staff. If you're an investor, you'll get to see the Monster 'road show'. And if you're a candidate - well, maybe you'll see more advertising trying to lure you back.

If Monster had done this in, say, 2010, it might have had a disruptive effect. At that point, Indeed was still pivoting to become a full-fledged job board, people aggregation was in its infancy, and competition for employer-based PPC offering was nil. In 2014, things are different. Each 'disruptive' element of Monster's plan is relatively mature, with significant competition for each. Will the market look kindly on Monster's efforts? In the short term, yes. In the long term, it's all about sales. If they go up, then Monster's stock price should rise (maybe).

My take? Hmm. What's proposed is not bad - in fact, a lot of it makes sense - but it's pretty late in the game, and it's a stretch to call the efforts 'disruptive'. More like, 'well, we've tried everything else, let's give this a shot!'. All in all, it doesn't seem like a sure-fire recipe for success. One other factor: you can have the best plans in the world, but success relies on execution. From what I've seen thus far, the current Monster management team seems a bit weak in this area.

But, as I've said many times before, this is just one Job Board Doctor's opinion.

What's yours?

Comment by Amber on May 20, 2014 at 11:41am: Maybe some basic things should have been fixed first - like their website actually working.

Comment by Rebecca B. Sargeant on May 21, 2014 at 7:23am: It's a shame Monster has been sliding for so long I agree I am not sure they can turn it around. I think Monster is in a good position to be LinkedIn's worst nightmare but I am not sure they have a enough life span left to do that.

Comment by Jeff Dickey-Chasins on May 21, 2014 at 8:19am: Rebecca, I agree. It's better for the industry to have Monster out there as a strong competitor to LI, CareerBuilder, Indeed, etc. But whether they can do it or not seems iffy.

Comment by Noel Cocca on May 21, 2014 at 4:07pm: Disruption is the new word I am bored with...They are late to the game but this will make an impact. Amber said it right...before you add, how about perfecting what you already do!

Comment by Suresh on May 22, 2014 at 8:52am: There is clearly room between Indeed and LI, both have weaknesses and if I was Monster that's where the improvements could be. I tried Monster Publisher, it was only US based and in this era where most growth in traffic is global, why focus just on the US market, Indeed PPC covers many countries. LI's core strength (for stickiness) I would argue are the groups and Monster could improve on that concept.

Overall, I agree its not disruptive if you are just trying to improve on existing ideas, but then again you could do an Apple...don't have to be first to the market.