Your calling has just hung-up for some Monster execs. Here’s an internal message recently sent to employees at Monster Worldwide (MNST) on the ongoing reorganization.
I am pleased to share with you recent developments in the operating structure of the sales organization and leadership team. These actions are part of the ongoing transformation of Monster to a customer focused life improvement company. I believe these changes will better position the Company to meet evolving customer needs and enable Monster to deliver the best products and services in our industry.
Ed Lo has joined the Company in the newly created position of Executive Vice President, Greater China. Ed joins us from the AIG Investment Corp., where as Managing Director and COO, he successfully guided the company’s operations in 13 Asian countries. Prior to that, he served as Deputy CEO and COO of Union Bank of Hong Kong following a nearly 25-year career with Bankers Trust Company mostly in Asia. Ed will be responsible for driving Monster’s overall growth in the greater China region including Hong Kong and Taiwan. Additionally, he will oversee the anticipated integration of ChinaHR into Monster during the first half of 2008. He will report directly to me.
As announced in a news release issued this morning, Steve Pogorzelski has decided to leave the company. Steve has been an important contributor of the Company’s global success since Monster’s inception. We thank Steve for his many years of dedicated service and appreciate his numerous contributions and wish him well in his future endeavors.
We have made additional changes within our North American sales team that we believe will benefit the Company as we move forward. Steve Cooker, head of Monster Government Solutions, will have additional responsibility leading the US field sales team. Diane Frankenfield will assume responsibility for the global eCommerce business. Peter Gilfillan will take on additional responsibility for Monster’s business in Canada and will continue to lead the Canadian sales team activities.
Andrea Bertone, Rob Brouwer, and Arun Tadanki will continue to lead their respective regional teams in Europe and Asia, while Phil Kuehne will continue to be responsible for the telesales organization in the United States.
We are also pleased to announce that we have strengthened our sales operations group with the selection of Marci Reynolds as Vice President, Sales Operations. In this role, Marci will support the North American sales organization.
The regional sales leaders and the heads of the US sales segments will report directly to me. These changes are effective immediately.
Mike Coney, Mike Coddington and Gabriel Bouchard will be leaving the Company to pursue other opportunities. We appreciate their contributions to Monster’s success and wish them well in the future.
I’m also pleased to announce that Lise Poulos will assume greater responsibility within the Company. Lise will oversee the Company’s Human Resources, Public Relations, Internal Communications and Diversity functions, as well as Monster’s future Philanthropy initiatives as Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer. Lise will continue to perform her Chief of Staff duties as CAO.
Lori Erickson, in her role as SVP, Human Resources, will report to Lise. Bob Jones will report to Lise executing the Company’s Public Relations initiatives and continue in his role as head of Investor Relations reporting to Tim Yates. Steve Pemberton will report to Lise in his dual role as Chief Diversity Officer.
We believe these changes will provide the organization structure necessary to support and foster the ambitious growth objectives of the Company. We are now One Monster, moving in the same direction on a global basis. We congratulate those who will be taking on new and additional responsibilities, welcome Ed to the Monster family and thank you all for your hard work, dedication and continued support.
Sal
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January 22nd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Customer focused life improvement company ?
I think CareerBuilder is on a far better track (as shown with Personified) in understanding that they are not a consumer products company but a B to B vendor with consumer exposure.
Maybe I’m way off base, but I thought Monster’s customers are businesses. Will they be switching to a Ladders type model and extracting cash from jobseekers ?
Also the tone of this communication was kind of creepy- lots of dictat without much explaination.
I keep hoping Monster will wake up and realize that they have (had?) a shot to be a key cross-spectrum talent vendor rather than a one-trick pony. CB and even Hotjobs are clearly onto that opportunity.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Gotta love it!!! Shortly after you posted this, The Monster site went down! Joel, you have some power don’t you!!!!
Example of what came up:
We’re sorry. This page is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try us again soon as we are working quickly to resolve the situation for you. If you feel you are seeing this message in error, please delete the cookies and temporary internet files and restart your browser. If you are unsure on how to do this and our site is now available, please consult the Help options for your browser software for instructions.
And they even have a sorry url…..CLASSIC http://jobsearch.monster.com/sorry.html
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Martin,
Monster went down the path of Talent Management vendor in the past. What is now Hudson was a part of that strategy 6 years ago. I’m not convinced that those are the services customers truly look for from companies that are first and foremost media properties.
I think the reason CareerBuilder is doing well is because they are delivering consumers to the businesses who are their customers better than the competition. I would choose a variety of pure-play Talent Management companies and RPO providers before I chose one affiliated with a media company. So I’m very skeptical that Personified is the right move for CareerBuilder.
As far as Monster being a life improvement company, it sounds like they could partner with a Yoga teacher or a vitamin brand with that schtick. We’ll see if that message resonates with the candidate marketplace, and that the right kind of talent ultimately end up at the companies who pay Monster the bucks.
I’d rather ride a wildly successful one-trick pony than a washed up mega-brand who forgot what they came to the marketplace to do.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Kris no question that execution is the ultimate measure.
Six years ago the idea of Talent Management was just a spark of what the idea means today. I also hear you about the happy spot of being a wonderful one trick pony, but even the Coca Cola Corp seeks and has often found other ways to leverage its various attributes to make money.
And in fact- who would be better positioned to pull together a single source offering for TM than the vendor bringing talent in the first place ? Fragmentaton of both the orgazational elements of TM and the vendors of TM solutions makes it difficult for any single vendor to accumulate the market/capital/mindshare needed to really score.
Look at IBM- they were bascially a medium-sized maker of tabulating equipment and typewriters, and now they are a global force across dozens of technologies.
Monster is in no danger of going out of business in the forseeable future, but ROI for shareholders is another story.
I think there is more at work here regarding the seeming opposite directions of Monster v. CareerBuilder’s trend lines- both are still bringing jobseekers and employers together, but one clearly sees a bigger future than the other.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:23 am
My calling is your calling is their calling. So ’save the worldy’. Unfortunately unless your calling is: “financial advisor” which are all these job sites are littered with these days, you should go calling somewhere else.
January 27th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
“Your calling is calling” is an ad campaign that tries to lure job seekers to the site so that they can find their “dream job”. Unfortunately Recruiters and Hiring Managers are not looking for their inbox to be full of candidates submitting resumes to positions they are not qualified for in hopes of “finding their calling”. And as a job seeker when you go to Monster, spend valuable time applying to jobs that you never get a response from, you will never use Monster again. This shows how much attention Monster pays to their clients actual needs of hiring quality candidates from a shrinking candidate pool.
January 28th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Amen, Anonymous!
I wholeheartedly agree.
http://www.krisrzepkowski.com/blog/work/monster-your-website-is-calling-take-down-the-billboards.html