http://www.krisrzepkowski.com/blog/work/monster-your-website-is-calling-take-down-the-billboards.html

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.

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.

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

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.