Monster.com has been floundering for a very long time.
In the early days of the dotcom boom it was an early leader in job search. Unfortunately, it was quickly outpaced by newer technology from companies like Indeed, ZipRecruiter and even recently Google itself — but now it’s fighting back.
Monster has purged it’s upper management and getting back in the ring to try and regain it’s title as king of job search. More competition among the job search giants can only be good news for us humans that need it.
ORIGINAL PRESS RELEASE
Monster, a leading solution for connecting people and jobs, is reaffirming its commitment to advancing the lives of job seekers through meaningful enhancements and algorithm changes geared towards helping reduce the stress, anxiety, and time waste of job searching.
Over the last six months, the company has brought in an almost entirely new executive team, with the goal of evaluating all of the company’s offerings and looking for opportunities to better serve both customers and candidates. As part of this effort, Monster’s product and marketing teams—now led by Chief Product Officer Chris Cho, formerly of TMP Worldwide, and Chief Marketing Officer Jonathan Beamer, formerly of SolarCity—have been analyzing the job search experience on Monster’s own site as well as across the industry. What they found left them disappointed on both fronts. They discovered that Monster had been following the trend of an industry that commoditizes individuals—turning what should be a transformational experience into something that is purely transactional.
“Let’s be honest—our industry has failed both the job seeker and the employer by not making the matching process easier,” said Beamer. “What everyone forgot is that on the other end of this equation are people—unique individuals who bring unique skills, personality and dedication to their work. At Monster, we’re committed to refocusing our efforts on the people we’re serving. We’re intent on taking this company back to its initial purpose of helping people advance their lives, and are working on new ways for people and companies to showcase the best versions of themselves. The changes we’ve made so far are just the beginning.”
Over the past several weeks, the Monster team has begun to introduce improvements to the existing user experience—a process that will be ongoing while teams are also working on product innovations that are expected to be revealed over the next several months. Changes in recent weeks are aimed at:
- Refining the Matching Process. As a first step, Monster updated search algorithms and results to ensure matching the right people to the right jobs is the priority. Among the changes was the decision to remove ads from job search results on the site and sent via emails, a practice that has become all too common in the industry and gets in the way of connecting people to relevant job listings. By making these changes, Monster is helping to reduce wasted time and the anxiety of not finding matches, the success of which is confirmed in an increase of nearly 20 percent in job applies during testing of the change.
- Improving the User Experience. Monster is actively working on ways that it can eliminate unnecessary time wasted in the job search process. The first of these was improving page speed. Understanding that 53 percent of people will leave a mobile web page if the load time is greater than three seconds, our teams have been aiming to get sitewide page speed below this benchmark. Currently, 97.5 percent of our job view pages load in less than one second. Monster has also implemented a two-panel combined job search and job view experience. This combined view allows the seeker to scroll search results and see—or even apply to—expanded job descriptions all in the same view. This eliminates the time wasted navigating back and forth between search results and job ads. This new experience first rolled out on www.monster.com and will soon be available on other entry points, such as email links, in the coming days and weeks.
All of these updates are rooted in Monster’s commitment to humanizing the job search process. By serving as an ally for people in the job market and offering better tools to achieve better results, companies and employers will benefit, as well. Helping people in their job search is Monster’s priority and it will continue to look for ways to improve the process moving forward.
About Monster
Monster is a global leader in connecting people and jobs. Every day, Monster makes meaningful human connections that advance lives and strengthen businesses by helping individuals find better jobs and employers find the best talent. For more than 20 years, Monster has worked to transform the recruiting industry. Today, the company leverages advanced technology using intelligent digital, social and mobile solutions, including the flagship website Monster.com®, Monster’s innovative app, and a vast array of products and services. Monster is a digital venture owned by Randstad North America, a subsidiary of Randstad Holding, a $26 billion (US) global provider of HR services.
Juan is a mission-driven professional and meditation coach that focuses on human development as the path for both internal joy and external success.