Online job sites squeezed

Associated Press

BOSTON — It’s been a challenging few months for online job search sites. They’ve been flooded with resumes, but not with jobs, and that’s where much of their revenue comes from.

Meanwhile, the competitive landscape is different, too, after a merger between Monster.com and Hotjobs.com — the companies that dominate the $1 billion online recruiting and classifieds industry — fell through in December.

Visitors to the sites notice the effects of the recession, the accompanying surge in unemployment and a drop in demand for workers.

Dan O’Sullivan of Cambridge found a big difference between the number of hits he got on his resume during a 2000 job search and another a year later, amid the recession.

"Last year, and this was with pretty good experience, I would check … and virtually no one had been there," he said.

"They do have hundreds of jobs posted on them, but applying to one is kind of like dropping a fishing line with no hook, no bait, into a lake and trying to catch something," said Judd Everhart of Bethel, Conn., who was laid off from a corporate job at World Wrestling Federation in November and has gotten only a few minor nibbles from his postings on both sites.

The latest earnings reports from the sites show the effects of the weaker job market.

On Tuesday, Monster parent company TMP Worldwide reported fourth-quarter net earnings of $27.3 million, or 24 cents a share, down 21 percent from $34.6 million, or 31 cents a share, a year earlier, although commissions and fees at Monster rose 41 percent.

HotJobs recently reported a fourth-quarter profit of $237,000, or 1 cent a share, excluding merger expenses. That was an improvement over a year-earlier loss of $6.9 million, or 19 cents a share, but revenues were down 20 percent.

Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said the sites have performed relatively well, not only in comparison with other Internet companies, but with the recruiting industry in general.

"Just look at the newspapers," Li said. An "overall 32 percent loss for 2001 in recruitment classifieds … it is by far the biggest drop they’ve ever seen in any cyclical downturn."

Analysts expect the sites to do better when the job market recovers. In the meantime, they’re trying to figure out how the recent shake-up among the top companies will play out.

Late last year, Monster looked like it was en route to a monopoly when TMP announced plans to buy HotJobs. But in December, Web portal Yahoo! stepped in with a higher offer of $436 million, which TMP declined to match.

So the two sites — known to many for their dueling Super Bowl ads the last four years — are again competing.

"HotJobs is back with a major media partner, and I think that’s going to tip the scale significantly over the next year," company chief executive Dimitri Boylan said in a recent interview.

Monster founder and CEO Jeff Taylor doesn’t sound too worried.

"Yahoo! seems to relaunch their careers area about every year, and that tends to bring up a few questions, and then Monster goes out and continues to dominate the marketplace," he said.

Some analysts share Taylor’s skepticism and wonder whether Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo! — which claims 219 million consumers — will squander the HotJobs brand.

"I’m very dubious about whether Yahoo! is ever going to recognize $400 million of value from the acquisition," said Aram Sinnreich, a senior analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix in New York. "Their company has a history of spending exorbitantly to announce their entry into a space that’s hot only to drop the ball when they get into other initiatives."

It’s part of Yahoo!’s new focus on owning content rather than bringing it together, company spokeswoman Joanna Stevens said, adding that Yahoo! believes the price it paid for HotJobs was right.

So far, Maynard-based Monster is the bigger of the two sites, with more visitors — 8.9 million to 7.7 million — according to the latest Jupiter Media Metrix numbers. Monster claims 15 million job seekers’ resume on file, up from 7 million a year ago, and about three times as many as HotJobs.