I Heard It On Tech Dirt, It Must Be True

Monster isn't the Monster we thought they were.

The flood of useless resumes that companies receive often means that posting a job to a major site is more trouble than it's worth. The industry is now starting to iron out its kinks, but in a way that's not to the benefit of the major sites, like Careerbuilder and Monster.com. While their traffic sags, business is booming at niche sites (via alarm:clock), like GovernmentJobs.com, which only lists public sector jobs.

The comments are instructive, but nothing new to recruiters.  I actually spoke to a Monster rep when I was at ERExpo.  Eric Winegardner, I think?  He told me that Monster had been into Web 2.0 for 5 years.  I let that sit for a moment, and then asked him to clarify.

What he meant was that Monster had some kind of user-generated content at sites like Military.com and some other niche sites.

It had been my hope to give him a chance to flesh that out - anyone saying they had been involved in Web 2.0 for five years is a bit like saying they've been involved in .Net development for 10 years.

Eric, if you happen to read this - that interview slot is still open.  I would love to hear the reply from Monster, and some further elaboration on what exactly Web 2.0 means to Monster.   

Comments

[Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com]

Monster has actually been involved in Web 2.0 since the day they launched. Doesn't user generated content include resumes and job postings, or does Web 2.0 exclude such content?

I actually believe that Web 2.0 does not include job postings or resumes as those are more akin to data than information. Articles, podcasts, blogs, videos, etc. are more akin to information than data and when I think of Web 2.0, I think of user generated information, not user generated data.