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Randstad buys Monster for $429M as recruitment consolidation continues
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- winteriscoming 10y agoThe article talks about around 50K employers registered on these job portals, as a metric. Bit surprised since I always thought the number of potential employees was a more valuable metric. Don't see that number being mentioned in their comparison with other such portals.
- doug1001 10y agoi used to work at Simply Hired; the employers are the customers of these job aggregators--eg, they give you access to a their database of current open positions often via an API, and we would load them into our ETL pipeline then put them on the SH Site, hopefully after intelligently indexing them so that a user (prospective employee) could retrieve the available jobs they are looking using just a handful of broad keywords. Of course you're spot on that traffic to the Site, in the form of prospective employees, is just as important. But there's no agreed-upon, industry-wide KPI to express this and i suspect that might discourage public disclosure. as you can imagine there are maybe a dozen different ways to express site traffic. So for instance, unique visitors per day gives you an optimistic figure but without any indication of traffic quality (ie, how many searches, how many jobs they clicked, and how many they applied for); and of course at the other end is something like "unique applicants per day". and again, on the other hand, paying customers (employers) while not the whole story, is a metric subject to less reporting variance.
- abluecloud 10y agobut the employers are the ones more likely to pay to get their advert promoted, featured etc.
- 10dpd 10y agoI'd imagine job sites are like dating sites - churn is built in by definition as users achieve their goals.
- noer 10y agoWell, they're both marketplace businesses. Churn is built in for the non-revenue side, but for this kind of marketplace, chrun is only built in on one side. The goal is most likely for Employers to continue to provide revenue month after month.
- noer 10y agoEmployers are where the revenue comes from. Number of available Employees is a metric they'd probably use in marketing or acquisition materials. I wonder how many of those employers provide MRR though.
- chillydawg 10y agoIt's a chicken and egg network effect, just like facebook or a dating site.
- davidiach 10y agoIt is only me or is this a really good time to buy tech companies? We had so many acquisitions lately some of which don't even make that much sense apart from the low price they where bought for.
- toyg 10y agoIt's a good time to buy anything. Low interest rates across the board mean you can leverage cheap loans.
- _pmf_ 10y ago> apart from the low price they where bought for It's not low for German (I'd even argue: for European) standards.
- davidiach 10y agoLast year they had $666.9M in revenue and $73.61M in profits.[1] I would say it is pretty low. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MWW/financials?p=MWW https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MWW/financials?p=MWW
- lpolovets 10y agoTheir multiple is probably low because it looks like the business is shrinking: $764m in 2013, $726m in 2014, and $667m in 2015. I might be overgeneralizing, but it even looks like revenue is shrinking at an accelerating pace.
- _pmf_ 10y ago> I might be overgeneralizing, but it even looks like revenue is shrinking at an accelerating pace. German here; they have ads everywhere; maybe they just spend too much at the moment.
- smeyer 10y ago>they have ads everywhere; maybe they just spend too much at the moment. But the parent commenter was worrying about shrinking revenue, not profit. If anything, an overly aggressive advertising campaign should grow revenue while shrinking profit.
- TorKlingberg 10y agoThis feels very cheap to me. Monster is a well established brand with many uses and the monetization path is clear. I suppose Monster is losing to LinkedIn for higher paid jobs.
- ryporter 10y agoMonster's P/E ratio yesterday was around 65. Given that the company is far from a high-growth startup, that suggests that this deal isn't cheap. (That's not to say this is a bad deal -- the synergies between online and offline recruitment make sense.)
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- martinald 10y agoPretty crazy that such a well know brand still, after all this time, is not making great profits. I would have guessed that monster was a massive unicorn spinning out loads of cash in the fees they charge recruiters, turns out they're not at all.
- NTripleOne 10y agoMonster jobs, not monster energy. I was very confused at first glance.
- Cthulhu_ 10y agoMonster jobs was around wayyy before the energy drink
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- hellweaver666 10y agoI thought this was about Monster cables!
- realworldview 10y agoI thought this was about Cookie Monster!
- zeveb 10y agoI honestly thought it was about Monster Cables at first, because I've never heard of Randstad & the name sounds like it could be a high-end audiophile brand.
- lpolovets 10y agoRandom anecdote from the early days of LinkedIn: around 2004 or 2005, I remember reading a news story where a Monster.com exec was asked if they'd want to acquire LinkedIn. This is back when LinkedIn only had 1m or 2m members while Monster was the leader in the job postings space. The exec responded with something like, "LinkedIn is still very small and unproven, but I suspect that if they succeed, Monster wouldn't be able to afford them." Interesting to see that in 2016, Monster got purchased for ~1.5% of LinkedIn's acquisition value. (In 2004, LinkedIn was probably 1.5% of Monster's value -- if that.)
- themartorana 10y agoAs I was reading that I expected the quote to be dismissive and flip. At least the guy had a level head on and understood the market.
- richiezc 10y agoThat is great. Random anecdote from the sort of early days (2008 or 2009): We had hit some membership milestone and Dan Nye who had taken over from Reid as CEO said something like: "Who's the Monster now?" This clip was actually filmed but never released as we were still tiny in comparison.
- vadym909 10y agoI'm not sure what the exec meant? It can be a failure or a huge success? This is such a generic statement
- ejcx 10y agoThat sounds like exactly the type of thing you would want to/have to acquire, right? I think a good example is Instagram. 1b sounded like a lot, but it now looks like a grand bargain.
- ben_jones 10y agoDoesn't mean they had the capital to do it or that their business strategy / growth strategy at the time allowed them to do it. Just looking at the logistics of merging two companies it is completely reasonable that the experience and talent to make it work (like a few really good office managers) weren't there.
- douche 10y agoUntil the other day when I saw Monster mentioned in some random puff piece about local tech company interns competing in sack races, I had completely forgotten they existed. They've kind of fallen completely off the map, for a company that was at one point the jobs board on the internet.
- hoorayimhelping 10y agoThey have some kind of office off of I-95 in South Carolina or Georgia. I drove by it earlier this summer, and until I had, I had completely forgotten about that company as well, despite getting my first job out of college through them in aught six.
- neuromancer2701 10y agoI think it is a call center in Florence, South Carolina.
- thoughtsimple 10y agoI think the sign for Monster is still up in Maynard MA at the mill even though they haven't been there for several years. I used to work on a floor below them during the dot-com boom and I remember their company meetings would drown out ours (which were unfortunately always subdued since we were going out of business.)
- twistedpair 10y agoI had the very same thought last week when I drove by their office in Weston, MA. Figured they must be making VCR's like Polaroid.
- pselbert 10y agoWorking as a Temp through Randstad was my first "professional" job back as a teen in the nineties. It paid marginally more than working in a restaurant and was drastically more mind numbing. The work consisted of tasks like: format the text for every entry in an Access database manually, physically sort all of the files in hundreds of boxes, or the Sisyphean job of filing every sheet of paper that came through a fax machine. That experience gave me a deep appreciation for Office Space. I've never had to work in an environment like that anytime since, and just as fortunately, I've never had to resort to a job search through commodity job sites like Monster.
- SmellTheGlove 10y agoI'm not sure where Monster fits nowadays. Indeed does a pretty good job of crawling job postings directly, and LinkedIn gets a lot of recruiters as well as principals. Are Monster/Dice/CareerBuilder just places where recruiters go when they don't want to pay LinkedIn prices? My impression is that not very many companies use these sites directly any more. Interestingly, my zombie monster resume from 10 years ago still gets me the occasional inquiry for things I used to do 10 years ago.
- donretag 10y agoSometimes those zombie resumes are hard to delete. Even with the advent of LinkedIn, recruiters will still use knowingly outdated information. I guess it is just a numbers game for recruiters. http://blog.brusic.com/2012/07/how-private-is-your-online-job-profile.html http://blog.brusic.com/2012/07/how-private-is-your-online-jo...
- jeffmould 10y agoI run a couple job boards and we tested doing some backfill from Monster at one time. The quality of the postings was horrible. Between them and CareerBuilder we mainly received "work from home", "avon", "mary kay" and "get rich quick" jobs. We could have filtered further, but then we were left with only a few valid results. We ended up not using either. It seems over the past few years they both went for quantity over quality. Indeed's API sucks compared to some of the others, their payouts to partners are horrible, but at least they have a good array of jobs. SimplyHired did a good job, but it seems over the last year they just gave up. Their partner help was non-existant, and their API was in bad need of an overhaul, although it was a well-rounded API and allowed some highly specific niche searches (i.e searching via O*NET codes). Now they are Indeed so that wiped them out of our arsenal. We are left with ZipRecruiter, which in my opinion has one of the best teams to work with. They are not only easy to work with, but super friendly and knowledgable. Mainly they want to see their partners succeed which is a huge benefit for everyone involved.
- mrweasel 10y agoDoes anyone actually have good experiences using recruitment firms for filling positions? Tell Randstad that you'd like a Python/Django developer and they'll throw 20 people at you that all have one thing in common: They don't know Python, nor Django.
- alicewales 10y agoI regularly get cold-emailed by recruiters I've never dealt with for jobs I'm unqualified to do in locations I'm unwilling to move to. (No, I am not going to be a PHP dev for a betting outfit in Leeds.) I bin them, but I suspect there are at least a few people who will go "hey, I can wing that" and respond depending on their level of desperation.
- nannal 10y agoSkybet are still hiring I see
- sofaofthedamned 10y agoAs a devops guy I get calls for there all the time, as well as some government agency there.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoI always tell myself that if I were in this position, I'd go to the interview and tell the company that they're being ripped off by the recruiter.
- WhitneyLand 10y agoYes are good/useful recruiters are out there. It can be tough to see because there are so many companies, but some have ethics, professionalism, and good results. One suggestion for you: When you write up a job description, break down the requirements into clearly labeled groups like "must have", "nice to have", etc. Makes it easier to hold them accountable for what candidates they bring you.
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- vthallam 10y agoThis is such a deal for Randstad. Monster is the only brand which has presence in multiple countries with significant market share. But as aggregators(read Indeed) grew, the traditional job boards lost the value. Monster has infact blocked Indeed to index their jobs, but by then Indeed was so big and powerful. Also, monster probably because of their size didn't do any innovation in recruitment space, didn't acquire any company which has new tech, so it was bound to go down.
- walshemj 10y agoWhich is whey reed elsiver sold there recruitment arm a while back
- losteverything 10y agoWhere does one go for a non-tech job nowadays. Part time low or unskilled. Or ft like a vet assistant, laborer (eg construction), medical biller, etc
- bsbechtel 10y agoMy company recruits heavily on college campuses via their career departments. We also use Indeed. We've tried out Craig's List, but haven't had much luck.
- alicewales 10y agoIndeed.com (or its national variants) seems to be the place a lot of these kinds of employer advertise.
- losteverything 10y agoTY. Stupid q. Searched my area and found lots of listings. 1 do employers know they are on indeed? And 2 how does indeed get listings? Sorry for the real basic level.
- to3m 10y agoI don't know the answer to #1. Regarding #2, indeed appears to be some kind of job site search engine, a la google, as most links I've clicked on there have sent me to some recruitment/agency/etc. website... but sometimes you find direct links.
- simonbw 10y agoIn general indeed gets its listings by aggregating them from across the web. They also have a lot of people post directly on their site. They also have the Job Spotter app that gives rewards to people to find and upload pictures of "Help Wanted" signs. https://jobspotter.indeed.com/ https://jobspotter.indeed.com/
- mikesickler 10y agoWhen my family business was looking for a bookkeeper, we listed on Indeed directly. It was really inexpensive and very effective; we received many qualified applicants.
- drcross 10y agoAs an aside, I'm looking for a job at the moment and linked-in is fucking terrible at the moment. I can't stand recruiters posting all their "forwards from grandma" memes flooding my news feed and I don't know how to separate the wheat from the chaff.
- walterbell 10y agoOne alternative: http://linkup.com http://linkup.com is an aggregator / search engine that only indexes jobs from employer sites, no job boards or other noise sources. For startups, try https://angel.co/jobs https://angel.co/jobs to connect directly with founders and hiring mgrs.
- mkohlmyr 10y agoI deleted my account a long time ago. It simply isn't useful to most people any more. LinkedIn is 1) a target for recruiters with a spray and pray strategy 2) a crm/lead gen tool for sales people The amount of spam (I work in email marketing tech, I know these emails work, but let's call a spade a spade) in my inbox went down considerably as a result.
- 0xmohit 10y agoOdd that the amount of spam reduced. I've seen instances where individuals weren't even able to delete their accounts. Sounds funny, but it goes like: (1) you delete your account, (2) you receive a message from LinkedIn, (3) you think that the account isn't deleted and login to delete. Voila, you nullified what you did in (1)! The following is true: https://twitter.com/darylginn/status/590664399041519617 https://twitter.com/darylginn/status/590664399041519617
- mkohlmyr 10y agoOh it was definitely a "process" deleting the account. But the sheer amount of emails they send is a travesty. I honestly can't believe they haven't hit the point of diminishing returns yet. I suppose because people view linked in as a must there are virtually no consequences for them. Unless people start deleting their accounts. I highly recommend it.
- vadym909 10y agoI think it's becoming clear that job boards have failed as model. Simplyhired, now Monster. I think employers are tired of posting jobs or scouring the resume databases have realized it might make sense to just outsource the whole recruiting thing. Which is why Indeed is now owned by Recruit a Japanese staffing firm and Monster by Randstad. That leaves Adecco to pick up Careerbuilder.
- dave_sullivan 10y agoWhat's the going rate on recruiters these days though? 20% of first year salary? I'd rather use it for a 20% pay bump to get a particularly good candidate. Hell, real estate agents sell a HOUSE and only get 3%. Recruiters make a series of phone calls and they're supposed to get 20-40k, while I go to work? It's a great business though, I would know, I've worked for/at/with a couple midsized recruiting firms, they make a lot of money.
- vadym909 10y agoCompanies won't give you the 20% pay bump if you approached them yourself. Its a good deal for the company because they outsource the risk of hiring a recruiter fulltime and not finding a candidate. Some recruiting agencies make a lot of money but many go under. Companies pay a recruiting agency only if the agency found them the candidate. With lots of agencies competing, the fee is not certain. The good sourcers/recruiters definitely find it more profitable to work on their own.
- b34r 10y agoI'm extremely surprised Monster is worth more than 50M max.
- atombath 10y agoI think we have to thank Monster for the current dismal state of recruitment... so I hope this acquisition along with the others causes some shake-up. I can understand the concerns of companies that are unsure about a market so they shop out to recruiters, but it simply doesn't work for anyone. I'm just as tired as everyone else getting those emails like "I noticed your skills in Visual Studio and thought you'd be a great fit!" Uploaded my resume last night. 10 emails + 12 calls so far(despite that I removed my phone number... but it's cached somewhere =/) and you guessed it, at least two thirds are terrible technology matches. I reiterate, thanks for creating this Monster of a recruitment process.
- withdavidli 10y ago> I can understand the concerns of companies that are unsure about a market so they shop out to recruiters, but it simply doesn't work for anyone. I worked for an RPO (outsourced recruiting with access to internal systems and hiring managers). Maybe not work for everyone, but that's really dependent on the recruiter reaching out and the experience they initiate. Made plenty of hires, multiple teams did better than their internal recruiters. >despite that I removed my phone number... but it's cached somewhere =/ What likely happened here is they are using a another product outside of Monster itself, like Avature CRM. They have your past info on file. As soon as you updated your resume you show up on their filter (ex. only resumes updated within last 7 days), they matched your email address and combine your profile so they have your phone number as well. Also, if you're being messaged for experience that are years to decades old. You can just leave those as generic titles and only have details with most recent work. Say you'll provide more details if requested. This will limit search terms for what you come up for.
- liquidcool 10y agoI've never advertised on Monster, but if you're a recruiting agency, wouldn't you think twice about doing so now that it's owned by a competitor? This is the same reason Pepsi spun off YUM brands. Coke converted Pepsi restaurant customers by asking how they felt about giving money to KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut.