6 ms·

CareerBuilder and Monster job boards, file for bankruptcy

49 points by gscott 1y ago

pluc 1y ago
Operating a failed job board is a lot like operating a failed casino. If you can't make it work in today's market, it's largely your fault. Especially when they were so dominant a few years ago. Monster.com was a pop culture icon, even featured on The Office! I'm guessing that they failed to keep up with the market and kept developing features nobody wanted, until competition overwhelmed them.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > If you can't make it work in today's market, it's largely your fault. The job markets are dead, just look at the last few months of layoffs across the board. First the Russian invasion and the resulting inflation plus the end of ZIRP, then the Trump tariff wars.
  - pluc 1y ago
    The job markets aren't dead, job boards are still full of opportunities. What's dead is the interaction between recruiters and candidates, and we can thank AI for that. For job boards, there's definitely opportunities to cut through the bullshit there, but it's a lot easier to get on the bandwagon than it is to say the train is headed for a wall.
    - kassner 1y ago
      > job boards are still full of opportunities That’s not a proxy anymore. In my corner, I keep seeing the same listings over and over again. Friends with hiring power have all sorts of stories, multiple reorganizations, budget cuts (and then a week later announcing record profits on earnings calls). Companies are just not hiring. They need to say they are to keep investors on the hype (if you aren’t hiring you mustn’t be growing).
      - jf22 1y ago
        Idk about this. Every dev I know that has lost or left a job in the past year found another one without too much struggle. Cycles take longer and are more annoying but companies are definitely hiring.
    - mschuster91 1y ago
      > The job markets aren't dead, job boards are still full of opportunities. Many of these "open positions" aren't really planned to be filled. They're just out there to gauge interest or wait for the one "rockstar" candidate. Honestly, this kind of deception should be banned by law. So much time is wasted every year applying to jobs that practically aren't real.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  Like anything else, the casino business is competitive, right? A casino might be a money printer, but as the years go by the tech to print money can get cheaper, and there isn’t a ton of incumbency advantage because it’s all straightforward. Also with a job board, there seems to be a natural progression—the most valuable asset you can have is that the dummies and the useless resume-optimizers haven’t figured out how to game your system yet. So if anything there’s a huge incumbency disadvantage.
  - pluc 1y ago
    If you invest nothing in your casino upkeep, or focus on stupid ideas like daily themed coasters, the new casino next door will take all your business just by being new.
    - bee_rider 1y ago
      Or if your casino has debts, like employee pensions, that your competition doesn’t have. Or if the town over has decided they want a slice of the pie too, and has added tax incentives that you can’t take advantage of.
- skeeter2020 1y ago
  I don't know their particular journey, but based on my experience with other PE-owned companies any post-mortem should trace that path to look at how that unfolded.
  - lumost 1y ago
    As a Bostonian, I’d blame Bain capital and other east coast VC firms for the current state of the Boston tech scene. Firms largely lacked growth capital unless they adopted thesis driven strategies such as velocity sales. Chasing scale through cheap talent and cheap products doesn't really work in tech. The winning employee strategy was to pivot into either SV based firms or biotech about a decade ago.
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      The non-competes don't help either, but that's more of a symptom of the observations you have (and I +1 them). There are a couple promising Boston area tech startups I've been following, but it is definetly a much weaker ecosystem compared to even 15 years ago. The decline of Dell+EMC, Akamai, and VMWare+CarbonBlack also seemed to have play a role. That said, there are good Boston area VCs like General Catalyst, Unusual Ventures, and Fidelity Ventures, but at this point they've all basically moved to concentrate on identifying talent at Harvard+MIT who were already going to move West or to NYC. I hoped Klaviyo would have had a significant impact, but it seemed fairly muted for the size of exit it was. Same with it's ancestor Hubspot.
      - lumost 1y ago
        You can add trip advisor, wayfair, kayak, and others to that list. There is probably a bias at this point that experienced employees who are good are unlikely to work for the prevailing wages at these companies unless they are unable to earn more at west coast firms.
      - busterarm 1y ago
        I know some very early hires at Akamai and they're all still there and effectively lifers. And filthy rich.
- boo-ga-ga 1y ago
  > If you can't make it work in today's market, it's largely your fault I think it's exactly the opposite situation. In this market most money are made from companies and recruiters. If there is less demand and more supply for white collar jobs, companies don't need to spend their resources on all possible channels to reach candidates. That's why some "default" channel like LinkedIn will get a job posting, and all others won't, especially if these are paid.
brk 1y ago
Monster.com literally owned this space, and had so much potential. I worked in a few startups at the Clocktower in Maynard, MA, where Monster was also based. Their offices had all the SV amenities and vibe, and for the longest time they were the default job search/resume database. Now, I can't recall hearing anyone mention Monster, or seeing anything about them online in over a decade. They're like the 3Com of job search.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Monster.com is also the main driver for the decline of the old "talent agent"-style headhunter. I guess the model was an anachronism, whose time had come, but I still miss it.
  - noitpmeder 1y ago
    This model is still alive and (trying to) thrive in the tech space adjacent to finance/hft. Not sure what it's like for other mid-to-senior engineers in non-finance-adjacent tech shops. IMO the cold calls (or, these days, linkedin messages, god help you if you ever give any one of them your number, you'll never want to answer an unknown call again) are a bit insane. They feel like used car salesmen. Incentives are definitely misaligned with the employee -- from what I understand they're usually paid a percentage of first year salary, so they just want to move as many people as possible for the most money. Not that candidates don't also benefit from a drive to increase offers, but I get the feeling people are pushed into taking jobs they might otherwise would not have.
    - Nextgrid 1y ago
      > This model is still alive and (trying to) thrive in the tech space adjacent to finance/hft Any ones you can recommend? I seem to have exhausted the potential of my current network of recruiters.
      - noitpmeder 1y ago
        Heh I think we'd all looking for the mythical diamond in the haystack. I'm not sure any of them are worth recommending, really. Full disclosure, I haven't switched jobs in a while, but I got the impression I could "get to the interview" for any of these companies even just reaching out directly to the in-house recruiters listed on LinkedIn. At that point I'm not sure what a head hunter provides in terms of value-add (for me) -- maybe they know more secrets about salary negotiations or conducting bidding wars? But on the whole it seems my application would be less attractive coming through a head hunter since now the company is shelling out an extra 30% to the HH just for forwarding on my resume. I'd be interested to know what you mean by "exhausted the potential" -- have you applied and not found a fit with any of the gamut your current LinkedIn recruiter spam would recommend? I get the impression that 95% of external agency recruiters are all shopping some slice of the same openings from the same ~10-15~ firms.
bhouston 1y ago
I guess they got taken out primarily by LinkedIn Jobs? LinkedIn is an online resume essentially with a lot of additional self-promotion, so it simplifies the job application process, and also allows for searching for potential recruits. Jobs postings/applications was always a perfect adjacent market for LinkedIn.
- hardwaresofton 1y ago
  Don't forget Indeed -- they seem to be absolutely crushing it and have been for... over a decade? Even though they've been purchased, I think their operating team is mostly still the same.
- notarobot123 1y ago
  And which employer could resist using a social credit score system as the primary entry-point for new employees?
purple_mugs 1y ago
I worked in this space for the market leader for a good portion of my career. It was very interesting to see how jobs fluctuated across economic cycles. Interestingly, there were rumors that a certain job board allows hedge funds to read their data to gauge the economic outlook. I eventually left because of terrible leadership, nepotism, and selfishness.
- bhouston 1y ago
  > Interestingly, there were rumors that a certain job board allows hedge funds to read their data to gauge the economic outlook. Not surprised. Just another revenue stream.
Beestie 1y ago
I'm actively seeking a new contract position so dusted off my accounts in both of these engines about a month ago. I also use a few other sites like Indeed, Flex Jobs, remote.io, etc. Couple things I have noticed. Indeed does the best job of recommending jobs based on the jobs I click on. Sort of like Amazon's "since you like that, you might also like this". Indeed is very good at it. Out of the six or so services I am now active in, Monster is dreadful at it. Their email recommendations and related job postings are so far off the mark, I gave up on them. Another interesting thing I've noticed is how some of the smaller boards like remote.io are using the same listings as the bigger boards - so much the same that I wonder if the bigger board also owns it. Its been over a month so don't recall exactly which "niche" board was essentially a clone of the more mainstream board but when I'm paying for full access, I don't want to see the exact same listings. It was way beyond coincidence and no relationship was disclosed. So I think Monster just got fat and happy and turned into the Blockbuster of job boards. Not sure about Careerbuilder. One thing on my agenda for this afternoon is to completely remove/delete/truncate/smote my accounts with Monster and Careerbuilder.
- dylan604 1y ago
  > I've noticed is how some of the smaller boards like remote.io are using the same listings as the bigger boards - so much the same that I wonder if the bigger board also owns it. Could they also just be scraping other sites? Scraping seems to be the way for startups to gain traction without having to do any of the hard work of beating the bushes
dzonga 1y ago
monster is like trump. you would have to be horrible at operations to fail at running a casino. usually playbook for these things - company makes a lot of money, the owners get enticed by PE - PE guts out operations like gutting out fish. the company forgets what made them tick or special. company declares bankruptcy. Even with indeed now dominating the space n to a lesser extent linkedIn - no reason for monster to fail. none at all.
- postalrat 1y ago
  Indeed is on the decline. They all have the same problem, they need job seekers to attract employers/recruiters/etc who pay them for access to job seekers. There are many conflicting interests.
daft_pink 1y ago
How do you lose money as essentially running a classified ad site?
- motohagiography 1y ago
  it's a bankruptcy so I would estimate revenues were insufficient to service both debt and operating expenses. ideally they have assets like real estate or something of value to liquidate, but regardless, it's likely that everyone except employees will have been paid. imo there are three phases of a company: build, manage, liquidate. essentially seed/A-B, C-N rounds, PE debt rounds & asset stripping.
  - daft_pink 1y ago
    I guess I don't understand how they could have substantial expenses for something that essentially is a fancy forum based website, where companies pay to post. I would expect that revenues could go down, but their gross margin should be so large that it would reduce profit and losing money should be impossible let along bankruptcy.
    - motohagiography 1y ago
      if they were levered enough and the interest rate changed vs. their revenue, it was probably inevitable. slowly, and then all at once as they say.
bbaron63 1y ago
I didn't know CareerBuilder still exists. They were the first job site I can recall in the late 90s. Then Monster emerged as the dominant place for job search.
racl101 1y ago
Monster totally was the place and then Indeed became the defacto. At least in Canada.

49 points by gscott 1y ago

pluc 1y ago

Operating a failed job board is a lot like operating a failed casino. If you can't make it work in today's market, it's largely your fault. Especially when they were so dominant a few years ago. Monster.com was a pop culture icon, even featured on The Office! I'm guessing that they failed to keep up with the market and kept developing features nobody wanted, until competition overwhelmed them.

mschuster91 1y ago
> If you can't make it work in today's market, it's largely your fault. The job markets are dead, just look at the last few months of layoffs across the board. First the Russian invasion and the resulting inflation plus the end of ZIRP, then the Trump tariff wars.
- pluc 1y ago
  The job markets aren't dead, job boards are still full of opportunities. What's dead is the interaction between recruiters and candidates, and we can thank AI for that. For job boards, there's definitely opportunities to cut through the bullshit there, but it's a lot easier to get on the bandwagon than it is to say the train is headed for a wall.
  - kassner 1y ago
    > job boards are still full of opportunities That’s not a proxy anymore. In my corner, I keep seeing the same listings over and over again. Friends with hiring power have all sorts of stories, multiple reorganizations, budget cuts (and then a week later announcing record profits on earnings calls). Companies are just not hiring. They need to say they are to keep investors on the hype (if you aren’t hiring you mustn’t be growing).
    - jf22 1y ago
      Idk about this. Every dev I know that has lost or left a job in the past year found another one without too much struggle. Cycles take longer and are more annoying but companies are definitely hiring.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > The job markets aren't dead, job boards are still full of opportunities. Many of these "open positions" aren't really planned to be filled. They're just out there to gauge interest or wait for the one "rockstar" candidate. Honestly, this kind of deception should be banned by law. So much time is wasted every year applying to jobs that practically aren't real.
bee_rider 1y ago
Like anything else, the casino business is competitive, right? A casino might be a money printer, but as the years go by the tech to print money can get cheaper, and there isn’t a ton of incumbency advantage because it’s all straightforward. Also with a job board, there seems to be a natural progression—the most valuable asset you can have is that the dummies and the useless resume-optimizers haven’t figured out how to game your system yet. So if anything there’s a huge incumbency disadvantage.
- pluc 1y ago
  If you invest nothing in your casino upkeep, or focus on stupid ideas like daily themed coasters, the new casino next door will take all your business just by being new.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    Or if your casino has debts, like employee pensions, that your competition doesn’t have. Or if the town over has decided they want a slice of the pie too, and has added tax incentives that you can’t take advantage of.
skeeter2020 1y ago
I don't know their particular journey, but based on my experience with other PE-owned companies any post-mortem should trace that path to look at how that unfolded.
- lumost 1y ago
  As a Bostonian, I’d blame Bain capital and other east coast VC firms for the current state of the Boston tech scene. Firms largely lacked growth capital unless they adopted thesis driven strategies such as velocity sales. Chasing scale through cheap talent and cheap products doesn't really work in tech. The winning employee strategy was to pivot into either SV based firms or biotech about a decade ago.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    The non-competes don't help either, but that's more of a symptom of the observations you have (and I +1 them). There are a couple promising Boston area tech startups I've been following, but it is definetly a much weaker ecosystem compared to even 15 years ago. The decline of Dell+EMC, Akamai, and VMWare+CarbonBlack also seemed to have play a role. That said, there are good Boston area VCs like General Catalyst, Unusual Ventures, and Fidelity Ventures, but at this point they've all basically moved to concentrate on identifying talent at Harvard+MIT who were already going to move West or to NYC. I hoped Klaviyo would have had a significant impact, but it seemed fairly muted for the size of exit it was. Same with it's ancestor Hubspot.
    - lumost 1y ago
      You can add trip advisor, wayfair, kayak, and others to that list. There is probably a bias at this point that experienced employees who are good are unlikely to work for the prevailing wages at these companies unless they are unable to earn more at west coast firms.
    - busterarm 1y ago
      I know some very early hires at Akamai and they're all still there and effectively lifers. And filthy rich.
boo-ga-ga 1y ago
> If you can't make it work in today's market, it's largely your fault I think it's exactly the opposite situation. In this market most money are made from companies and recruiters. If there is less demand and more supply for white collar jobs, companies don't need to spend their resources on all possible channels to reach candidates. That's why some "default" channel like LinkedIn will get a job posting, and all others won't, especially if these are paid.

brk 1y ago

Monster.com literally owned this space, and had so much potential. I worked in a few startups at the Clocktower in Maynard, MA, where Monster was also based. Their offices had all the SV amenities and vibe, and for the longest time they were the default job search/resume database. Now, I can't recall hearing anyone mention Monster, or seeing anything about them online in over a decade. They're like the 3Com of job search.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Monster.com is also the main driver for the decline of the old "talent agent"-style headhunter. I guess the model was an anachronism, whose time had come, but I still miss it.
- noitpmeder 1y ago
  This model is still alive and (trying to) thrive in the tech space adjacent to finance/hft. Not sure what it's like for other mid-to-senior engineers in non-finance-adjacent tech shops. IMO the cold calls (or, these days, linkedin messages, god help you if you ever give any one of them your number, you'll never want to answer an unknown call again) are a bit insane. They feel like used car salesmen. Incentives are definitely misaligned with the employee -- from what I understand they're usually paid a percentage of first year salary, so they just want to move as many people as possible for the most money. Not that candidates don't also benefit from a drive to increase offers, but I get the feeling people are pushed into taking jobs they might otherwise would not have.
  - Nextgrid 1y ago
    > This model is still alive and (trying to) thrive in the tech space adjacent to finance/hft Any ones you can recommend? I seem to have exhausted the potential of my current network of recruiters.
    - noitpmeder 1y ago
      Heh I think we'd all looking for the mythical diamond in the haystack. I'm not sure any of them are worth recommending, really. Full disclosure, I haven't switched jobs in a while, but I got the impression I could "get to the interview" for any of these companies even just reaching out directly to the in-house recruiters listed on LinkedIn. At that point I'm not sure what a head hunter provides in terms of value-add (for me) -- maybe they know more secrets about salary negotiations or conducting bidding wars? But on the whole it seems my application would be less attractive coming through a head hunter since now the company is shelling out an extra 30% to the HH just for forwarding on my resume. I'd be interested to know what you mean by "exhausted the potential" -- have you applied and not found a fit with any of the gamut your current LinkedIn recruiter spam would recommend? I get the impression that 95% of external agency recruiters are all shopping some slice of the same openings from the same ~10-15~ firms.

bhouston 1y ago

I guess they got taken out primarily by LinkedIn Jobs? LinkedIn is an online resume essentially with a lot of additional self-promotion, so it simplifies the job application process, and also allows for searching for potential recruits. Jobs postings/applications was always a perfect adjacent market for LinkedIn.

hardwaresofton 1y ago
Don't forget Indeed -- they seem to be absolutely crushing it and have been for... over a decade? Even though they've been purchased, I think their operating team is mostly still the same.
notarobot123 1y ago
And which employer could resist using a social credit score system as the primary entry-point for new employees?

purple_mugs 1y ago

I worked in this space for the market leader for a good portion of my career. It was very interesting to see how jobs fluctuated across economic cycles. Interestingly, there were rumors that a certain job board allows hedge funds to read their data to gauge the economic outlook. I eventually left because of terrible leadership, nepotism, and selfishness.

bhouston 1y ago
> Interestingly, there were rumors that a certain job board allows hedge funds to read their data to gauge the economic outlook. Not surprised. Just another revenue stream.

Beestie 1y ago

I'm actively seeking a new contract position so dusted off my accounts in both of these engines about a month ago. I also use a few other sites like Indeed, Flex Jobs, remote.io, etc. Couple things I have noticed. Indeed does the best job of recommending jobs based on the jobs I click on. Sort of like Amazon's "since you like that, you might also like this". Indeed is very good at it. Out of the six or so services I am now active in, Monster is dreadful at it. Their email recommendations and related job postings are so far off the mark, I gave up on them. Another interesting thing I've noticed is how some of the smaller boards like remote.io are using the same listings as the bigger boards - so much the same that I wonder if the bigger board also owns it. Its been over a month so don't recall exactly which "niche" board was essentially a clone of the more mainstream board but when I'm paying for full access, I don't want to see the exact same listings. It was way beyond coincidence and no relationship was disclosed. So I think Monster just got fat and happy and turned into the Blockbuster of job boards. Not sure about Careerbuilder. One thing on my agenda for this afternoon is to completely remove/delete/truncate/smote my accounts with Monster and Careerbuilder.

dylan604 1y ago
> I've noticed is how some of the smaller boards like remote.io are using the same listings as the bigger boards - so much the same that I wonder if the bigger board also owns it. Could they also just be scraping other sites? Scraping seems to be the way for startups to gain traction without having to do any of the hard work of beating the bushes

dzonga 1y ago

monster is like trump. you would have to be horrible at operations to fail at running a casino. usually playbook for these things - company makes a lot of money, the owners get enticed by PE - PE guts out operations like gutting out fish. the company forgets what made them tick or special. company declares bankruptcy. Even with indeed now dominating the space n to a lesser extent linkedIn - no reason for monster to fail. none at all.

postalrat 1y ago
Indeed is on the decline. They all have the same problem, they need job seekers to attract employers/recruiters/etc who pay them for access to job seekers. There are many conflicting interests.

daft_pink 1y ago

How do you lose money as essentially running a classified ad site?

motohagiography 1y ago
it's a bankruptcy so I would estimate revenues were insufficient to service both debt and operating expenses. ideally they have assets like real estate or something of value to liquidate, but regardless, it's likely that everyone except employees will have been paid. imo there are three phases of a company: build, manage, liquidate. essentially seed/A-B, C-N rounds, PE debt rounds & asset stripping.
- daft_pink 1y ago
  I guess I don't understand how they could have substantial expenses for something that essentially is a fancy forum based website, where companies pay to post. I would expect that revenues could go down, but their gross margin should be so large that it would reduce profit and losing money should be impossible let along bankruptcy.
  - motohagiography 1y ago
    if they were levered enough and the interest rate changed vs. their revenue, it was probably inevitable. slowly, and then all at once as they say.

bbaron63 1y ago

I didn't know CareerBuilder still exists. They were the first job site I can recall in the late 90s. Then Monster emerged as the dominant place for job search.

racl101 1y ago

Monster totally was the place and then Indeed became the defacto. At least in Canada.