Jeff Taylor still thinks on a big scale, writes Jamie Smyth, Technology Reporter.
Mr Jeff Taylor doesn't put much stock in fancy titles, which is hardly surprising given that he is officially listed as the "Chief Monster of Monster" on the recruitment firm's website.
Indeed, the 41-year-old dotcom guru has managed to retain an informal and dynamic approach to business despite the massive shakeout in the internet industry over the past few years.
Not one for the typical stuffy employee meetings, Mr Taylor recently took part in a judo presentation at one meeting, with a staff member who turned out to be a martial arts expert on course to take part in the next Olympics.
"He simply flipped me around like a rag doll," says Mr Taylor, who breaks into a hearty laugh at the memory.
An unashamed publicity seeker, Mr Taylor regularly takes part in high profile stunts such as skiing three miles behind a company airship in an attempt to beat a previous "blimp" skiing stunt by the British entrepreneur, Mr Richard Branson of Virgin.
Certainly, this isn't the leadership style adopted by most Fortune 500 companies but online recruitment firm Monster.com, which Mr Taylor founded in 1994, isn't a typical US company.
Monster.com was the 554th dotcom or commercial site on the internet when it launched as the Monster Board in 1994. It was one of the first recruitment firms to take advantage of the internet and over the past two's year has steered a bumpy path through the dotcom implosion and the slump in the US jobs market.
Monster's parent, Monster Worldwide, slumped to a $535 million (€461 million) loss in 2002 from a $69 million profit in 2001 as US unemployment surged. But it is back in the black posting an $18.5 million operating profit in the second quarter this year.
Originally conceived as a bulletin board site to reach out to technical people, Monster.com has grown into a dotcom gorilla, which posts about one million new jobs per quarter on its websites and stores 30 million curricula vitae on its main database.
Like most online recruitment sites Monster does not charge job seekers for access to its job listings or placing a CV on its database. It generates revenue by charging firms for placing adds and searching its CV database.
Indeed, the Monster database is now one of the most lucrative elements of its sites with third party recruiters now accounting for 20 to 25 per cent of Monster's revenues, says Mr Taylor.
Sold by Mr Taylor to the directories firm TMP Worldwide in 1995 for just $900,000 - a bargain when compared to the astronomical sums paid for online recruiters a few years later - Monster currently pulls in more cash than the two much longer established advertising and marketing divisions in the company.
In its most recent quarterly earnings Monster.com reported revenues worth $103.1 million, compared to the $64 million generated by the advertising and marketing arms of its parent firm.
To reflect the growing importance of Monster's contribution to the group and its global branding success, TMP Worldwide changed its name to Monster Worldwide earlier this year.
With its headquarters in New York, the firm now has a workforce of about 4,500 in 19 states worldwide. Despite experiencing a decline of visitors to its website over the past nine months, Monster.com gets almost double the number of visitors to its site, 15.2 million per month, than its nearest rival HotJobs, which is owned by Yahoo.
Monster.com is now focusing on expanding market share in Europe, where it has 14 country websites, including its recruitment website for the Republic.
"Our big goal is to become number one in all our European markets and grow the business here," says Mr Taylor, who visited the Republic two years ago when Monster held a European management event in Dublin.
"We are continuing to look for opportunities to grow our marketshare in Europe."
"We are very strong in both Ireland and the UK where we hold a leadership position and are tied for second or third in Germany, which obviously is a very important market for us," he says.
Monster.com's Irish unit says it attracts 271,000 unique visitors monthly who generate about 2.6 million page impressions. About 97,000 job-seekers have registered on its site and the firm has a searchable database of approximately 55,000 CVs.
The firm has run quirky advertising campaigns to boost its brand image in the Republic, including a poster based on the resignation of the former Irish soccer manager Mick McCarthy.
Monster.com was also an official supplier to the Special Olympics and worked with the Irish organising committee to hire about 30,000 volunteers for the games, says Mr Taylor.
Monster.com's rapid success in the Irish market earned it a Golden Spider internet award in 2002 in the category of Best International Website. This year it is nominated for three Golden Spider awards, including the award for best recruitment site.
Mr Taylor says the company's goal is to make all its European subsidiaries profitable over the next 12 to 18 months. Monster.com will also continue its shift to addressing local markets rather than just the online world.
Monster took a significant step towards localising its own advertising earlier this year when it decided to redirect $50 million of its $125 million annual advertising budget towards national and local marketing. To do this it cancelled online advertising contracts with the internet giants AOL and MSN to finance the campaigns, which begin this month.
Analysts are divided on Monster.com's new strategy which some believe is risky. But Mr Taylor is confident of success.
"We want Monster to be recognised as both a national and a local brand. We've started this process by raising our profile in the major cities and we will continue this by going to second and third tier cities," he says.
But by focusing more on local and national markets will the firm not be in danger of losing its dotcom roots and perhaps even its sense of fun?
"My philosophy is to work hard and play hard and its a good way to deal with business," says Mr Taylor. "But we are now seeking to put some rigour in the business which wasn't there when the business started."
Certainly, a cost cutting campaign over the past 12 months which has reduced the workforce by almost a quarter demonstrates that there is now a realisation that the technology boom is over.
Everyday we become a little bit more monster and less dotcom, says Mr Taylor, who now concentrates on strategy rather than the day-to-day running of the firm which rests with Monster Worldwide's chief executive, Mr Andrew McKelvey.
Despite the dramatic weakening in the international jobs market from the good old days in the technology boom, he remains positive about future growth.
"I predict we will be in the worst labour shortage in our lifetime by the end of this decade and at this stage Monster will have 50 million CVs on its database," says Mr Taylor. "In the US and Europe the workforce is ageing and there are less employees available to take up skilled jobs. The mathematics just don't add up.
Online recruitment will continue to take most of the "new job" business from newspapers over the next decade, according to Mr Taylor, who can point to research which shows that print advertising revenues fell 35 per cent in 2001 and 23 per cent in 2002, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
Monster is in a good position to capture more of the online market, which will continue to grow as more blue collar workers move online, says Mr Taylor.
But with Monster's business maturing and a more rigorous regime taking root, will he have the desire to be a chief Monster?
"We continue to be entrepreneurial as an organisation and I have a good relationship with the founder of TMP, who gives me a lot of leeway."
MONSTER: the facts
Monster.com was the 554th commercial internet site or "dotcom" on the web.
It recently cancelled a $50 million annual online advertising contract with AOL and MSN to focus on local and national ads.
Monster lost $535 million in 2002 and it restructured. It turned a profit in its last quarter.
The firm is now focusing on expanding its market share in Europe to drive its own growth.
Monster.ie, its Irish site, attracts about 271,000 users per month and almost 100,000 job-seekers have registered online.
