Monster Unveils Local Site for Hourly Workers

Looking to accomplish on its own what it once hoped to do by acquiring HotJobs, Monster.com has launched its first local job site aimed at hourly workers.

The site initially is focusing on the metropolitan region around Cincinnati, Ohio. Monster said more locally focused JobMatch.com sites will be rolled out but did not put a timeframe on the expansion. The local sites will have a heavy emphasis on job listings for so-called non-exempt or hourly wage earners.

"We believe this is the first meaningful entry into the non-exempt marketplace, which makes up more than 70 percent of the U.S. labor market and has a turnover rate four times higher than that of the exempt market," said Pat O'Brien, who was named as president of the Cincinnati venture, known as TriState JobMatch.

Likely Target

Monster and parent company TMP Worldwide (Nasdaq: TMPW) had planned to use the acquisition of number two career site HotJobs as a cornerstone for its attack on the hourly market, which is dominated by newspaper classified ads.

But after Yahoo! outbid TMP for HotJobs, Monster turned to a new approach.

"We expect our launch of TriState JobMatch to be the first step in a series of successful rollouts," TMP CEO Andrew McKelvey said. "Once we've established a presence in Cincinnati, our lead market, we can easily apply the model to markets nationwide."

Offline Features

The JobMatch sites will work much like Monster.com, which has used aggressive marketing to propel itself to the top of the online job search business and continually provide TMP with profitable results.

But it also will have an offline component that lets workers use either a toll-free number or traditional mail to fill out job applications, which then will be uploaded into the JobMatch system.

In addition, Monster said the JobMatch system will "pre-screen" hourly workers by asking specific questions that will enable companies to hire workers more quickly.

The site lists jobs for registered nurses, landscapers, and restaurant and childcare workers, among others.

Harder Times

The economic slowdown has hit Monster hard. Last year, the Maynard, Massachusetts-based company shed some of its workers, and in its most recent earnings report, TMP said fourth-quarter sales for Monster were down about 4 percent from the year before to US$115 million, though the site still generated more than $28 million in profits.

Meanwhile, Monster faces an evolving competitive landscape. In addition to facing off with Yahoo!, which successfully completed its HotJobs takeover last month, Monster is facing a new threat from a nonprofit consortium of some of the country's largest employers, which recently announced the creation of their own job site.