New Job-Hunting Sites Might Be Monster Killers

Monster.com may grow up to be a dinosaur. That was my firstthought upon seeing a new breed of online job sites shaking up therecruitment industry.

Simply Hired and Indeed, upstarts less than a year old, aregetting attention for their Google-like approach to helping peoplefind jobs. They do for job listings what Google does for generalinformation -- crawl or "scrape" listings from thousands of sitesand create a free, searchable index in one spot.

The key difference between these sites and leading job boardsMonster and CareerBuilder is that employers don't pay to be listed.Simply Hired and Indeed base their results on a crawling of the Weband mathematical formulas that attempt to judge the relevance of eachjob opening to a user's query, much as regular search results arepresented on Google. As a result, Indeed (www.indeed.com) and SimplyHired (www.simplyhired.com) offer many more listings than Monster orCareerBuilder -- including some found at those sites, at specialtyrecruiting services and the sites of individual employers.

Indeed is even developing a pay-per-click advertising model thatmimics Google's, including an online auction in which employers andother companies will bid to have their ads displayed alongsideregular search results. In most cases, the paid ads will link back tolistings on an employer's site. Simply Hired wouldn't say exactly howit plans to make money, except that it will use some form of pay-per-qualified lead and pay-per-hire model.

"By and large, employers will foot the bill," said Simply Hiredchief executive Gautam Godhwani. "Over time, we are going to be ableto bring a targeted job seeker over to your Web site or send them toa listing you have anywhere on the Web."

Executives at both sites contend that their approach willcomplement rather than replace the paid listings of Monster andCareerBuilder, which is owned by a group of newspaper chains.

But if Indeed and Simply Hired succeed, they will put pressure onthe big job boards to lower or eliminate their basic listing fees andfind other ways to collect money from employers. After all, if youwere an employer, would you prefer to pay $300 for a listing onMonster, pay nothing to post it on a site like Craigslist, or justdisplay it on your own site? All three routes would produceessentially the same listing in search results on Indeed and SimplyHired.

Google, meanwhile, has declined to disclose any plan it may havefor indexing jobs, but you can bet that the search giant is preparingsome form of recruitment search -- and that will only intensify thesqueeze on paid sites.

The No. 3 recruiting site, Yahoo HotJobs, surprised analysts lastmonth by introducing a job search that for the first time includesfree listings copied from sites across the Web. But to minimize thechance of undercutting its paid listings, HotJobs shows the freebiesat the bottom of its results, below its premium jobs. Moreover,HotJobs doesn't appear to be showing listings from key rivals such asMonster, making it less comprehensive than Indeed and Simply Hired.

That would seem to validate the claims from the upstarts that theyare less employer-centric than the big boards.

"Our whole approach is to put the job seeker first and make theprocess simpler for them," said Paul Forster, chief executive ofIndeed. "It is a different philosophy from the job boards, whichessentially put their clients first because you can only read jobsposted there by their clients."

Recruitment is a huge industry, of course, and the Internet hashad the newspaper industry in a tizzy for years with its steadycannibalization of print classifieds. No wonder the New York TimesCo. joined the consortium that announced an investment of $5 millionin Indeed last week.

There's plenty of other activity in this industry, too, includingthe purchase last month of a similar service called WorkZoo byJobster Inc., a rival Web recruitment service.

Also likely to accelerate the free listing trend will be the debutnext month of an Internet domain suffix that will allow employers topost openings at Web addresses ending in ".jobs" -- GiantFood.jobs,for example, or BestBuy.jobs. The new addresses should make it easierfor applicants to go directly to company sites to see what jobs areopen.

For the most part, industry analysts seem impressed with the newjob search engines, while pointing out that their revenue models areunproven and they still have to prove that they can help job seekersfind their dream jobs.

"There is a point of providing too much information," said GregSterling, an analyst for the Kelsey Group, a consulting firm.

I think he's right. Ironically, what could trip up these sites istheir sheer success, meaning if they collect too many listings in oneplace, they will overwhelm users. I believe that is why some jobhunters already have stopped using Monster in favor of niche jobboards that focus on particular industries.

But a pal who does a great deal of job hunting online tested thenew sites at my request and was impressed. She said she will continueusing them if for no other reason than to find the "occasionalsurprise opportunity."

Those surprises seem to lurk everywhere online, don't they? Andthat's giving Web business strategists fits while putting theestablished Monsters at continued risk of extinction.

Leslie Walker's e-mail address is walkerl@washpost.com.