History
Early years
Monster.com was founded when Jeff Taylor, the owner of human resources company Adion, contracted Net Daemons Associates to develop a facility whereby job seekers could search a job database with a web browser.
Initially the site, which went live in April 1994, was populated with job descriptions from the newspaper segment of Adion's business.
However, in 1996, The Monster Board issued a press release that was widely picked up and drove more people to the site. The Monster Board became the first public job search website on the internet and the first to have job search agents or job alerts.
Adion was subsequently acquired by TMP Worldwide, which went public in December 1996, with its shares traded on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “TMPW”.
In 1999, The Monster Board merged with Online Career Center to become Monster.com and TMP Worldwide was added to S&P 500 Index in 2002.
TMP Worldwide changed its corporate name to Monster Worldwide, Inc. and began trading under the new NASDAQ ticker symbol "MWW" in 2003.
Growth
Throughout the years, Monster.com expanded its services, acquired other companies and launched additional websites:
- recognising that job hunting often leads to relocation, Monster launched Monstermoving.com in 2000 to provide resources to assist users with a successful move;
- in April 2002, Monster purchased the Jobs.com URL and trademark for $800,000[3] and, in May 2007,[4] Monster launched its first mobile services;[5]
- in January 2008, Monster acquired Affinity Labs for US$61 million[6] and, in July 2008,[7] it acquired Trovix, a semantic job search engine, for US$72.5 million; and
- in February 2010, it was announced that Monster would acquire its rival, HotJobs, from Yahoo! for $225 million, which resulted in HotJobs being shut down in favor of Monster.com, and Yahoo and Monster establishing a traffic-sharing agreement.[8]
Decline and challenges
In August 2005, founder Jeff Taylor left Monster to create Eons.com.
A year and half later in April 2007, Sal Iannuzzi was named as Monster chairman and CEO.[9] In 2011, the company's stock was rated the worst-performing stock of the year[10] and the same year, Monster relocated to Weston, MA ending a 15-year stay in Maynard.
On November 4, 2014, Iannuzzi's tenure as CEO ended. During his time at the company's helm, its stock value declined by over 90% and it lost 93% of its market capitalization, falling from US$5.5bn when he was named CEO to under $400M when he departed.[11]
Shares of Monster.com jumped 12% in pre-market trading with the announcement of his departure.[12]
Acquisition
On June 8, 2016, Monster.com announced its acquisition of San Francisco-based start-up Jobr, a job-finding app the company described as a Tinder (app) for jobs.[13]
Two months later, on August 9, 2016, Monster was acquired by Randstad Holding, a multinational human resources and recruitment specialist, for $429 million in cash.[14] Following completion of the transaction, its shares were delisted from the NYSE.
In January 2018, Quess Corp bought the company's business in India, SE Asia and the Middle East,[15] and, in November 2022, Monster APAC & ME (a subsidiary of Quess Corp) announced that the business was changing its name to Foundit, and that the website would become a talent management platform in the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East regions.[16][17]
Criticism
Cyber attacks
Monster has faced several instances of personal information theft.
In less than two weeks in August 2007, Monster had numerous leaks that resulted in the loss of millions of customers' data to identity theft.[18][19] Monster waited several days to announce this leak, a delay that drew heavy criticism. They subsequently announced new security measures.
In January 2009, there was another large-scale leak at its UK-based site monster.co.uk,[20] in which demographic information of up to 4.5 million people was obtained by hackers.[21]
Stock option grants backdating scandal
In July 2006, the company announced that it might restate financial results for the year ending December 31, 2005 and previous years to record additional non-cash charges for stock-based compensation expenses relating to various stock option grants.[22] In October 25, 2006, the company said that it found pricing problems in a "substantial number" of its past option grants and, as a result, it expected to restate its results from 1997 through 2005.[23]
In September 2006, Monster suspended Myron Olesnyckyj, the company's lead lawyer, pending the internal review of irregular stock option grants.[22] Olesnyckyj had held the titles of senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary.[23] In a statement, the company said Olesnyckyj was terminated "for cause."[23] Andrew J. McKelvey also resigned his posts as chairman and chief executive, although he retained his seat on the board as chairman emeritus.[23]
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York issued a subpoena to the company over options backdating, and a special committee of company directors planned to complete its own investigation by the end of the year.
The company delayed filing its earnings results for the second and third quarters for 2006. Second-quarter results were expected December 13. Third-quarter numbers were to be issued "as soon as practicable," according to a November 7 statement from the company.[23]
In 2006, Monster Worldwide, Inc. received a notice from Nasdaq about a possible delisting of its shares due to the company's failure to file its third-quarter earnings report.[24] However, the delisting did not occur.
