What a Difference a Year Makes

Consider the Monster Board. The largest job search/career advertising site on the planet is the first or second stop on the Internet for most job hunters and fast becoming the site of choice for on-line career advertising. Although not the best in terms of functionality of their database Monster offers very good screening tools for employers and has improved their database search capabilities greatly. It still doesn't have the search capability of Workopolis (Canada's big job board) but they are improving.

The numbers are improving as well. Monster's lastest financial news is decidely better than what it has been:

Monster Worldwide (Nasdaq: MNST) padded its resume after posting a 75% spike in second-quarter earnings. That $0.14 a share showing is commendable given that back in April the company had projected the bottom line to come in at $0.12 or better. This is better. A lot better. The job site leader also grew its revenues by 26% during the period to hit $209.4 million.

Not only that investment site Motley Fool feels that Monster is taking on the look of another internet category killer:

eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) in a similar scalable model where size matters. Just as auction buyers flock to where the sellers are (and vice versa) the same can be said of personnel recruiters and job hunters.

Contrast that to a year ago when Monster wasn't so .. monstrous, at least from a financial perspective. In fact a Fortune Magazine article at the time was downright dour on Monster overall.

Calling Monster one of the one of the stranger corporate ducks you'll ever come across Fortune listed a plethora of problems facing the company.

One complaint? Unlike eBay, whose hold on the online auction business seems nearly impregnable, Monster is under assault from toughened competitors.

Gee what a difference a year makes!

Read more at Motley Fool and Fortune (A lot of stuff is subscription only at Fortune - this one didn't seem so you should be able to read it).

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