
Randstad buys Monster for $429M as recruitment consolidation continues - kenbaylor
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/08/randstad-buys-monster-for-429m-as-recruitment-consolidation-continues/
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lpolovets
Random anecdote from the early days of LinkedIn: around 2004 or 2005, I
remember reading a news story where a Monster.com exec was asked if they'd
want to acquire LinkedIn. This is back when LinkedIn only had 1m or 2m members
while Monster was the leader in the job postings space. The exec responded
with something like, "LinkedIn is still very small and unproven, but I suspect
that if they succeed, Monster wouldn't be able to afford them." Interesting to
see that in 2016, Monster got purchased for ~1.5% of LinkedIn's acquisition
value. (In 2004, LinkedIn was probably 1.5% of Monster's value -- if that.)

~~~
ejcx
That sounds like exactly the type of thing you would want to/have to acquire,
right?

I think a good example is Instagram. 1b sounded like a lot, but it now looks
like a grand bargain.

~~~
ben_jones
Doesn't mean they had the capital to do it or that their business strategy /
growth strategy at the time allowed them to do it. Just looking at the
logistics of merging two companies it is completely reasonable that the
experience and talent to make it work (like a few really good office managers)
weren't there.

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mrweasel
Does anyone actually have good experiences using recruitment firms for filling
positions?

Tell Randstad that you'd like a Python/Django developer and they'll throw 20
people at you that all have one thing in common: They don't know Python, nor
Django.

~~~
alicewales
I regularly get cold-emailed by recruiters I've never dealt with for jobs I'm
unqualified to do in locations I'm unwilling to move to. (No, I am not going
to be a PHP dev for a betting outfit in Leeds.)

I bin them, but I suspect there are at least a few people who will go "hey, I
can wing that" and respond depending on their level of desperation.

~~~
nannal
Skybet are still hiring I see

~~~
sofaofthedamned
As a devops guy I get calls for there all the time, as well as some government
agency there.

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douche
Until the other day when I saw Monster mentioned in some random puff piece
about local tech company interns competing in sack races, I had completely
forgotten they existed. They've kind of fallen completely off the map, for a
company that was at one point _the_ jobs board on the internet.

~~~
hoorayimhelping
They have some kind of office off of I-95 in South Carolina or Georgia. I
drove by it earlier this summer, and until I had, I had completely forgotten
about that company as well, despite getting my first job out of college
through them in aught six.

~~~
neuromancer2701
I think it is a call center in Florence, South Carolina.

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pselbert
Working as a Temp through Randstad was my first "professional" job back as a
teen in the nineties. It paid marginally more than working in a restaurant and
was drastically more mind numbing.

The work consisted of tasks like: format the text for every entry in an Access
database manually, physically sort all of the files in hundreds of boxes, or
the Sisyphean job of filing every sheet of paper that came through a fax
machine.

That experience gave me a deep appreciation for Office Space. I've never had
to work in an environment like that anytime since, and just as fortunately,
I've never had to resort to a job search through commodity job sites like
Monster.

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vthallam
This is such a deal for Randstad. Monster is the only brand which has presence
in multiple countries with significant market share. But as aggregators(read
Indeed) grew, the traditional job boards lost the value. Monster has infact
blocked Indeed to index their jobs, but by then Indeed was so big and
powerful.

Also, monster probably because of their size didn't do any innovation in
recruitment space, didn't acquire any company which has new tech, so it was
bound to go down.

~~~
walshemj
Which is whey reed elsiver sold there recruitment arm a while back

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SmellTheGlove
I'm not sure where Monster fits nowadays. Indeed does a pretty good job of
crawling job postings directly, and LinkedIn gets a lot of recruiters as well
as principals. Are Monster/Dice/CareerBuilder just places where recruiters go
when they don't want to pay LinkedIn prices? My impression is that not very
many companies use these sites directly any more.

Interestingly, my zombie monster resume from 10 years ago still gets me the
occasional inquiry for things I used to do 10 years ago.

~~~
jeffmould
I run a couple job boards and we tested doing some backfill from Monster at
one time. The quality of the postings was horrible. Between them and
CareerBuilder we mainly received "work from home", "avon", "mary kay" and "get
rich quick" jobs. We could have filtered further, but then we were left with
only a few valid results. We ended up not using either. It seems over the past
few years they both went for quantity over quality.

Indeed's API sucks compared to some of the others, their payouts to partners
are horrible, but at least they have a good array of jobs.

SimplyHired did a good job, but it seems over the last year they just gave up.
Their partner help was non-existant, and their API was in bad need of an
overhaul, although it was a well-rounded API and allowed some highly specific
niche searches (i.e searching via O*NET codes). Now they are Indeed so that
wiped them out of our arsenal.

We are left with ZipRecruiter, which in my opinion has one of the best teams
to work with. They are not only easy to work with, but super friendly and
knowledgable. Mainly they want to see their partners succeed which is a huge
benefit for everyone involved.

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davidiach
It is only me or is this a really good time to buy tech companies? We had so
many acquisitions lately some of which don't even make that much sense apart
from the low price they where bought for.

~~~
blumentopf
In German industry, there's plenty of angst that incumbents might be displaced
by IT companies. E.g. Apple introduced their watch a bit more than a year ago
and now they're dominating the smartwatch market, traditional swiss
watchmakers can hardly get a foot in this space. So companies are trying to
buy whatever they can afford in the hope of not ending up left behind. Porsche
recently bought a stake in a parking app startup [1]. It all feels a bit like
the dotcom era when so-called "old economy" companies frantically shelled out
money to acquire "new economy" startups. Or like the stage shortly before the
credit crunch in 2007 when dumb German Landesbanks piled subprime papers onto
their balance sheet [2].

[1]
[http://www.intelligentmobilityinsight.com/news/ClB/Porsche-t...](http://www.intelligentmobilityinsight.com/news/ClB/Porsche-
teams-with-parking-app)

[2]
[http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive...](http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/09/03/100172459/index.htm)

~~~
ethbro
To be fair, Swiss watchmakers have a long tradition of sticking their head in
the sand when innovation happens. _cough_ Quartz.

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TorKlingberg
This feels very cheap to me. Monster is a well established brand with many
uses and the monetization path is clear. I suppose Monster is losing to
LinkedIn for higher paid jobs.

~~~
ryporter
Monster's P/E ratio yesterday was around 65. Given that the company is far
from a high-growth startup, that suggests that this deal isn't cheap. (That's
not to say this is a bad deal -- the synergies between online and offline
recruitment make sense.)

~~~
martinald
Pretty crazy that such a well know brand still, after all this time, is not
making great profits.

I would have guessed that monster was a massive unicorn spinning out loads of
cash in the fees they charge recruiters, turns out they're not at all.

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atombath
I think we have to thank Monster for the current dismal state of
recruitment... so I hope this acquisition along with the others causes some
shake-up. I can understand the concerns of companies that are unsure about a
market so they shop out to recruiters, but it simply doesn't work for anyone.
I'm just as tired as everyone else getting those emails like "I noticed your
skills in Visual Studio and thought you'd be a great fit!"

Uploaded my resume last night. 10 emails + 12 calls so far(despite that I
removed my phone number... but it's cached somewhere =/) and you guessed it,
at least two thirds are terrible technology matches. I reiterate, thanks for
creating this Monster of a recruitment process.

~~~
withdavidli
> I can understand the concerns of companies that are unsure about a market so
> they shop out to recruiters, but it simply doesn't work for anyone.

I worked for an RPO (outsourced recruiting with access to internal systems and
hiring managers). Maybe not work for everyone, but that's really dependent on
the recruiter reaching out and the experience they initiate. Made plenty of
hires, multiple teams did better than their internal recruiters.

>despite that I removed my phone number... but it's cached somewhere =/

What likely happened here is they are using a another product outside of
Monster itself, like Avature CRM. They have your past info on file. As soon as
you updated your resume you show up on their filter (ex. only resumes updated
within last 7 days), they matched your email address and combine your profile
so they have your phone number as well.

Also, if you're being messaged for experience that are years to decades old.
You can just leave those as generic titles and only have details with most
recent work. Say you'll provide more details if requested. This will limit
search terms for what you come up for.

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winteriscoming
The article talks about around 50K employers registered on these job portals,
as a metric. Bit surprised since I always thought the number of potential
employees was a more valuable metric. Don't see that number being mentioned in
their comparison with other such portals.

~~~
10dpd
I'd imagine job sites are like dating sites - churn is built in by definition
as users achieve their goals.

~~~
noer
Well, they're both marketplace businesses. Churn is built in for the non-
revenue side, but for this kind of marketplace, chrun is only built in on one
side. The goal is most likely for Employers to continue to provide revenue
month after month.

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losteverything
Where does one go for a non-tech job nowadays. Part time low or unskilled. Or
ft like a vet assistant, laborer (eg construction), medical biller, etc

~~~
alicewales
Indeed.com (or its national variants) seems to be the place a lot of these
kinds of employer advertise.

~~~
losteverything
TY. Stupid q. Searched my area and found lots of listings. 1 do employers know
they are on indeed? And 2 how does indeed get listings? Sorry for the real
basic level.

~~~
simonbw
In general indeed gets its listings by aggregating them from across the web.
They also have a lot of people post directly on their site. They also have the
Job Spotter app that gives rewards to people to find and upload pictures of
"Help Wanted" signs.

[https://jobspotter.indeed.com/](https://jobspotter.indeed.com/)

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vadym909
I think it's becoming clear that job boards have failed as model. Simplyhired,
now Monster. I think employers are tired of posting jobs or scouring the
resume databases have realized it might make sense to just outsource the whole
recruiting thing. Which is why Indeed is now owned by Recruit a Japanese
staffing firm and Monster by Randstad. That leaves Adecco to pick up
Careerbuilder.

~~~
dave_sullivan
What's the going rate on recruiters these days though? 20% of first year
salary? I'd rather use it for a 20% pay bump to get a particularly good
candidate. Hell, real estate agents sell a HOUSE and only get 3%.

Recruiters make a series of phone calls and they're supposed to get 20-40k,
while I go to work? It's a great business though, I would know, I've worked
for/at/with a couple midsized recruiting firms, they make a lot of money.

~~~
vadym909
Companies won't give you the 20% pay bump if you approached them yourself.

Its a good deal for the company because they outsource the risk of hiring a
recruiter fulltime and not finding a candidate.

Some recruiting agencies make a lot of money but many go under. Companies pay
a recruiting agency only if the agency found them the candidate. With lots of
agencies competing, the fee is not certain. The good sourcers/recruiters
definitely find it more profitable to work on their own.

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liquidcool
I've never advertised on Monster, but if you're a recruiting agency, wouldn't
you think twice about doing so now that it's owned by a competitor?

This is the same reason Pepsi spun off YUM brands. Coke converted Pepsi
restaurant customers by asking how they felt about giving money to KFC, Taco
Bell, and Pizza Hut.

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b34r
I'm extremely surprised Monster is worth more than 50M max.

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drcross
As an aside, I'm looking for a job at the moment and linked-in is fucking
terrible at the moment. I can't stand recruiters posting all their "forwards
from grandma" memes flooding my news feed and I don't know how to separate the
wheat from the chaff.

~~~
mkohlmyr
I deleted my account a long time ago. It simply isn't useful to most people
any more.

LinkedIn is 1) a target for recruiters with a spray and pray strategy 2) a
crm/lead gen tool for sales people

The amount of spam (I work in email marketing tech, I know these emails work,
but let's call a spade a spade) in my inbox went down considerably as a
result.

~~~
0xmohit
Odd that the amount of spam reduced. I've seen instances where individuals
weren't even able to delete their accounts. Sounds funny, but it goes like:
(1) you delete your account, (2) you receive a message from LinkedIn, (3) you
think that the account isn't deleted and login to delete. Voila, you nullified
what you did in (1)!

The following is true:

[https://twitter.com/darylginn/status/590664399041519617](https://twitter.com/darylginn/status/590664399041519617)

~~~
mkohlmyr
Oh it was definitely a "process" deleting the account. But the sheer amount of
emails they send is a travesty. I honestly can't believe they haven't hit the
point of diminishing returns yet. I suppose because people view linked in as a
must there are virtually no consequences for them. Unless people start
deleting their accounts. I highly recommend it.

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NTripleOne
Monster jobs, not monster energy.

I was very confused at first glance.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Monster jobs was around wayyy before the energy drink

~~~
hellweaver666
I thought this was about Monster cables!

~~~
zeveb
I honestly thought it was about Monster Cables at first, because I've never
heard of Randstad & the name sounds like it could be a high-end audiophile
brand.

