Catherwood LibraryILR School

Last night Monster.com and HotJobs.com continued their 4-year old practice of competing for business through expensive Super Bowl advertisements, in an employment environment in which employers and employees have become increasingly comfortable with online job posting and searching. Since the industry first surfaced in the 1990's, online recruiting has matured from a market characterized by hordes of small competitors struggling to survive, to a market in which the two dominant companies battle for market share while holding off a pack of new start-ups. Along the way, many of the smaller companies have folded or been absorbed by larger competitors---leading to increased Federal Trade Commission scrutiny of the industry leaders, and customers have developed more realistic expectations than the initial assumptions of guaranteed jobs.