Direct tech hiring may be a little soft today, but staffing firms are powering the recruiting market, looking to fill orders for temp and project workers that employers need, but are hesitant to bring on permanently.

“Staffing firms in the technology space are definitely very active today,” said Scot Melland, chairman, CEO and president of Dice Holdings, “and they’re seeing their businesses do pretty well.”

Speaking to financial analysts during a Q1 conference call this morning, Melland said, “Companies are still leaning towards outsourcing talents to contractors, as well as staffing firms, rather than hiring full time.” (more…)

If Dice Holdings is any kind of bellwether, Q1 is looking like it got off to a slow start for the publicly held job boards. The company reported this morning it earned 12 cents a share on $50.4 million of revenue, which put it mostly in line with what Wall Street was expecting and what the company predicted in January.

However, that was down a penny per share from the same quarter last year, and the analyst estimates were lowered after Dice issued a forecast below what Wall Street was looking for. The other indicator of a general job board slowdown is that most of the $4.3 million increase in revenue comes from the company’s acquisition of Slashdot last year. Taking that out of the equation, Dice Holdings grew organically by $300,000, and the tech and security sector saw a 2 percent increase. (more…)

TheLadders is being sued in New York federal court in a class-action consumer lawsuit alleging that for years it falsely claimed it offered only high-paying jobs.

Brought by an Arkansas woman representing perhaps as many as a million customers of the job board, the suit says:

From its inception until September, 2011, TheLadders scammed its customers into paying for its job board service by misrepresenting itself to be ‘a premium job site for only $100k+ jobs, and only $100k+ talent.’ In fact, TheLadders sold access to purported ‘$100k+’ job listings that (1) did not exist, (2) did not pay $100k+, and/or (3) were not authorized to be posted on TheLadders by the employers.

According to the suit, many of the jobs offered on TheLadders were scrapped from other sites with no attempt at verifying how much they paid or even if they were current.

The suit, filed yesterday by the New York class action firm of Bursor & Fisher, was reported by recruiting consultant and blogger Nick Corcodilos. He’s posted a copy of the lawsuit here.

TheLadders issued this statement in response to news of the suite:

We just learned about this yesterday afternoon, and have put it in the hands of our counsel to resolve. We remain steadfast in our commitment to providing the best job-matching service, while serving as the fastest-growing source for professional jobs. In fact, we’re focused on migrating our members to our new online experience, featuring Scout, by April 1, as well as launching our free native iOS app. We continue to be a free resource for recruiters and employers to help them find the right person for the right job.

Five specific counts are alleged in the class action suit: (more…)

In the movie “The Matrix” there’s a scene where Laurence Fishburne says to Keanu Reeves, “The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work … when you go to church … when you pay your taxes.”

That’s basically the premise of big data, where the potential in recruiting is in getting good candidates to respond. (more…)

The long-standing legal dispute over the establishment of job boards using the SHRM-sponsored .jobs Internet address has been resolved in favor of the job boards.

This means that the 40,000 site Universe.jobs network, run by DirectEmployers Association, will continue to operate, and can even expand if it chooses. Other job boards now will also be able to use that Internet domain, an extension just like the more familiar .com, .org, and .net. A new round of address issuance is scheduled to open in January.

Industry analyst Kevin Murphy called the decision by the Internet’s addressing authority — the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — “opening the floodgates for third-party job listings services.”

ICANN, which issued a breach of contract notice in February 2011 over how the .jobs addresses were being used, did not explain its decision. Nor, for that matter, has it as yet posted any official notice of its decision. Instead, it posted the request to end the legal proceedings sent to an international arbitration group by registrar Employ Media. An ICANN spokesman called to say additional details were unavailable today, but there may be some tomorrow. (more…)

Propelled by its flagship tech site, Dice Holdings this morning delivered a financial report so strong it sent the company’s stock up 12 percent.

The company, the first of the publicly traded career sites to report, said it earned 17 cents per diluted share. That beat Wall Street’s average estimate of 12 cents. Dice also reported revenue of $48 million, an increase of 2.6 percent over the same quarter last year and a million more than analysts were expecting.

CareerBuilder, which is privately held, voluntarily reported revenue of $169 million from its operations in North America. That’s a 5 percent increase over the third quarter of 2011. The company doesn’t release other revenue numbers or earnings. LinkedIn will report on Nov. 1.

Monster, curiously, has yet to set a date for release of its numbers. Typically, the company would have done that by now. It also would typically report its numbers this week. There were rumors of a possible sale to (among others) the German media company Axel Springer. The company denied the reports this week.

Dice Holdings, meanwhile, is looking ahead to a strong finish to the year, and product improvements and growth next year.

“We liked the third quarter because of the strategic moves we made,” said Scot Melland, Dice chairman, president and CEO. Speaking with me hours after conducting a conference call with investment analysts, Melland credited a strong IT hiring market and a booming energy sector for the company’s financial performance.

But Melland, who said he hadn’t checked the company’s stock price before we spoke, seemed most excited by the September acquisition of the highly trafficked tech news, discussion, and open source code sites Slashdot, SourceForge, and Freecode. Dice paid $20 million for the three.

As the sites become integrated with the job postings and other career services on Dice.com, recruiters will gain direct access to the tens of millions of tech visitors who frequent the sites each month. Melland said the acquisitions will give recruiters much broader exposure for their brands and open jobs “hitting that passive tech worker … during their work day.”

While Slashdot gets about 60 percent of its 4 million monthly visitors from North America, Sourceforge, Melland said, gets 80 percent of its 40 million visitors from the rest of the world.

They will serve, he said, as a “launching pad” for broadening Dice’s reach outside the U.S. and Canada. That’s coming next year, Melland said, first with English language sites intended for global companies hiring for their in-country operations. Later, native language sites may follow.

It also won’t be long, he said, before the company unveils new features and upgrades to its existing jobs platform. I couldn’t coax even a hint out of him about what these might be. All he would say is they will help make Dice “an even more efficient way to reach” talent across its multiple sites.

The only financial disappointment came from the company’s  eFinancialCareers sites. They primarily serve Europe, which is still struggling with budget deficits, high unemployment, and related ills. The financial sites were off 20 percent in the third quarter over the same quarter last year.

Melland was hesitant about predicting when conditions there might turnaround. Still, with tech hiring continuing to grow, and demand for oil and gas workers exceeding the available talent in much of the U.S. and other parts of the world, Dice Holdings told Wall Street it expected to earn about $8.7 million in the current quarter and $37.6 million for the year on revenue of $51.4 million and $194 million. Both the fourth quarter and full-year estimates are ahead of what analysts are predicting.

Propelled by its flagship tech site, Dice Holdings this morning delivered a financial report so strong it sent the company’s stock up 12 percent.

The company, the first of the publicly traded career sites to report, said it earned 17 cents per diluted share. That beat Wall Street’s average estimate of 12 cents. Dice also reported revenue of $48 million, an increase of 2.6 percent over the same quarter last year and a million more than analysts were expecting.

CareerBuilder, which is privately held, voluntarily reported revenue of $169 million from its operations in North America. That’s a 5 percent increase over the 3rd quarter of 2011. The company doesn’t release other revenue numbers or earnings. LinkedIn will report on Nov. 1.

Monster, curiously,  has yet to set a date for release of its numbers. Typically, the company would have done that by now. It also would typically report its numbers this week. There were rumors of a possible sale to (among others) the German media company Axel Springer. The company denied the reports this week.

Dice Holdings, meanwhile, is looking ahead to a strong finish to the year, and product improvements and growth next year.

“We liked the third quarter because of the strategic moves we made,” said Scot Melland, Dice chairman, president and CEO. Speaking with me hours after conducting a conference call with investment analysts, Melland credited a strong IT hiring market and a booming energy sector for the company’s financial performance.

But Melland, who said he hadn’t checked the company’s stock price before we spoke, seemed most excited by the September acquisition of the highly trafficked tech news, discussion, and open source code sites Slashdot, SourceForge, and Freecode. Dice paid $20 million for the three.

As the sites become integrated with the job postings and other career services on Dice.com, recruiters will gain direct access to the tens of millions of tech visitors who  frequent the sites each month. Melland said the acquisitions will give recruiters much broader exposure for their brands and open jobs “hitting that passive tech worker… during their work day.”

While Slashdot gets about 60 percent of its 4 million monthly visitors from North America, Sourceforge, Melland said, gets 80 percent of its 40 million visitors from the rest of the world.

They will serve, he said, as a “launching pad” for broadening Dice’s reach outside the U.S. and Canada. That’s coming next year, Melland said, first with English language sites intended for global companies hiring for their in-country operations. Later, native language sites may follow.

It also won’t be long, he said, before the company unveils new features and upgrades to its existing jobs platform. I couldn’t coax even a hint out of him about what these might be. All he would say is they will help make Dice “an even more efficient way to reach” talent across its multiple sites.

The only financial disappointment came from the company’s  eFinancialCareers sites. They primarily serve Europe, which is still struggling with budget deficits, high unemployment, and related ills. The financial sites were off 20 percent in the third quarter over the same quarter last year.

Melland was hesitant about predicting when conditions there might turnaround. Still, with tech hiring continuing to grow, and demand for oil and gas workers exceeding the available talent in much of the U.S. and other parts of the world, Dice Holdings told Wall Street it expected to earn about $8.7 million in the current quarter and $37.6 million for the year on revenue of $51.4 million and $194 million. Both the 4th quarter and full year estimates are ahead of what analysts are predicting.

Down on the day. Up on the evening. If they’re not drinking champagne at LinkedIn HQ they should be. Not only did the company meet the optimistic 16-cent-a-share earnings estimate of Wall Street, it blew through the revenue guess, beating the $216 million estimate by a cool $12.5 million.

Net profit was lower than last year’s second quarter, because the company is spending at a faster pace as it aggressively grows domestically and especially abroad. Sales and marketing was the fastest growing expense category, more than doubling in cost.

But that spending, company officials say, is powering the expansion of the client base, which increased by some 1,600 customers during the second quarter, and prompted them to raise both their revenue and earnings expectations for the current quarter and the full year.

Now, LinkedIn says it will bring in between $235 million and $240 million in the 3rd quarter and $915-$925 million for the year. That puts it on track to meet, or even surpass Monster’s full-year revenue. (Monster reported a lackluster second quarter, and cautioned this morning that the third quarter would be below last year’s.)

LinkedIn’s report released minutes after the market closed today sent shares of the already pricey LinkedIn stock up 7.5 percent in after hours trading The stock not only regained the $2.13 per share it lost during the day, but has picked up another $4.84 as this is being written. LinkedIn stock is now selling at just over $100 a share.

CEO Jeff Weiner, in an almost laughable understatement, opened the conference call with analysts and investors this afternoon, saying the company’s second quarter was, “A strong one.”

Indeed it was. LinkedIn reported earning 16 cents a share on $228.21 million in revenue. That 89 percent increase over the same quarter in 2011 was eclipsed by the doubling of recruitment revenue, which went from $58.5 million in Q2 of 2011 to $121.6 million this year.

Recruitment sales now include a larger number of products, and have bigger dollars attached. The company, Weiner said, is “taking a larger and larger share of budget.” Churn, a measure of satisfaction, is at near lows.

Those metrics would make any investor jump. But wait, there was more. Weiner said LinkedIn continues to add new users at about the same two-person-a-second pace as it did in the first quarter of the year. Registered members now number 174 million, and they are increasingly joining via mobile devices.

Monthly unique visitors are also up, and now average 106 million; combined with the numbers from its SlideShare acquisition, LinkedIn is now the 26th most visited site in the world, Weiner reported. And 23 percent of those uniques come via portable device.

A test is underway now of a mobile ad delivery program, Weiner said, that is showing signs of success. In addition, he said, echoing comments by CFO Steve Sordello, LinkedIn’s redesigned homepage is increasing pageview count and user engagement, particularly as more content and more precisely tailored content is delivered to users.

The early June hack caused LinkedIn to disable the six million passwords that were accessed, Weiner said. Additional security measures were also taken, though the cost, he told an analyst who asked, was relatively small.

Even Monster’s CEO had a hard time finding much to be optimistic about in the company’s 2nd quarter performance.

There’s some improvement in bookings in North America; Power Resume Search, with its premium pricing is beginning to gain some traction in Europe; and the big Kforce deal is the first of several in the admittedly slow process of being forged with staffing companies.

Potential, however, doesn’t trump results, and the numbers for Monster’s last quarter were not entirely what Wall Street was expecting. The company reported earning 6 cents a share after adjustments, in line with predictions. But revenue was $237 million, some $6 million below the average of analysts’ estimates of $243.3 million.

(CareerBuilder, a privately held company, said its North American revenue was $160 million, up 6.7 percent over the same quarter last year. The company doesn’t release other revenue numbers, nor does it publicly report expenses or earnings.)

Monster officials cautioned a few months back that the business was softening along with the global economic conditions, and downsized expectations for both revenue and earnings. Revenue for the quarter came in at the low end of their estimates, while the per-share earnings were in the middle.

Despite that, the stock was hit hard as soon as trading began on Wall Street with shares plunging by more than a dollar to $6.00.

Traders were not buoyed by some of the positive developments, including an increase of 14 percent in North American bookings, with the company’s newer products — 6Sense (the Power Resume Search) and SeeMore (a cloud-based app using 6Sense search — increasing their share. Instead, it was a reaction to both the 2nd quarter results as well as new warnings from the company about the current quarter.

Monster is expecting its third quarter to be down 6 to 12 percent from the same quarter last year. Earnings per share are estimated in the range of 2 to 7 cents, well below last year’s 13 cents.

“The global business environment continues to be weak,” Sal Iannuzzi told analysts during a morning conference call before the New York markets opened. Iannuzzi, Monster’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, said the company’s performance was consistent with the changes in the global economy, which are now affecting more of Europe, including Germany, and Asia Pacific. The weakness in these markets, he said, will continue throughout the third quarter.

Nevertheless, he said the company has now deployed its 6Sense search technology more broadly, and is seeing interest from Europe, though it’s muted by the spreading economic slowdown there. In the United Kingdom and France, where the 6Sense platform has been available for more than a year, adoption is strong, in the range of 50 percent, Iannuzzi said. Elsewhere in Europe, where the availability is more recent, adoption is under 25 percent.

The large staffing companies are showing a greater interest in 6Sense, which makes resume searching quicker and more efficient since it’s a far more sophisticated method than traditional keyword and field range searching. Iannuzzi said companies that have beta-tested 6Sense have been impressed enough to begin discussing terms and deployment. But, in response to an analyst’s question, he acknowledged that new technology sales take more time. When deals will be closed, he said, “would be a hot in the dark.”

LinkedIn, which is expected to report strong sales and earnings, will release its second quarter numbers this afternoon, following the close of the market.

Monster is having problems. A slumping stock price. Confusion in the boardroom. A publicly stated desire to sell itself. All this despite the fact that the company has an impressive client list, continues to launch new products and services (BeKnown, 6Sense, SeeMore), and employs many bright and capable people.

So the other day, I began wondering: what might happen if Monster vanished? No sale, no resurgence in health — just an ever-increasing death spiral that left the company bankrupt and unable to compete. Yes, I realize this is extremely unlikely. b=But it’s interesting to contemplate, nonetheless.

First, some numbers.

Not numbers to shake the world — but the company has been around for a while, and it gets progressively harder to grow the bigger you become.

However … what might happen if Monster went the way of Pets.com or eToys? Let us consider:

• A $1 billion ‘hole of opportunity’ would open in the job board world. I suspect that Indeed, LinkedIn, and CareerBuilder would battle hard to fill it.
• Thousands of clients would have portions of their recruiting budget “freed up.” Many of them would use the opportunity to experiment with other sites and techniques. (And some would bank the savings, only to discover later that they are a few candidates short of their goal).
• The industry would be flooded with talented but unemployed former Monster employees. Some would no doubt start their own businesses. This could result in even more growth in the industry.
• There would be acquisitions and confusion in the non-U.S. markets where Monster is strongest as indigenous companies (and new players) fight to come out on top.
• There would be empty real estate in Maynard, Massachusetts.
• There would be a significant uptick in “job-boards-are-dying” opinion pieces.
• Key technology (such as 6Sense) would be acquired by competitors or perhaps even a job board software company.
• Many stockholders would be very unhappy. 
• It would become much more difficult for any job board company to go public or attract venture funding. (Correspondingly, this might signal the death knell of the term “job board,” at least as far as those seeking funding are concerned).

I don’t think it will happen. What do you think? What other changes did I miss?