Jeff Taylor is a monster. Nothing remarkable in that. Corporate jungles have their own monsters, midgets, and moguls. Only, in Taylor's case it is official. He is the founder and 'Chief Monster' of Monster.com (now Monster, part of Monster Worldwide). Monster is today the tenth most populated website in the world and the global leader in the online recruitment space. From 40 clients, 200 jobs, and five employees in 1993, the company has grown to 2,600-odd employees, who sell the company's 42-million-plus resumes in 12 different languages across 24 countries to some 500,000 clients (read: companies) today.

Monster's founder and CEO for well over 10 years, Taylor talks to BT's Sudarshana Banerjee about Monster's monstrous growth, why a green ogre with a yellow trumpet was chosen as corporate logo, plans for Monster India, hot jobs, recovery of the US employment market, and on a personal note, how he beat the *&$# out of Richard Branson.

How did you start Monster.com?

If I had gone back to sleep that December night, there would have been no Monster! I used to run a recruitment ad agency called Adion those days. One day, a client said, "Hey no more big ideas, we want a monster idea." I woke up in the middle of that night with vague dreams of a Monster Board, where we could, instead of getting the paltry 15 per cent agency commission, become publishers ourselves, and get to keep all the money.

One hardly remember dreams and ideas that come in sleep the morning after, so I went to a coffee shop, sat there for five hours, and designed the user interface of Monster as you see it today.

'Monster.com' and corporate logo that depicts a green monster playing a yellow trumpet-how did you make the branding work?

I drew a circle with two horns and a smile at the coffee shop that was to be our logo. It was a happy monster. One of our senior designers later sketched it in colours. But the name and logo had very few evangelists to begin with. My employees did not like it, my customers did not like it, my wife hated it. But I had seen my kids play with dinosaur models. They loved it.

We had to convince people we were not building a Frankenstein (monster). Nor were we what you found under the bed. We just had this big, a really big database that just had to capture the imagination and attention of job seekers. And it did.

How much venture capital did you go in for? What is the Monster business model like?

We started up with money made from Adion in '93. A major milestone and fresh resources came in 1995 when Monster was sold to TMP Worldwide. TMP Interactive was set up and its number one product was Monster. Then TMP Worldwide went public in 1996. We trimmed the brand to Monster from Monster.com around this time. In fact, today, apart from US, the only other subsidiary using a .com extension is India.

Other than the name, there has been very little change in the behaviour or proposition of the Monster business model over the 10 years of our existence. Employers for hundred years have been paying for posting jobs and they have been paying for quality. Jobseekers have always built resumes and applied for employment. What we have revolutionised is the distribution, and the way you publish jobs. Most companies today post for jobs online; some companies only post for jobs online. More and more jobseekers have access to the internet. Online applications are growing by the day.

There's this intriguing thing called 'feeding the Monster' that is part of your business model. What exactly does that involve?

Monster is the flagship brand of Monster Worldwide. It has the directional marketing division-the largest yellow page agency in the world with roughly 25 per cent marketshare. There is the advertising and marketing division that deals with recruitment advertisements and CMR (customer managed resources). There is Monster Moving, an online marketplace for relocation information, services- and moving-related support tools. Then there is Monster Hourly and Skilled.

What typically happens is, online businesses are an afterthought with a well-established brick and mortar existence. But with us, the online business is the primary source of revenue and by far the most profitable. Monster's presence in other countries follows Monster Worldwide's footprints. In Japan, we already have the yellow pages business, and Monster is setting shop soon.

What about profitability?

Monster has been making profits for the last six years, irrespective of the dotcom boom and then the bust. Before the recession we had 22 to 25 per cent profitability. We are back to over 20 per cent profitability now.

Last year seems to have been one of acquisitions and partnerships. Monster took over Military.com and Jobpilot, apart from acquiring Jobsahead (in India). You also tied up with Community Connect.

Jobpilot was the leading online recruitment portal in Germany. We have added new geographies with this acquisition-Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Austria. With Military.com, we have entered the military recruitment space. What is important strategically for us is that besides offering civilians avenues to join the military we help the ex-military-army, navy, air force, marine corps, coast guards-to find jobs.

We also bought Tickle.com. Tickle offers IQ, interpersonal and personality quizzes. It tells you which Hollywood character you resemble most, or which canine breed shares your personality trait. It is a fun site and is among the Top 25 in Media Metrix lists. Now, the serious part about Tickle is the revenues it generates from career and IQ tests.

The partnership with a diversity site like CCI, which runs Black Planet, Asian Avenue, and MiGente, means Monster is addressing the minority ethnic markets-Hispanics or African Americans.

But last year also had its share of bad luck. You fired 1,000 people and exited 50 offices.

We downsized 25 per cent of Monster. Most companies got smaller during the recession of 2001-2003; ditto us. We are back to full strength now though.

What is the road ahead for Monster India, especially now that it has acquired Jobsahead?

...to adopt some of Jobsahead's best practices. It works with more recruiters than Monster does and we hope to introduce new services specific to recruiters. Healthcare and pharma will also be thrust areas.

Around 35 to 40 per cent of our resumes in India are in the IT space. We want to expand value added services to the ITEs space now. A difficult proposition, as the nature of the industry demands huge feeds of resumes, and there is very little value we can add to that. How does one for example determine oral communication skills from a CV?

When we looked at India four years ago, the positioning we had in mind was a premium Indian job site for Indians, as opposed to a brain-drain portal. We stick to that.

How important is India in your monstrosity map?

Very important. India generates the highest revenue for Monster in Asia. We have a 20 per cent quarter on quarter growth here, and a profitable business. There are more than 100,000 jobs in Monsterindia. We reach 5.5 million visitors here, and like in the States the average person visits Monster thrice a month. We are beginning to invest in Asia, and India is the cornerstone of our efforts in Asia.

Talking of job markets, how close is US in solving the 'jobless recovery' paradox?

I think the employment situation is US is really positive now after two-and-a-half, three years of negative numbers and job losses month over month. We are seeing dramatic job increases across all geographies in the US, across all industries. In the last four months, we have created almost a million jobs.

The Monster Employment Index tracks online job postings. If you look at the numbers based on the Index of 100 between January to June-102, 107, 109, 125, 128, and 136-you will see big jumps between March and April, and between May and June.

What does your role as Chief Monster involve? And why er... the Chief Monster?

Over 10 years I have been President, CEO, Chairman... and now Chief Monster. Some months ago, Monster's parent company TMP Worldwide decided to rechristen itself as Monster Worldwide. My assistant is known as the Head Diva, and I was called the Chief Monster, so I thought why not make this official.

My current role is less operations and is more strategy and marketing. Much of my time is now spend outside, in Wall Street, speaking in different forums, and acting as a brand ambassador.

There is Jeff Taylor the monster. How is Jeff Taylor the man?

I am house music DJ Jeff Tale. I play a couple of nights at different nightclubs in Boston-and am coming up with a compilation. I collect Shelby Mustang cars. At any given time I have 12 to 13 of these cars, and five full-time guys to look after them. I wrote a book called Monster Career published by Penguin this year. I also hold the world record for blimp skiing. I water-skied 3.3 miles behind the Monster.com blimp, upsetting Virgin CEO Richard Branson's 1.5-mile record. Okay, I will say it, I beat the *&$# out of him!