Whenever the leading firm in a category falters it causes great concern for the entire HR community.

With the recent announcement that Monster is laying off 15% (800) of its staff and cutting estimates in a very hot market, you really start to wonder what’s up. Ever since Jeff Taylor’s, and more recently Andrew McKelvey’s departure, it seems that they have lost their culture, their “win at all cost” mantra that made them an exciting place to be and a market leader. In the past they bought companies to keep the momentum alive, promoted a visionary figurehead who created an industry and never left you wondering who was going to rule the world. Although Monster was never really good at technology integration or messaging (other than “feed the monster”) they led the pact in brand, international expansion and vision. While it is too early to judge the new CEO (Salvatore Iannuzzi), the management put in place post Andrew can be faulted for the lack of product innovation, development and vision. Sal has some very large shoes to fill in living up to the cult-like status of Andrew and Jeff.

Here would be my top three priorities if I sat in Sal's shoes:

1)       Show your staff you are committed to bringing back the dynamic culture while still enforcing accountability. I would do this by incenting the internal development team to deliver on two “must have” requirements -
A)       Social networking capabilities, and
B)       New Search - Fix the job search. Get rid of all the non-relevant ads that you have to search before you actually find a job. I do not need a full page on a Sears credit card before I look for a career in customer service. Monster's core product is matching employees and employers, yet when I enter the site I get all these non-relevant ads.

The staff should be compensated based on delivering on time and on budget as well as based on how well these tools adapt to their community and customer satisfaction. Too often Monster has developed products in silos without the involvement of their clients and these products were not well received by the marketplace..

2)       Bring back the fun ads for both consumers and HR people. I love the children ads. These ads truly reflected the culture and creativeness of Monster.

3)       Get my direct reports totally aligned and onboard. In the past two years there have been several changes in all levels of management reporting to the CEO. This team needs to be stabilized and put in charge.

Interesting to see after yesterday's announcement that you have two seasoned veterans buying stock (Steve Pogorzelski and Brad Baker) yet Andrew McKelvy dumping shares. I hope this means that these two executives are committed long term and are still drinking the Kool – Aid … remember, Steve is the person responsible for all that international growth. They need him back in the US market to work his magic.

Meanwhile, the other job boards seem to be gaining traction, funding as well as industry focus. The DICE IPO pegs DICE with last year’s revenue of $87M, losing $22M at a market cap of $750M. With Jobbing, Jobster, Jobfox (old market 10), Ontarget jobs and snagajob closing more than $200M in VC funding, it would appear that many people are after that number 1 job board spot. The funding was evident at this year's SHRM event, where Jobbing had over 120 staff in attendance, the largest booth space booked with booths and party rooms for each individual location they represent. CareerBuilder, Monster and Yahoo also invested heavily at SHRM.