Sanjay Modi joined Monster in 2001 and has a rich experience of 20 years. Before joining Monster in 2001, Modi served at Indiaconstruction.com as the General Manager of operations, and in business roles at NIIT and Ingersoll Rand (India). Sanjay’s entrepreneurship has helped Monster in India to expand in rural markets by conceptualizing RozgarDuniya.com along with ITC eChoupal, connecting rural India to the main stream. In an exclusive interview with India Digital Review, Modi discusses the growth story of Monster India and the way forward.

What are your priorities as the Managing Director of Monster India this year?

Monster.com India has successfully established itself as a leader in the online career and e-recruitment space with a registered jobseeker base of 30 million, offices across 13 cities. Being closely associated with company over the last decade and gradually steering the Monster brand in India, my professional journey in Monster.com has been exciting.

Leveraging Monster’s global footprint along with a focused India centric growth strategy, last year Monster.com launched a slew of initiatives to empower jobseekers and employers. We launched Monster College to simplify campus recruitment, Return2Home to tap the vast non-resident population based abroad with ambitions of returning to their origins. We announced collaboration with VSkills to increase employability via vocational training, and providing candidates/job seekers with relevant qualifications and launched Monster Talent Management Suite to help companies attract the best talent. We launched Monster Mobile Solutions with Android application for jobseekers and employers and introduced a new interface for employers on our WAP portal while revamping the WAP portal for job seekers. We made a grand entry into the professional networking space with the launch of BeKnown; a professional networking application on Facebook.

Going forward, we plan to broaden our presence by further leveraging our global lineage, strengthening our technological base while keeping innovation at the centre of our new offerings. Our goal will be to maintain and consolidate Monster’s leadership position in the market by leveraging our cutting edge technology solutions.

Monster had acquired JobsAhead and has also made acquisitions outside. Are there plans in acquiring any other Indian start-up currently?

Ans: As an organisation Monster is always open to new opportunities for expansion which are aligned to our business model, long term vision coupled with a robust technological base.

Tell us about some of your strong points that, according to you, other companies in competition to you lack?

As I mentioned earlier, Monster is the pioneer in the e-recruitment space and undoubted a global leader in the e-recruitment space.

• Only global player: Monster.com is the only global player in the category. We are a ‘one stop shop’ for all the recruitment needs of a company; be it local, regional or global.
• Product and services: Monster has been committed to bring best in class product and services to both employers and jobseekers. Powered by Monster’s intuitive technology; Monster ‘Enhanced Magic Search’ tool ensures that a job seeker gets options that best fit his profile. The actionable job seeker tools also make the job search experience simple and engaging. The simple browse jobs features make the entire job/candidate search even more productive
• Reach: With our focus on convergence of technology; we have expanded our reach to TV with Monster JobActive to Mobile with Monster Mobile Solutions to Social Media with the launch of BeKnown.
• Customer centric solutions: All our innovations are customer centric. We recently launched Monster Talent Management Suite for the employers to help them manage the entire employee lifecycle. In 2011, we also launched Monster College to help companies reach out to the best of talent available in the campuses across the country with utmost ease and minimal cost. Monster.com also launched ‘Return2Home’ initiative to help companies in targeting India Diaspora who possess relevant experience and skills to come back and work with them. Our branding solutions help our clients to showcase themselves as an employer of choice. Our branding product range boasts of Site Capture, Shoshkele, Fade in fade out, brand booster, brand maximizer, employer video, corporate microsite to name a few.
• Growing rapidly: Monster India has a registered base of 33 million seekers which is growing at a rapid pace. We add about 14-15 thousand resumes daily. This in itself is a testimony of Monster’s strength in the Indian market

Monster India had partnered with DishTV to launch “Monsterjobs Active”. How has the initiative taken off so far?

Monster pioneered jobs on television with the launch of ‘Monsterjobs Active’ in collaboration with Dish TV. The objective behind the launch was to reach out to the jobseekers who have limited access to internet.  “Monsterjobs Active” was launched to help jobseekers to search for jobs across the country in various industry verticals from the convenience of their homes. Dish TV has been an ideal partner for us as they have the mass reach across tier 2 and tier 3 markets that we could leverage through ‘MonsterJobs Active’.  Launched three years ago, the initiative has received a tremendous response. We have seen a surge in the number of job applicants seeking jobs through our tie-up with Dish TV. In the coming years, we plan to increase our interaction with users by introducing new feature this platform.

Can you guide us through the business model of Monster College? What was the objective behind launching Monster College?

Monster College has been launched with an aim to simplify campus recruiting. A pan India online campus hiring initiative, Monster College collaborates with educational institutes across India. Monster College was launched with a vision to bridge the gap that exists between the colleges and the corporate by seamlessly providing corporate with an access to the vast database of students across the country who possess the required skill in the quickest and most cost efficient manner. 

Monster College helps educational institutes map their student talent and provide relevant job opportunities. It also helps institutes identify skill gaps through assessment and suggest proactive measures. Monster College helps institutes enhance their visibility among corporates thereby providing equal job opportunities to students across India.

‘Monster College converts the art of campus hiring into a science by addressing and bridging this talent gap by making placement processes more systematic and measureable as well as enhancing employability by grooming talent basis industry demands.

Monster College thrives on our deep domain expertise, extensive database, superior technology and innate understanding of the recruiting landscape. Monster College offers educational institutes the opportunity to leverage Monster’s extensive reach in the corporate world by connecting them to over 20,000 employers across various industries.

Monster had also launched ‘Return2Home’ as a specialized portal. What was the objective and idea behind this initiative?

Today Asia and specifically India is seen as a land of opportunities owing to the rapid economic explosion, MNC’s recognizing India as strategic market, which in turn has resulted in global work culture, competitive salaries, world class infrastructure, improved socio-economic facilities and access to an international standard of living. According to the findings of a Monster survey, between January and December 2010, there was a 65% growth in traffic of job seekers from outside India, with nearly three quarters of respondents (74%) planning to return to India eventually or have already done so, indicating the rising interest of NRI’s in their homeland. With India moving away from being a talent feeder to the developed nations, to a talent powerhouse, ‘reverse brain drain’ will enable various industry sectors to attract the ‘right talent’ who have the relevant global experience, domain knowledge and are also culturally aligned . This led us to launch ‘Return2Home’ initiative in June 2011.

How has Monster’s initiative with ITC e-Choupal Rozgarduniya.com fared so far?

Rozgarduniya.com is a 50:50 JV with ITC e-choupal network. -- to provide Internet-enabled kiosks set up by ITC Limited in villages throughout India. The initiative has been acknowledged by Business Call to Action (BCtA) as it is in line with the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. The initiative was launched to bridge the divide between urban and rural recruitment in India through a multi-lingual job portal for rural job seekers where they can find relevant jobs in their own geographies and recruiters interested in recruiting in rural areas can find the right resources. Rozgarduniya.com was designed to provide employers in corporate India a unique platform to access rural talent, thus removing the traditional barriers they face in this process. Currently it covers four states and 10000 villages and our plan is to cover nine states and 40,000 villages across nine states.

What are your marketing plans for this year?

2011 for marketing was a year of launches and our focus had been around the awareness of the new products and their adoption by both jobseekers and employers.

2012 marketing is focused around creating delightful experiences for both jobseekers and employers via the new offerings. All our initiatives are customer focused and the domain is primarily digital as that is where our customers are. We will be cashing on the shift of the screen from desktop to phone and our customer experience will be 360 degree.