Review: Monster.ie (Verdict: 6 out of 10) This review of Monster.ie was conducted as a secret shopper experience. We approached the site with a "hypothetical" vacancy. The role to be advertised was an Admin/Secretary job for an estate agents office based in Dublin 2 on a salary of €25 to 28K. The job site did not know that this was a review call. Monster.ie whatjobsite profile.  Reviewed: September 2007.

The Monster.ie website

One of the oldest job sites in the game and probably the largest worldwide, monster.ie provides all the features and functionality of one of the world's best known job site brands. The search is straight-forward and easy-to-use. We couldn't find a way of searching for employer-only jobs but as monster.ie doesn't have an overload of jobs, searching was quite efficient. For the advertiser, monster.ie provides help on using the site to recruit with a handy-online tutorial.

How Monster.ie works

The call was short and to the point with most of the main information covered. Although there is an account managed service available, for our one-off job we were encouraged to use the online form to post our job. The online training tutorial gave us a full and detailed explanation of what we had to do.

Unfortunately, our call was handled by Monster.ie's Glasgow office and while the account manager could answer all the straightforward questions about the site, she couldn't tell us how many people actually used Monster.ie, or how many jobs and employers were advertising on it, or if the site was any good for our job. A real disappointment.

The Products

The online job posting is €320 for 60 days. This is about average for job sites in Ireland. There are, of course, other products available such as CV search starting at €199 for 1 week and 100 views. In addition there is email targeting and branding options. 

Monster.ie user statistics and site demographics

As we indicated above, the sales person did not know how many people used Monster.ie. On the site, however, the ABCE 2005 audit figures were quoted. This 2005 ABCE audit gives monster.ie 158,644 monthly Unique users. There was another figure of 337,000 visitors quoted on the site. Whether this latter figure is Unique visitors or visits is unclear (and there is a major difference between them.) We used a number of online tools to estimate that the site's current unique user figure probably isn't far off that 2005 ABCE audit figure. A search of the job site brought back only 976 jobs with the overwhelming majority being in Dublin. Not a huge inventory of jobs but there did seem to be a good number of employer jobs. 

Monster.ie  — the Pros and Cons.

The Pros: A good well-known site, It is well designed and the job posting service seems smooth and easy to use. The price at €320 is competitive.

The Cons: Again, it's the basics: the sales people should know how many people will potentially see the job ad. How can an potential advertiser feel confident in choosing a job site if the job site doesn't even know how many people are looking at it. Also, we got the office in Glasgow, and the person there seemed to know nothing about the Irish job market. A little bit of knowledge on the market should be requisite for any account manager. In general, the whole experience made monster.ie feel like an afterthought to the main monster.co.uk site.

Overall Verdict: 6 out 10

Monster.ie is a good site and, if the user figures we estimated are accurate, then there is reasonable traffic coming to the site. With a small inventory of jobs compared to some of its competitors, there could be an advantage here for the direct employer. Fewer jobs means more potential candidates looking at yours, even if it is Dublin-focussed. Still, the fact that my account manager could tell me nothing to make me feel confident about advertising on Monster.ie was disappointing for such a well-established brand. Go to the monster.ie whatjobsite profile 

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