Yahoo announced plans to sell its HotJobs employment search service to Monster Worldwide for $225m, the companies said yesterday. Monster currently controls one third of online jobs postings in the United States.

The two companies also struck a three-year agreement under which Monster will provide career and job content for the Internet giant's homepage in the U.S. and Canada.

Terms of the deal include Monster being paid for providing job-related postings for Yahoo's homepage in the US and Canada for three years and other expressions of interest. Yahoo, who bought HotJobs in 2001 for $436 million, last month agreed to sell email provider Zimbra to VMWare Inc. for an undisclosed amount, having it acquired for $350 million two years ago.

Cquote1.svg "HotJobs with its significant customer base plus the traffic agreement are an ideal complement to Monster's innovative recruitment solutions and global reach," Cquote2.svg

—Sal Iannuzzi

"HotJobs with its significant customer base plus the traffic agreement are an ideal complement to Monster's innovative recruitment solutions and global reach," said Sal Iannuzzi, chairman, CEO and president of Monster Worldwide. "Monster will be able to offer its employers a significantly larger pool of candidates across diverse geographies and industries," the company said in a statement.

Buying Yahoo out of the online recruitment business leaves Monster with only one major competitor, Careerbuilder.com. "We have substantially added quality traffic, while substantially increasing our customer base," he added.

HotJobs averaged 12.6 million unique visitors a month, according to Media Metrics comScore. HotJobs generates annual revenue of about $100 million while Monster's revenue totalled $905 million in 2009. Alexa.com rates HotJobs at rank 3 while Monster.com at rank 531.

Source: Wikinews