Jeff Taylor

Founder and Chief Monster

The idea for Monster came to founder Jeff Taylor in a dream.

Head of his own recruitment ad agency, Adion, Jeff was focusing his business on big ideas and technological efficiencies for his high-tech clients. In the fall of 1993, a client said to him, “No more big ideas. I want a monster idea!”

Soon afterward, Jeff says, “I woke up at 4:30 a.m. from a dream that I built a bulletin board system where people could look for jobs. In the dark, I wrote down on a pad next to my bed, ‘The Monster Board.’ Realizing that in the morning I wouldn’t be able to read what I had written, I got out of bed, went to a coffee shop, and at five in the morning designed a lot of the concepts and interface we’re still using today.”

Recognized as an innovator and visionary in both the Internet and careers industries, Jeff has reinvented the way the world looks for employment. His “monster idea,” conceived at the dawn of the World Wide Web, quickly became one of the first dot-com companies (454th registered domain on the Web) and has since grown into the world’s leading online career site. Today, the Monster global network consists of 22 local content and language sites in 20 countries and serves 20 million unique visitors monthly.

Jeff is a frequent speaker at colleges and universities across the country, and at technology, advertising and human capital conferences hosted by such noted organizations as Forrester Research, 21st Century Workforce Summit, Kennedy Information, The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), Fast Company and The Working Women Network. He serves on both the National and Massachusetts boards of directors of Junior Achievement and is also a board member of Boston’s Wang Center for the Performing Arts. Jeff also co-authored the book, Monster Careers, which hit nationwide bookstores in April 2004 and gives job seekers a step-by-step plan for finding the job of their dreams.

Jeff has an undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Certificate-Owner/President Management (OPM) Program, Executive Education, Harvard Business School; and also holds an Honorary Doctorate from Bentley College.

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