LinkedIn closed Thursday at $76.39, down 15 cents. But after investors got a look at the report, the stock climbed up, and within two hours was trading at $83.25, up 9 percent.

The company reported fourth quarter revenue of $167.7 million, more than double its fourth quarter last year. Analysts, who had been expecting the company to finish strong, predicted revenues of $159.7 million. They also expected a 7 cent per share profit. LinkedIn reported earning an adjusted 12 cents per share.

Calling 2011 “A landmark year for LinkedIn,” CEO Jeff Weiner said the company would continue to grow this year, putting an emphasis on expanded mobile capabilities, the international market, and plans to “refresh a number of our pillar products.” Many of those are recruiting related.

Before today’s financial report and an after-market conference call, analysts projected LinkedIn would earn 57 cents a share on revenue of $828.2 million. Now, the company says it expects revenue in a range of $840-$860 million. For 2011, LinkedIn’s revenue totaled $522.1 million.

Recruitment provided half the revenue for 2011 and just over half in the last quarter of the year. The relative percentages that LinkedIn’s three product lines — recruitment, marketing, and subscriptions — contribute to the total revenue haven’t changed much since the company went public last May.

During the question and answer with analysts, Steve Sardello, LinkedIn’s CFO, said there won’t be “a lot of change” in recruitment pricing this year. Instead, the company will focus on expanding its client base and improving the penetration of the service. He said the renewal rate and add-ons grew by 171 percent, and said most customers now hold between three and four recruiter seats.

LinkedIn has been focusing increasing attention on the international market, and growth there has been slowly edging up. By the end of 2011 it accounted for a third of LinkedIn’s quarterly revenue. During the quarter the company opened offices in Brazil, India, and Japan, and translated the service into five additional languages.

LinkedIn’s optimistic outlook for this year is in marked contrast to at least two of its competitors. In the last two weeks both Monster and Dice Holdings offered financial guidance that was more conservative than what Wall Street wanted to hear. As a result, the stock of both companies saw a sharp decline.

CareerBuilder, privately held by three media companies and Microsoft, said it had North American revenue of $157 million in the fourth quarter, bringing the total to $627 million. The company publicly releases only revenue for North America. It does not release international earnings or expenses or profit.

However, Gannett’s CEO Gracia Martore told investors and analysts that CareerBuilder accounted for 82 percent of the company’s digital revenues. That revenue, the company said, was $181.5 million in the 4th quarter. She also said international revenue was up 40 percent for the job board.

If the four owners of CareerBuilder share its income in proportion to their ownership percentage of its stock, then CareerBuilder contributed $148.8 million to Gannett. (The company owns 50.8 percent of CareerBuilder.) From that figure, it’s possible to conjecture CareerBuilder had a $293 million quarter, putting it ahead of Monster. Company officials declined to comment on the figures.

Hours after the company reported it nearly doubled its fourth-quarter profit over the same quarter in 2010, meeting Wall Street’s expectations, its stock price took a 16 percent beating. In afternoon trading in New York, Dice Holdings was selling for $8.40 a share, down $1.59 on the day.

Last week Monster’s stock took a 20 percent hit after it missed analyst profit expectations and announced layoffs. The company earned 11 cents a share, rather than the 12 cents Wall Street expected. Yet, the company grew revenue for the year by about 14 percent and turned 2010′s loss into a 37 cents a share profit.

Dice, however, not only met the Street’s per share earnings prediction, but its $47.36 million in revenue was slightly ahead of what analysts expected. For the year, Dice reported revenue of $179.1 million versus $129 million in 2010. Profit for the full year was 49 cents a share. In 2010 it was 28 cents.

Those results did little to cushion the company’s 2012 prediction that revenues and earnings will come in below analyst expectations. For the current quarter, Dice says it expects revenue of $46 million and net income of $7.1 million. Analysts are looking for  $46.83 million in revenue and per share earnings of 13 cents.

For the year, Dice is looking at revenue of $197 million. Wall Street wants $201.1 million.

In the announcement of the company’s financial results, Chairman, President, and CEO Scot Melland called 2011 “a terrific year for the company.” Calling 2012 “a more uncertain recruiting environment,” Melland said he expects the company to grow.

“Our strategic priorities are unchanged: expand the number of customers using our services, capitalize on the global opportunity in our energy vertical and serve more markets around the world.”

In the paperwork submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook said it expects to raise $5 billion from the public sale of its stock. That’s based on the registration fee it paid. The New York Times says it could end up raising much more.

Facebook reported in its S-1 filing that it earned $1 billion on revenue of $3.7 billion, most of it coming from advertising. It reported having 845 million monthly active users as of the end of the year, a 39 percent increase over the year before. In the U.S., Facebook saw a 16 percent bump over 2010, ending last year with 161 million monthly average users, or about half the country’s total population.

Its average daily user count is 483 million, meaning more than half those who visit the site in a month do so every day. The company also reported 425 million monthly mobile users, a number it expects will grow with some of it replacing PC access.

With numbers like these it’s not surprising that employers have been flocking to build Facebook profiles and encourage their workers, customers and others to “like” them.

Recruiters began embracing Facebook years ago, seeing it as a way to expand the reach of their employer branding. Many began by combing through Facebook profiles as part of candidate vetting.  Now, companies regularly see Facebook as both a branding tool and a way to develop prospect communities.

Increasingly, Facebook is becoming a sourcing tool. BranchOut, which launched on Facebook 18 months ago, enables users to create business-only networks that can be accessed by recruiters. BeKnown, launched by Monster last summer, is similar.

Both BranckOut and BeKnown also connected with LinkedIn. But not long after the BeKnown launch, LinkedIn shut off access. That hasn’t put much of a damper on either site. BranchOut has about 2.7 million monthly average users. BeKnown has 260,000.

A third site is poised to announce its own Facebook connection later tonight, Pacific time.

Monster’s stock price was down almost 20 percent at lunchtime in New York, a drop of $1.79 on the day. Trading below $10 for so long that Standard & Poors moved the company out of its S&P 500 stock basket in December, Monster’s price is now right at $7.19 a share.

The jobs advertising company, which yesterday laid off 400 employees, issued its fourth-quarter and full-year financials this morning before the markets opened. Despite growing revenue by almost 14 percent for the year, the company fell short in the final quarter. It earned 11 cents a share versus the 12 cents analysts were expecting. Monster’s revenue for the quarter also fell short, coming in at $250 million instead of the $259 million average estimate of Wall Street analysts.

Compared to 2010, Monster was profitable, earning 37 cents a share for the year (after allowances for one-time and similar expenses). In 2010 the company lost 7 cents a share.

Looking ahead, the company is not optimistic about where the job market is heading. Bookings (posting and search contracts) are expected to be down 6 to 10 percent from the 1st quarter of 2010. Part of the explanation for the decline is that there were strong signs of economic recovery at the beginning of 2011 leading employers to anticipate adding staff. But the economy sputtered, slowing hiring.

Now, with employers carefully monitoring headcount and with surveys suggesting that if hiring accelerates at all, it will be in the second half of the year, Monster says it expects its revenue will be lower this quarter than the year before. The outlook, says the company’s report, is for a 3 to 7 percent decline in revenue.

“First quarter earnings are expected to be in the range of break-even to $0.04 per share,” the company says.

However, from a purely employment view, posting and search revenue actually was up globally. While North American revenue (principally the U.S.) declined 2 percent in the last quarter, Monster’s international revenue grew by 8.3 percent. For the year, revenue from its international operations was up 23.3 percent, and is now approaching parity with North America.

The biggest revenue reduction came from Monster’s advertising income. Monster said earlier this year it would be getting out of the advertising business, so the decline here was to be expected. For the fourth quarter, Monster’s advertising revenue was $21.3 million, a 34 percent reduction from the year before.

The layoff of about 7 percent of its 5,700 employee workforce is expected to save about $100 million annually.

Said Sal Iannuzzi, chairman, president and CEO, “We are taking difficult but necessary steps to implement cost savings initiatives that will provide us the flexibility to enhance our marketing and sales efforts to continue to improve long-term growth prospects and profitability.”

Next week, CareerBuilder will release its North American revenue for the fourth quarter and full year. The privately held company voluntarily releases only select data. LinkedIn, now the leading recruitment competitor to both Monster and CareerBuilder, will report its financial results on Feb. 9. Dice Holdings, operator of Dice.com and other niche boards, will report its results Feb. 2.

We start with a job seeker good deed from the Challenger people:

Free Job Hunting Advice By Phone

For two days next week, job seekers will be able to get career advice directly from professional counselors at no charge. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. CST on December 27 and 28, counselors will accept calls from job seekers nationwide, answering questions and offering advice about the job hunting process.

The number is 312-422-5010. Job hunters can get more information about the call-in at firm’s website and blog.

This is the 26th year that the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray  & Christmas will offer this free call-in service .

Salesforce Acquires Rypple

Rypple, the company that brought a social, collaborative networking approach to performance management, is being acquired by Salesforce.com. The CRM company announced last week that it was buying Toronto-based Rypple for an undisclosed amount.

When the deal closes next year, Rypple will be renamed Successforce and become the foundation of a new Salesforce HCM business unit.

Both companies are entirely cloud-based operations, addressing different parts of the HR landscape. Primarily a CRM service, though it has a significant presence in candidate and applicant tracking, Salesforce has been broadening its product lineup. In the last year it ha acquired a number of companies including Assistly for $50 million, Mobile Metrics (price undisclosed), and social media monitoring company Radian6 for $326 million.

However, the Rypple deal is the first pure-play HR buy. It signals an aggressive push by Salesforce into human capital management.

Said the press release announcing the Rypple acquisition, “The company plans to expand into other areas with a new social model that will revolutionize the way companies recruit talent, build teams, empower employees, and achieve results.”

Salesforce Losing Force?

That’s one way to put it, says an analysis this week from writer Drea Knufken. In her list of the 10 Most Controversial Stocks of 2012 she calls Salesforce “one of the most overvalued stocks on the market.”

Pointing to a P/E ratio of 400 and receivables growing 300 times faster than revenue, the one time Business Pundit blogger declares, “The question seems to be not if Salesforce.com’s stock will drop, but when it will happen — and how the company will handle it.”

Solving the Mystery Applicant

Much like the weather, the “candidate experience” has been talked about for years but fewer folks do anything about it. Companies often not only don’t tell folks why they didn’t get a job — but decline to tell final candidates that they didn’t get the job.

The topic is getting new attention. A recent webinar on the topic drew a large crowd. And, a new award was recently launched just for providing a good candidate experience, with two winners of that award set to talk about their hiring-process improvements in March in San Diego.

Now, a startup out of the UK is also making the candidate experience its niche. Mystery Applicant is launching quietly while it builds up some clients and gathers data.

Director Nick Price says the product is a lot like the consumer surveys you take after calling in with a question about your credit card, satellite TV, or cell phone plan. When a candidate applies for a job, they get an email asking them to answer some short questions about how the process went for them. They’ll get another after being hired or rejected.

Price says that he hasn’t done any big splash, and is quietly working with applicant tracking systems to tell them about the product. But, he says, he has gotten the interest of some large companies, and one of the world’s largest employers is already using the service. They can filter the responses to see if it’s working better in certain geographies, or among young people vs. old.

A Recruitment Campaign or Is That a Wanted Poster?

The Hamburg, Germany police department is more than a little embarrassed after it discovered that one of the four models it used in its 50,000 Euro recruitment marketing campaign is a suspected thief.

Seems that after the we-want-you posters went up all over the city, one of the four models posing in full police uniform was identified as a suspect in a petty robbery. The victim saw the poster and called the (real) police. The suspect denies the charges, but the posters he has in have been taken down.

What’s That Internship Pay?

Students looking for work on Internships.com will now be able to see what the job pays and what the range is should it turn into a full-time opportunity. Glassdoor’s salary data will now be a part of the listings on the site.

New Sourcing Suite Version Released

Talent Technology Corporation released a new version of its  Talemetry talent generation suite. In particular, the company says the release includes a “significant update to Talemetry Match which delivers a redesigned user interface designed to help novice and experienced recruiters search, rank, and contact candidates from virtually any internal job database, job board or social network.”

Rumors have periodically made the rounds of a potential or even pending sale — 20 of them since 2006, according to Bloomberg. All have proven false. But now, says the financial news service, financial analysts and some of Monster’s largest shareholders say the time and price may be right for a takeover.

“The valuation is absurdly cheap,” Eric Green, a Philadelphia-based fund manager at Penn Capital, told Bloomberg. With 3.2 million shares of Monster stock, Penn Capital is one of the company’s largest shareholders.

“The stock has been a clear disappointment,” Green is quoted as saying. He suggested a takeover price of $15 a share. That’s a 92 percent premium over Thursday’s closing price of $7.83. “I would love to see someone buy it,” he said.

Monster’s stock price has declined steadily since hitting a 10-year high of $59.28 in May, 2006. In the last 12 months, the stock has been as high as $25.90, reaching there in January, when the economy seemed ready for a hiring surge. Since August, it has been under $10 a share.

The market value of the company is now about $1 billion, $5 billion less than it was worth in 2006. Its 66 percent decline since the start of this year is the largest of any company included in the S&P 500. As a result, Monster is being moved by Standard & Poors to its MidCap 400 after the market closes today.

Part of the reason for the lackluster stock performance is the weak hiring outlook and the global economic climate of the last few years. Another part is the rise of alternative recruiting channels, especially social media, and especially the launch of LinkedIn as a public company. It bears noting that as hot a launch as LinkedIn had, rising almost immediately upon the start of trading to a high of $122.70, it has been under $75 a share since November. Dice Holdings, the other pure play job board, is also off its 12-month high of $18.75, closing Thursday at $8.75. LinkedIn closed at $66.38. CareerBuilder is privately held by a group of newspaper companies with Gannett owning the majority.

“When the employment market recovers, we’re going to see Monster’s revenue recover,” Avondale analyst Jim Janesky told Bloomberg. “If Monster doesn’t earn the value it deserves in the stock market, then there are various other avenues of recognizing value, and one is certainly a merger or an M&A opportunity.”

Monster declined to comment to Bloomberg and didn’t respond to our email asking for comment.

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

Greenhaven Partners bought the annual conference and RecruitingTrends.com, the online successor to the venerable Kennedy Information print newsletter of the same name. The price was not disclosed. The conference and the website were owned by Tarsus Group, a publicly held U.K.-based international business-to-business media and conference firm. Tarsus bought OnRec several years ago, just as it was beginning to hold its first North American conference. OnRec was founded in the United Kingdom, and has a strong presence there with its website, print magazine, and conferences.  OnRec’s UK assets were not part of the sale.

If this was just another story of consolidation in the HR space, it could end here. But even in the sometimes strange world of M&A, it’s a curious kind of coming home tale. It begins and ends with RD Whitney and brothers Marshall and Wayne Cooper.

Even before them, there was Jim Kennedy. He founded a publishing business focused on recruiting and staffing. Its Red Book directory of recruiters and staffing firms became an industry staple. Over time, Kennedy added newsletters for the search industry and consultants and some smaller directories. In 1996, he sold the business for $2 million to the Coopers.

With Whitney managing part of the operation, the Coopers expanded its product line and broadened its reach to include online. By 2000, with Kennedy Information’s income at a reported $10 million, the brothers sold it to the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. The sales price was $47.7 million. Whitney stayed on with Kennedy to run the operation for BNA. By 2009, with a full-blown recession underway, BNA sold the Kennedy conference business and its online recruiting new site, RecruitingTrends.com, to Tarsus. The selling price, according to one report, was $1. However, BNA retained other parts of the business, including its recruiter directories and career and consulting services. Whitney, a BNA vice president and Kennedy general manager, went to work for Tarsus, running the Kennedy business.

Not long after the sale, BNA put the subsidiary that owned the rest of the Kennedy Information business into bankruptcy. That resulted in realigning the operation. Still following this story? It’s not as complicated as it might seem. Consider that the one constant through the various changes of ownership is RD Whitney. At least until January of this year, when he left to go back to work for the Coopers as a partner at Greenhaven.

That’s right, the Greenhaven that just bought back the Kennedy/OnRec conference and RecruitingTrends.com. And now that The Recruiting Conference and Recruiting Trends are back with the Coopers, Whitney  said he will again manage the operation. Anna Brekka, who was senior director and managing editor of RecruitingTrends when it was owned by BNA and then by Tarsus, is also continuing.

Whitney said the firm intends to maintain some of the international and global flavor of The Recruiting Conference, even as it reorients more toward North America. He says there will be pre- and post-conference workshops that will be international in nature, and that Greenhaven will explore synergies with some of its other publications and conferences, most likely its Chief Executive Group. “We’ll still have a relationship with Tarsus,” he said, adding that he hopes to foster relationships as well with other recruiting conferences and publishers.

The company told investors and analysts during a conference call after the markets closed this afternoon that it would add some 500 to 600 more employees by the end of the year. CEO Jeff Weiner said the rapid expansion would give LinkedIn a jump on 2012.

Because of SEC rules and legal cautiousness, company officials didn’t discuss the planned stock sale during the call. But Weiner and CFO Steve Sordello said they would be bringing in more tech people to speed up the launch of new products and scale its operation to accommodate the rapid growth. Sales people would also be added now so they’ll be in place to begin selling with the new year.

Sordello said the company was on pace to bring in between $154 and $158 million in the current quarter. That would give it between $508 and $512 million for the year.

The company has been on such a tear, that one analyst questioned whether its revenue and earnings projections might be too conservative.

For the third quarter, the company reported a per share loss of 2 cents. The analyst consensus was for a 4-cent loss. Adjusting for one-time and non-operational expenses, LinkedIn earned 6 cents a share. The consensus for that calculation was that the company would break even.

Showing that it’s not just growing money, Weiner and Sordello noted the company’s global expansion and reported that 59 percent of its 135 million members are international. The fastest growing group is college students and recent grads. Weiner said helping them find their first job is a company priority.

Its traffic has also grown rapidly. The site now averages about 87.6 million unique visitors monthly, a figure the company said is low since it doesn’t include mobile users who, by company metrics, now account for something “north of 10 percent” of page views.

“Mobile is far and away our fastest growing product and service,” said Weiner adding, “we’re thinking through how to monetize mobile and we’re hoping to begin that next year.”

The company this morning reported earning $9.3 million on revenue of $46.8 million in the 3rd quarter, yielding per share earning of 13 cents. Last year for the same quarter the company earned 9 cents per share.

The company said growth was driven by its flagship site, Dice.com, which saw an 18 percent increase in its recruitment-package customers whose average monthly spend grew by 12 percent. The eFinancialCareers operations also saw strong growth with a 29 percent increase over the same quarter last year.

Overall, the numbers were in line with analysts’ expectations. Revenue, in fact, slightly exceeded the estimates.

However, company officials estimated revenue for the current 4th quarter would come in at $47.5 million, $1 million below what Wall Street was projecting. The guidance pushed Dice’s stock to a low of $8.50 after opening at $9.50.

Dice CEO Scot Melland said, “Recruitment activity did improve in September after a seasonally slower summer; however, the magnitude was less than what we traditionally experience. As expected, recruitment activity slowed in financial services and economic uncertainty is impacting the urgency some companies place on recruiting.’

His comments echoed those of Monster Worldwide executives who noted an apparent slowdown in hiring activity beginning in September. Monster officials said the slowdown appeared to be extending into October.

The company’s shares got no lift from the overall market even though earnings are up, because the employment picture in the months ahead is murky. Murky enough that in releasing its third-quarter financials this morning, company officials estimated earnings for the current fourth quarter would be less than what analysts are expecting.

Monster’s share price opened at $9.25, then dropped sharply as the market digested the news that bookings (contracts for searching and job posting) weren’t likely to increase much in this last quarter and revenue for the year would be significantly less than the company projected in July.

The stock recovered some, closing at $8.83, behind Wednesday’s $8.91 close.

For the third quarter, Monster had revenue of $259 million, an increase of 20 percent over the same quarter in 2010. (The percentage is based on adjusted 2010 numbers, which were reduced to account for advertising business Monster voluntarily gave up. On an unadjusted basis, revenue grew by 13.2 percent). The company earned 13 cents a share (adjusted), or 1 cent more than Wall Street was expecting. Last year, after adjustments, Monster reported earning 2 cents a share.

(Public companies report their revenue and expenses two ways. The GAAP method includes expenses and income that for analysis purposes are one-time costs or are accounting issues that can distort a company’s actual operating performance. The non-GAAP report omits those items. Monster’s “official” or GAAP method report shows it earned 26 cents a share in the 3rd quarter and lost 5 cents a year ago.)

However, revenue for the quarter was less than what analysts estimated by about $5 million.

Monster’s Chairman and CEO Sal Iannuzzi blamed the “macro uncertainties” of the global economy for finally prompting employers to begin pulling back last month. The company first felt the effects in the e-commerce placement of job postings and resume purchasing, and then late in September started seeing customers cut back on their contracts.

Now, says Iannuzzi, the hiring pullback seems to be a trend, or at least enough of a concern that it is prudent to lower the estimates for both bookings and revenue growth. Earlier Monster estimates were based on national and global opinion of strong economic growth. That’s no longer the case.

“Right now,” said Iannuzzi, “there is increasing uncertainty and fear that we may experience another recession.” For that reason Monster cut back on its revenue and bookings estimates. “We believe it is prudent to manage our business on the assumption” that economic conditions will not improve, he said.

However, Iannuzzi said the situation is different from what it was three years ago. Instead of layoffs and other draconian measures, companies are slowing up on hiring.

CareerBuilder, which is not a public company and volunteers only some financial information, said its North American revenue grew 13 percent in the 3rd quarter to $161 million. Monster’s North American revenue was $123,2 million, a 15 percent improvement over 2010.

Although it doesn’t provide its international numbers, Gannett CFO Paul Saleh said CareerBuilder’s international business grew “in the low 40 percent.” Gannett, the largest newspaper company in the U.S., is the majority owner of CareerBuilder. Some of CareerBuilder’s performance is covered during Gannett’s quarterly financial report.

During the company’s conference call with financial analysts, CareerBuilder’s international opportunities were cited by Gannett CEO Gracia Martore, who said, “We’ve improved the results as we’ve been in many of the markets that we are in internationally year-over-year. And so we … see that as a great opportunity to continue to expand upon our international offerings there. And as Paul mentioned, we saw a terrific revenue growth overseas, albeit from a small base, but that’s a real area of opportunity for us going forward.”

The other two leading public careers advertising sites will report next week. Dice Holdings reports November 2, LinkedIn reports November 3.

Inc. ranks the companies, all privately held, by growth rate; the faster revenue increased over three years, the higher the company ranks. By that measure, HR staffing and services firm Nextaff was first among the HR companies that volunteered to participate. (Participation requires companies to divulge annual revenue, employee counts and growth, etc. Only some companies are willing to publicize that kind of proprietary information.)

Nextaff reported 2010 revenue of $72.1 million, a 1,167 percent jump over the last three years. In 2007, the company reported it generated $5.7 million with only nine employees. Now it has 12.

Of the top ten HR firms on the list, eight are staffing and placement firms, with several specializing in IT and engineering. That’s in line with the strong demand in the last 18 months for tech workers. It’s also evidence that employers turn to temps and contractors at the early stage of a recovery before committing to hiring permanent workers.

In 3rd and 5th place among the HR companies are Jobfox and BountyJobs, respectively. Both companies are familiar to recruiters.

Jobfox, launched in 2004 by former CareerBuilder CEO and founder Rob McGovern, is a network of networks where job seekers and jobs are matched, recruiters mingle with candidates, and referrals of friends who get hired earn rewards.

BountyJobs is a network of  pre-qualified headhunters and independent recruiters, and companies with reqs. Employers set fees and post jobs that interested recruiters can then bid on. It’s three-year growth of 881 percent, took it from $1.6 million in 2007 to $16.2 million last year, not only placing it high on the HR list, but 389th out of all 5,000 firms.

CEO Mike Hard, who piloted BountyJobs though the most turbulent economic years since the 1930s, emailed to say, “Fifth place is an eye-opener, but no HR department that regularly uses headhunters is going to be shocked at the emergence of BountyJobs and the category in general. When people hear about what BountyJobs does they say, ‘What took you so long?’.”

Hard attributed a big part of the growth to existing customers,  many of whom, he noted, are among the Fortune 500. BountyJobs, he said, handles the contingent search jobs of more than a third of the Fortune 500 employers in the U.S.

I also pinged McGovern, but haven’t heard back. However, the Inc. report placed Jobfox at 352 on the 5000 list. The company grew from $1.2 million in 2007 to $12.9 million last year, a 963 percent increase.

Besides the companies that described themselves as HR, the Inc. 5000 has others with extensive HR business and clients. Jobs2Web, the SEO firm that optimizes job postings and enhances their online visibility, is listed among the software firms. It’s $9.9 million in revenue last year was 824 percent ahead of 2007, ranking it 419 overall.

Fresh off its May IPO, the company surprised almost everyone, reporting it more than doubled revenue in the second quarter and turned a 7 cent a diluted share profit. After hours, investors rewarded the company’s performance, bidding up its stock price by almost 10 percent in the minutes after the numbers were released.

Analysts had predicted the company would lose 3 cents a share on revenue of $104.73 million. Looking ahead to the third quarter, the consensus was for a 4 cent a share loss on revenue of $111.82 million.

Now LinkedIn estimates it will bring in between $121 million and $125 million.

Since the initial euphoria, LinkedIn’s after-hours trading is lower, but still up over its New York close of $95.52. The stock lost $10.13 during Wednesday’s bloodbath. At early evening in New York, the stock is trading at $99.00 a share.

Company CEO Jeff Weiner, speaking at the company’s first financial results conference call, reported that on every metric LinkedIn’s second quarter performance showed growth. Besides the dollars and cents, Weiner said LinkedIn is growing at the rate of 2 members every second and now has 121 million members. Engagement with the site also continues to grow; pageviews are up 80 percent over the same quarter last year and unique visitors now average 81.8 million monthly.

“Talent is the driving force,” Weiner said, both on the site and in the company itself.

He and CFO Steve Sordello attributed some of the growth to the excitement around the company’s May IPO. The halo effect from all the publicity and interest will wane, and, said Sordello, the company’s financial performance will “normalize” during the current quarter.

New products are being developed, both men said, and will roll out over the next several months, but they offered no specifics. For instance, Weiner  mentioned mobile as one of the fastest growing components, up 400 percent over the same quarter last year, saying LinkedIn is concentrating some development resources there. He also said some additions to the homepage would be forthcoming, but didn’t tip his hand as to what they might be.

One area where LinkedIn is going to push hard is in growing its international business, especially in recruitment. In the coming months, said Sordello, there will be “more and more focus on a global scale.”

If this was one of those no-future-for-job boards things, then we might expect to see Wall Street discounting all the publicly held recruitment publishers. But Dice Holdings, which reported its strong quarter Tuesday morning, is up. And the Chinese careers company, 51Job, which has annual revenue that’s less than Monster’s quarterly take, is trading at $64.82, down .2 percent.

Not two hours after the company ended its quarterly financial conference call with analysts, Monster’s stock is selling at $12.06 a share. That’s an 8 percent drop from Wednesday’s $13.14 close.

It doesn’t seem to make sense considering Monster earned 9 cents a share, a penny more than what analysts were expecting. It reported 2nd quarter revenue of $269.7 million, well above expectations and even a bit more than the company’s own best prediction.

Its international business grew 31 percent over the 2nd quarter last year and now rivals its North American revenue, which increased by a not-too-shabby 26 percent to $122.6 million.

With those kinds of numbers, and predictions of a strong 3rd quarter, Monster Chairman, President and CEO Sal Iannuzzi was hardly boasting when he opened his presentation this morning, saying, “We are pleased with our financial performance.”

Considering the economic conditions worldwide, and especially the lackluster job growth in the U.S., Iannuzzi’s comment could even be considered understatement. Indeed, answering analyst questions later in the call, Iannuzzi said, “In general, business has been sluggish all year.” “More sluggish,” he added, “than we would have expected.”

In his opening Iannuzzi touted the launch of Monster’s biz-focused social network, BeKnown, and its versatile sourcing search tool, SeeMore. Bookings, the annual contracts for job postings, searching, and other services, increased 26 percent during the quarter. International bookings, Iannuzzi said, accounted for almost 50 percent of the contracts.

If anything could be considered big news (besides, that is, the quarterly numbers themselves) it would be that the company has decided to get out of the lead generation business. Those are the ad banners promoting trade, vocational, and online schools. In years past, credit card solicitations and a few other similar pitches were among them.

Media companies typically get a fee for every person who fills out one of the applications for information. Credit card companies used to pay $25 and up for each and some of the schools have paid multiples of that for every person signing.

Because it wasn’t so profitable, and because of government crackdowns on the for-profit education sector, which is resulting in new regulations, Monster won’t be running those ads anymore. It was worth $50 million annually in revenue, but was, Monster’s CFO said, essentially a break-even proposition.

What’s behind the stock hit? Perhaps it’s uncertainty about the debt ceiling issue in Washington, which affects Monster’s government service contract that represents about 10 percent of its North American revenue. Perhaps it’s worries about the global economy and job growth. The Chinese labor market is strong, so 51Job is less affected, while Dice is strong in tech and energy, two of the absolutely strongest market sectors.

Perhaps its just a fickle market that sees slower growth for recruitment advertising due, not only to the economy, but to the impact of social media, search sourcing, and, of course, companies like LinkedIn, which is now trading at $101.39 a share, up 1 percent. It reports its 2nd quarter numbers next week.

Reporting this morning before the U.S. markets opened, Dice reported it earned 11 cents a share on revenue of $44.9 million. Dice beat the Street’s high-end revenue prediction by almost $1 million. Revenue was 50 percent higher than in the 2nd quarter last year, due in part to acquisitions last year, as well as a 48 percent increase from eFinancialCareers, especially in the U.K.

For the current quarter, the company said it expected to earn 13 cents a share, which is what analysts were expecting to hear.

The largest company segment was tech and clearance, where revenue from the company’s flagship tech site, Dice.com, and from ClearanceJobs.com, was 32 percent ahead of the same quarter last year.

Scot Melland, Dice chairman, CEO and president, said business on the tech site in particular “continued to grow nicely.” Speaking during a conference-call presentation this morning, he predicted “the healthy tech recruiting market to continue for the forseeable future.” Financial recruiting, he said, will “moderate” some in the second half of the year.

He also offered an opinion that the job market, while hardly robust and weaker now than it was a few months back, is “not as bad as people think it is.” The recovery, he said, “really is a sector story,” pointing out that tech, healthcare, even manufacturing have been improving more rapidly than finance, construction, or government, which are either cutting jobs or struggling to stay even.

In response to a question about the impact of LinkedIn, Melland observed that while investors have only started paying close attention since LinkedIn announced its IPO a few months ago, Dice and other recruitment publishers have been competing with the company for several years.

“They (LinkedIn) get a piece of the business,” he said, ” We get a piece.”

“Customers,” he added, ” generally buy both services because they use us in different ways.”

Dice stock climbed sharply after the market’s opening, rising to $14.61 from its close, Monday, at $13.44 a share. It has since fallen back to $14.09, up 4.84 percent on the day. The Dow, meanwhile, is off .44 percent.

Tuesday morning, Dice Holdings releases its financials. Two days later, on Thursday, Monster reports. LinkedIn, which may or may not be a job board depending on your point of view, reports on August 4.

Privately held CareerBuilder released some limited numbers last week. One of the two largest career sites in the world, it reported $160 million in revenue from its North American operations. That represents a 15.1 percent increase over the same quarter in 2010, and a 6.67 percent increase over the first quarter of this year.

The Chicago-headquartered company doesn’t make public its other numbers, so only the owners know how well CareerBuilder is doing on the other fronts. There were some hints last week when its largest shareholder, Gannett Company, conducted its 2nd-quarter financial conference call. Gracia Martore, president and COO, credited CareerBuilder with “another strong quarter,” adding that among the reasons “was a significant revenue increase in their international operations.”

CareerBuilder’s CEO, Matt Ferguson, in a separate comment, attributed the job board’s growth to three factors:

One, the employment situation is improving in the U.S., Europe, Asia and other markets.  Companies are in a better financial position today and are feeling more confident about adding headcount. Job listings on our site were up 20 percent year over year in the second quarter.

Two, it reflects a greater demand for our human capital solutions that go beyond our job board …  We’re seeing rapid adoption of our Talent Network offering, Supply & Demand portal, and Work@ application, among others.

Three, our international business is growing rapidly. CareerBuilder operates sites in 21 countries worldwide and has a presence in over 55 markets. Global economies are in recovery and in need of talent.

Tuesday morning, Dice Holdings will report its 2nd quarter results. With tech one of the hottest job sectors, the company’s flagship, Dice.com, the web’s best known tech  job board, grew revenue by some 35 percent in the first quarter. (ClearanceJobs.com, another of the company’s sites, contributed to the total, but the bulk came from Dice.com.)

Analysts are expecting $43.55 million in revenue when Dice reports at 8:30 a.m. ET. Profits of 11 cents a share are predicted, a penny a share consensus increase in the last 90 days.

Monster, which reports Thursday, is a bit of an enigma. The company is expected to report earnings per share of 8 cents on revenue of $266.12 million, which is the mid-point of what the company predicted back in April.

Although analysts lowered their quarterly earnings consensus a few months’ back, there is a certain bullishness about the stock. UBS upgraded Monster to a buy recommendation in June. After Monster launched BeKnown a few weeks ago, Zacks Equity Research praised “management’s recent efforts to revamp business by constantly introducing innovative products along with cost-reductions.”

So what’s the enigma? The impact all the state and federal layoffs and budget problems are having on Monster’s government unit. During the 1st quarter financial report in April, Monster’s CEO Sal Iannuzzi warned analysts that government spending could be “a little bit lumpy at times.” With government employment spending accounting for about 10 percent of the North American revenue ($121 million in Q1 2011), the company was conservative in predicting its revenue and earnings.

One more thing: Is it meaningful that Monster will release its financial report before the markets open Thursday morning? Probably not. It wouldn’t be the first time it held a morning briefing, though usually the numbers and conference call are held after the market closes. On the other hand, if I had really good news, I’d want it to get as much mileage as possible, in which case two days of trading before the weekend would be better than one.

“We are slowly growing our European operations,” Gregoire told The Street’s market analyst Debra Borchardt.

He must have had his tongue firmly in cheek as he said that, since today Taleo doubled its European operations with the acquisition of HR technology vendor Jobpartners for $38 million.

Based in the U.K., Jobpartners has 68 clients, including 16 of the Global 500, who deploy its suite of talent management products across 50 countries and 28 languages. Its product lineup mirrors what Taleo offers — recruitment, succession planning, performance management, and social networking tools — and, like Taleo, it is SaaS based.

Besides acquiring the clients, Taleo also gains feet on the street, doubling the size of its sales and support team in Europe.

“This acquisition creates an opportunity for us to accelerate our expansion outside of North America by increasing our customer base, increasing our local sales and support capacity, as well as taking advantage of the Jobpartners Eastern European development center,” said Gregoire in announcing the deal.

Nothing was said of the transition in the announcement; however, it’s a good bet that Taleo and Jobpartners representatives will be meeting with the European customers to discuss transitioning them to an all-Taleo lineup when it stops offering Jobpartners products.

The deal is expected to close in the third quarter and add between $2 and $3 million to Taleo’s revenues. The company had revenue of $71.5 million for the first quarter of this year, losing $2.17 million or 5 cents a share. However, Taleo has grown revenue each quarter for more than a year, despite the rocky global economy, which has translated into a stock price (up over $1 today at $35.50) that has more grown 75 percent since January of last year.

During that time, Taleo bought up three other companies — Cytiva, Learn.com, and Worldwide Compensation. Learn and Worldwide complemented Taleo’s suite, adding compensation and learning technology to the product lineup. Cytiva brought a number of SMB clients.

In its recommendation, UBS said the job board’s North American division will continue to be challenged, but it is more optimistic about its growing international business and the potential revenue boost from the introduction of its 6 Sense search technology overseas.

The 44 percent drop in Monster’s stock price UBS considers overdone;  its 52-week high hit $25.90; today’s price is right around $13.50. However, while recruitment budgets are generally stable, UBS says the North American business, which comes largely from the U.S., has plenty of competition from niche sites.

As if to prove the point, Monster recently launched a recruiting site for expatriate Indians featuring jobs in the homeland. The flashy ReturntoHome channel, part of Monster’s India job board, has a prominent Flash presentation promoting India as “the land of opportunities.” Besides noting the country is now the 4th-largest economy in the world, it enthuses “your family will surely enjoy the same lifestyle in India.”

According to an account in The Wall Street Journal, a Monster India survey discovered that traffic to the site from those outside India increased last year by 65 percent. By late last year, Monster India had 250,000 resumes from those outside the country. The largest number came from residents of Gulf countries in the Middle East and from the U.S.

Meanwhile, in an analysis by Trefis, a community based, stock analytics and predictive pricing site, Monster was given a current price estimate of $14, which was then slightly below its market price. A big part of the price-setting was the decline in Monster’s North American job postings since the start of the recession. Trefis says postings went from 1.9 million in 2007 to 1.1 million last year.

With the upturn in hiring, the postings are rising, but Trefis says Monster will need to close on its federal government contracts. Says Trefis, “If the government delays further and if employment fails to pick up, we could see downside to our estimates.”

Company officials noted the uncertainty in government hiring during its Q1 financial conference call.

Not bad for a job board business network that saw its first profit last year.

The stock, which was priced in its first filings with the Security and Exchange Commission at $32-$35, soared to $122.70, before settling back to close the day at $94.25 a share.

Trading as LNKD, the stock was the darling of Wall Street. More than 27 million shares will have changed hands by the time the market closes, several times the 7.84 million share that were part of the initial public offering. More than 200 stories have appeared in the financial trades and online since the stock opened this morning.

The Wall Street Journal wrote an entertaining post pointing out that at LinkedIn’s price at one point, Apple would be worth $3 trillion. It shows, says the Journal, “how bananas the LinkedIn IPO is.”

In a more appropriate comparison, at its current price LinkedIn is worth about five times what Monster is. Monster’s stock closed today at $15.01.

The difference, of course, is that Monster Worldwide has been around for 16 years or so (depending on whether you consider just the job board or its predecessor, TMP). The other difference is that Monster’s quarterly sales are equal to LinkedIn’s annual sales.

The big difference is that LinkedIn is new school. It was designed as a business networking site and since has seen recruitment become the biggest part of its revenue stream. Now, recruiters pay annual fees to access tools to search for candidates and to contact them directly. Job postings, a relatively new product, is growing.

It’s the social aspect of the site that makes it different from job boards, despite its reliance on recruitment for revenue and profits. Users come to the site to make business connections, participate with peers in professional conversations, and stay atop developments. Job search, if they come for that at all, is down the list.

That’s why recruiters are so taken with LinkedIn; the users are almost all passives.

Job boards, try as hard as they may to layer on social and career elements, are still for job hunting. By definition, then, nearly everyone on the site is an active job seeker.

Still, while the IPO has made new Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires, the Journal offers three issues to consider. First on the list is “Yes, this is crazy.” At the bottom of the article is a little poll: “Does LinkedIn’s successful IPO signal a new tech bubble? So far, the Yes votes have 70 percent of the total.

According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a total of 7.84 million shares will be offered to the public at a price estimated to be somewhere between $32 and $35 a share. Of the total, LinkedIn will sell 4,827,804 shares, while existing stockholders, the venture capital investors, will sell the balance.

At the upper end of the price estimate, LinkedIn would be worth more than half again as much as Monster. (Stock held by the founders, other early investors, and executives, totals 89,547,185 and is factored in the total company valuation.) Monster’s market cap today is $2.04 billion.

Now why compare to Monster? Because increasingly LinkedIn is emerging as a social networking job board.

The company’s updated prospectus — it first filed for an IPO in January –shows its revenue from recruitment services has been steadily growing over the years. Last year, recruitment accounted for 42 percent of the company’s total revenue.

As recently as three years ago, recruitment was the smallest share, behind revenue from premium subscriptions and marketing products. In 2008, recruitment was 22 percent of total company revenue.

In the prospectus supplement, LinkedIn noted that its Corporate Solutions — the recruitment product bundle sold to employers — increased 85 percent from 2008, when the product launched, to 2009. Between 2009 and 2010 the number of Corporate Solutions customers increased 144 percent. At the end of 2010, LinkedIn said it had 3,900 Corporate Solutions customers.

LinkedIn also reported that it turned a profit last year, earning $15.4 million on revenue of $243 million. Its prospectus suggests that it expects to be profitable this year, noting that it doesn’t anticipate using any of the capital from the offering to fund operations. Instead, LinkedIn will use the money “primarily for general corporate purposes, including working capital, sales and marketing activities, general and administrative matters and capital expenditures. We may also use a portion of the net proceeds for the acquisition of, or investment in, technologies, solutions or businesses that complement our business…”