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.

Let’s start with the product announcements.

Taleo said it is incorporating collaboration tools and talent visualization capability into its Taleo Intelligence, available in the company’s enterprise release.

Taleo’s online description makes it clear that for companies who take talent management and workforce intelligence seriously, the new tools will simplify the information flow.

For one, the new “Conversation Hub” lets users drag and tag email discussions, linking them to a goal, competency, or development plan. Its visual orientation makes information available at a glance.

The “Talent Browser” is a visualization approach to organizational information and performance data. Visual search can be combined with filtering for various talent metrics like promotion readiness, risk of loss, and so on to find specific people or to take a high altitude look at a team or division or whatever.

For Taleo Recruiting, the company is now enabling users to easily post jobs to hundreds of social networks and track each one.

CareerBuilder for Employers

CareerBuilder launched a free mobile app it, appropriately enough, calls CareerBuilder for Employers. If you have a CareerBuilder account, the app syncs with it to let you do all sorts of things when you’re not at your desk. For instance, you can email, call, and write letters to candidates; you can flip through your applicants, and save candidates to your CareerBuilder account.

The app supplements CBmobile, the company’s mobile optimizing solution for corporate career sites. Says CareerBuilder: “CBmobile also enables employers to create a custom app that job seekers can download or revamp their current career site with mobile-friendly features, as well as Facebook and Twitter integration. Both solutions also include custom QR codes that can direct job seekers to career sites from an iPhone or Android device.”

CareerBuilder for Employers is available on the iTunes store.

Now, a couple of acquisitions.

Doostang Acquired by Universum

Doostang, the fee-based career site for young professionals, was acquired by Universum Development, the parent company of global employer branding and marketing firm Universum.

The Swedish-sounding Doostang is headquartered in Silicon Valley, where it was founded barely six years ago. Universum, which sounds like one of those Valley startups, is headquartered in Sweden, has some 1,200 clients, and is more than two decades old.

What they have in common is a strong focus on early-career professionals. Doostang has a Ladders-like business model, with job listings at its core. Universum is well-known for its survey of students and professionals who rate and rank the image of employers worldwide. The results become Univsersum’s IDEAL Employer Rankings.

How much Universum paid wasn’t disclosed. But since its founding, Doostang has gotten $5.75 million from investors. It claims 900,000 users, its monthly traffic is a fraction of that and, according to Compete.com, is declining.

Jeff Berger, founder and former CEO of  KODA, is Doostang’s new CEO. Even though KODA didn’t make it, falling victim to a recession that was already underway when it launched, Berger’s vibe and tailored approach to careers for the Gen Yers earned it an outsized share of attention.

If he brings that same energy and innovation to Doostang, then his press release comment that “Doostang will provide an innovative social media solution to Universum’s 1000+ clients across the globe,” will be an understatement.

SumTotal Systems

There’s also the acquisition last week of Accero and CyberShift by SumTotal Systems. This is a big deal, as it makes SumTotal “the largest provider of learning management software and one of the largest providers of talent management software,” according to Josh Bersin. Even more than that, it gives SumTotal a soup-to-nuts human capital management suite.

From its beginnings as a learning management provider, SumTotal has grown both organically, and especially by the acquisition of five companies before the most recent deal. Last year, it bought talent management provider Softscape.

SumTotal itself was acquired in 2009 by Vista Equity Partners, which paid $160 million and took it private.

Accero had several global customers for its payroll and benefits software, which handled complex, cross-jurisdictional payrolls for large multinationals.

CyberShift was a SaaS-provider of workforce management and expense-accounting software, including time and attendance, absence and leave management, and complex scheduling.

SumTotal said the two companies together had 1,000 clients, which gives the company a total of 3,400 around the world and revenue in excess of $200 million.

It now has the challenge of integrating the various components into an integrated whole, while supporting the existing product line. As Bersin wrote, “We have talked with some companies who have not found these transitions easy — but this is a fairly common problem in the HR software industry and SumTotal’s leadership team is laser focused on making sure that existing customers receive sound ongoing support.”

The White House

Today, Roberto Angulo, founder and CEO of the college student and alum job board AfterCollege, will be at the White House, among other Washington locations, to participate in the launching of Buy Young.

It’s an initiative of OUR TIME, an advocacy organization and network for those under-30. The Buy Young campaign encourages support for companies and organizations founded by emerging entrepreneurs.

Joining the group at appearances at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Capitol Hill, and the White House will be emerging entrepreneurs, industry leaders and government representatives including Kal Penn, Associate Director of White House Outreach, Sen. John McCain, and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer.

Angulo’s AfterCollege powers the career network for OUR TIME.

In March, says new data from Indeed.com, HR jobs were up 34 percent over March of 2010, and the number of human resource job postings grew faster than those in half a dozen other industry categories. In the last quarter alone, HR beat out the growth in most of the categories that Indeed tracks. Now that says something about the confidence of American employers.

Indeed, today, began listing human resources as the 13th category in its employment trends. The jobs site counts the number of HR and HR-related jobs during a month, scrubs the list to eliminate duplicates, and posts the results. It does the same for clicks into the HR listings on Indeed. (Because Indeed sends those clicks directly to the site where the job post originated, it can’t say how many turned into applications.)

Indeed also offers a few other data points: top keyword searches; top 10 job locations (New York, for HR, is #1, but St. Louis, and Charlotte, NC, also made the list); and the top job titles advertised.

Indeed debuted the list at the ERE Expo two weeks ago, with data showing HR jobs were up 37 percent year-over-year. For the Expo audience, Indeed did a special tabulation of recruiting and related jobs, which showed a 49 percent growth there on a February 2011 to February 2010 basis.

When you get done checking out the HR jobs, don’t forget to review the rest of the categories. It’s a good way to see what types of jobs are hottest and where the reqs are strongest. (No surprise: that would be healthcare.)

It’s also a good way to discover that real estate might not be the place to consider for your next career move.

Beyond, itself a network of some 15,000 employment sites, replaces HotJobs. The former Yahoo job board joined The Network in 2004 as the affiliate for the US and Canada.

The Network itself was founded in 2002 by two United Kingdom job boards — StepStone and TotalJobs. They brought in the Swiss board, Jobs.ch, and Irishjobs. Today, The Network claims a presence in 121 countries. It has 36 members, with multiple local job boards, and an especially strong presence in Europe.

Recruiters work through the local affiliates to post individual jobs to the network. With increased volume, direct access is provided.

Beyond.com, based in Pennsylvania, operates niche and regional job boards under a variety of names. Its national site is Beyond.com.

For sure, there are plenty of others doing the same in their own corner of the recruiting business. Jobvite just seems to be a little quicker. And it manages to work with the spirit of the trend.

For instance, 18 months ago Jobvite launched an app for Facebook and LinkedIn that made it possible to match a job to an employee’s friends and contacts. That employee’s friends and contacts could also opt-in to match the job to their friends and contacts and, well, you get the idea. Jobvite Source, as it is branded, is a lot truer to the spirit of social media than simply tweeting jobs.

Today’s announcement by Jobvite is no different. The company has streamlined its recruiting platform, Jobvite Hire and Jobvite Source adding extra functionality to the integration with social media. Now, a recruiter, hiring manager, or an employee can customize Jobvite Source to post only some jobs to each of their social networks. An automatic scheduler is available to time the posts.

That can be a useful feature for an individual, but it’s even better for recruiter and company pages. No one need lard up their Facebook wall or LinkedIn profile with a continuous stream of job ads. The scheduler lets you target as well as time and limit the posting of openings.

Targeting of the Jobvites has also been improved so that now a recruiter can match job openings to employees, rather than sending an opening to the entire workforce.

Jobvite Source will also distribute jobs across some 300 social networks and the like. And the Jobvites can be redistributed via Twitter.

The analytics may be the most crucial piece of everything Jobvite does. Regardless of how many times a Jobvite job is posted, reposted, forwarded or retweeted, the source is tracked. So a recruiter or hiring manager will know what network, blog, referral or what have you produced the best results.

There’s a free version of Jobvite Source called Jobvite Share that can do many of the things that the commercial version discussed here does. It’s limited, though, in the number of channels and contacts that can be handled in one sitting. The commercial version automates practically everything.

In a recent online poll by Monster Canada, 32 percent of French Canadian workers chose  work in answer to the question “Which factor would make you most loyal to an employer?” Only 15 percent of English Canadians  picked that as the most important factor for loyalty.

Instead, for 31 percent of the English respondents, “good pay and benefits” were #1.That was most important for 27 percent of French respondents.

There were other key differences between English and French workers. For 25 percent of English Canadians, their coworkers and a great boss were most important to keeping them loyal to an employer. Only 18 percent of French Canadians thought that important.

Advancement was more important to English workers (15 percent) than to French workers (9 percent), but both groups were just about equal in citing recognition as the reason for their loyalty.

Monster released its financials for 2008 this afternoon and the numbers give mute testimony to the impact of the worldwide recession on the recruitment market.

For the last quarter of 2008 Monster reported revenues of $290.7 million and earnings per share of 24 cents. This is off from last year and below analysts’ expectations, falling at the lower end of Wall Street’s estimates.

The biggest hit came in the company’s North American sales which were off 22.1 percent in the 4th quarter from the same quarter in 2007. For the year, North American sales were off 9.8 percent.

The silver lining, thin as it may be, is that the company managed to eke out a 1.5 percent increase in revenue for the full year, due mostly to a 17.9 percent growth for the year in international sales. However, the recession’s global impact began to be felt in the 4th quarter. International sales were off 14.3 percent, coming in at $122.8 million, just $12.3 million less than the  $135.1  million Monster generated in North America.

However the company’s operating expenses were almost $70 million more in 2008, which made a big dent in the earnings per share for the year. More than of half that – $40 million – is attributed for legal expenses in connection with the lawsuits arising out of the stock options backdating of several years ago.

Monster reported diluted earnings of $1.03 per share in 2008 vs. $1.12 in 2007.

Last year, Monster had $347.8 million in revenue for the 4th quarter and $1.324 billion for all of 2007.

Analysts had been expecting 4th quarter revenue in the range of $279.1 to $331.4 million with the average being $311.6 million. Earnings had been expected in the range of 21 to 33 cents per share with the average being 27 cents.

Monster, like most publicly held companies, reports numbers in a variety of different ways to make it easier for analysts to make comparisons. Numbers used here are from the company’s operations statements.

Depending when you read this, the redesigned site that company officials promise puts the focus on the jobseeker may already be up and running. If not, give it time, a company spokesman said Friday afternoon. Launching a new site, especially one that is global, is not just a matter of flipping switches, he said.

Today’s launch has been in the works for much of 2008. The date was picked at least as far back as October when Monster gave sneak previews at ERE Expo in Ft. Lauderdale. The company’s presence at the show was unavoidable. Buttons touting 1.10.09 where everywhere. Showgoers lined up at the booth to see what was coming and, of course, to pick up one of the purple Monster beach towels or win a stuffed trumpasaurus.

What we saw of the new Monster showed a site that seemed as useful to passive jobseekers on their way up the career ladder as the current one is to active job-seekers. It has career planning tools that let a user compare their progress to others in their field, even in the same job at other companies. And like a good talent management system, the new Monster will show a user where the gaps are in their experience and background.

We certainly didn’t get to see everything Monster had in the bag, but our tour guide, Eric Winegardner, VP of Client Adoption, promised that something like 90 percent of the user experience — recruiter, as well as seeker — was reworked, redesigned, or improved.

After you’ve walked through the new site, tell us what you think.

In the 1990s, the 74-year-old billionaire fashioned what is today Monster Worldwide from a Yellow Pages advertising firm and two of the earliest online job boards, The Monster Board and Online Career Center. McKelvey got into the advertising business in 1967 when he founded Telephone Marketing Program, which would later lend its acronym to the fledgling advertising conglomerate, TMP Worldwide.

In the early years, the Yellow Pages advertising division was the financial engine for the business. But by 2003, in acknowledgment of the direction the company was headed, TMP Worldwide became Monster Worldwide. Three years later the division was sold off piecemeal with capital fund management firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson getting the North American portion.

By then McKelvey was on his way out as chairman and CEO of the company he founded. He resigned in late 2006 in the midst of an investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission into the backdating of stock options by the company. McKelvey later admitted to playing a role in authorizing the backdating and paid a cash settlement. Because of his already advanced cancer, prosecutors agreed to postpone further court action.

Less well known is McKelvey’s philanthropy. The Associated Press says that since 2001, he has donated $25 million to the Andrew J. McKelvey Lung Transplantation Center at Emory University in Atlanta and has given $3 million to the Andrew J. McKelvey Lower School at the Hewitt School in New York.

His McKelvey Foundation has supported over 600 college students across the country, and he has provided funding for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and for the Andrew J. McKelvey Campus Center at his alma mater, Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa.

McKelvey is survived by his children, Geoffrey, Stuart, Christine, Amanda, as well as six grandchildren.