Monster's founder eyes the future.

• Position: Conference Preview - Jeff Taylor - Interview

Jeff Taylor, the founder and chairman of Monster, the Internet-based recruitment company that has the largest job-posting traffic volume on the globe, is a big believer in b the ability of technology to reshape the world. The advertising agency veteran dreamed up Monster in 1994 and says he designed the interface at a coffee shop early one morning after being intrigued by the bulletin board services that were starting to proliferate on the World Wide Web. Initially, the company was known as "the Monster Board."

Taylor sold the company to TMP Worldwide in 1995 but has remained chairman and guiding visionary. In fact, TMP recently changed its name to Monster Worldwide Inc., a reflection of the top-of-mind brand that the service has established around the world. Monster is now operating help-wanted services featuring local content and local languages in 22 countries and has an impressive array of statistics: More than 18 million visitors a month, more than 50 million unique visits and a database of 27 million resumes, as well as a network of 200,000 employers that post openings.

Taylor gives as many as 60 talks a year, traveling recently to areas like India and Central America, talking to executives and business audiences about human capital management, trends in labor and recruitment and the promises of new technology. He will be a keynote speaker at FEI's annual CFIT Conference, to be held Sept. 17-19 in Las Vegas. Taylor spoke in June with Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Marshall; an edited transcript follows.

On human capital management: "We're headed toward the worst labor shortage we've seen in our lifetimes, and it will begin to accelerate in 2008.

I talk about the job-seeker revolution. It's hard to visualize when you have 6 percent unemployment and 9 million people out of work, but we've been going through a 'virtuous cycle' in business since 1960 in the U.S., where supply and demand are in direct proportion to our economy.

There's a very systematic ebb and flow to the economy; when the economy is doing well, we have low unemployment and no supply [issues]. We experienced that [most strongly] in 1998 and 1999, and the beginning of 2000, when the employee took control in the buyer-seller relationship. We have 100 years of history saying that [things are] moving in this direction, but employers have very little skill in knowing what to do when their employees are in control.

There's a combination of five factors that will make up this labor...