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Marketing monster.com

Dhruvakanth B Shenoy, Vice-president, Marketing, Monster Asia, speaks to Srinivasa Rao Dasari about his passion to build a brand image for his organisation

Dhruvakanth Shenoy works with a mission to deliver things for the organisation he works for. It doesn’t matter which organisation Shenoy is with—he always aims at building a good image for his company. Shenoy is the Vice-president, Marketing, of Monster Asia, and heads all marketing and product initiatives at Monster India and JobsAhead (Monster recently acquired JobsAhead). He falls under that rare category of professionals who do not hesitate to go beyond the comfort zone. From advertising to marketing to running one of India’s largest online recruitment organisations, he has had varied experiences. Shenoy is now redefining the e-recruitment process by transforming the organisation as a preferred destination for job seekers and employers as well.

“My passion was for the advertising field and building a brand image for whatever organisation I worked for. I always look at how I can get much larger responsibilities through sincere hardwork. Since I do not want to be one among many, I put all my efforts to get the best for the organisation. I focus on making things differently,” says Shenoy.

Born in Udipi, Karnataka, Shenoy studied at various schools and colleges in different towns as his father had a transferable job at Canara Bank. He completed his schooling in Bettadapura (near Mysore) and Raichur. He did intermediate and the first two years of BCom at Railway Degree College in Secunderabad, and final year at V R College in Nellore. He then did his MBA with marketing specialisation from Sri Venkateshwara University at Tirupati.

His career started off with TGL Quick Foods in Adoni, AP, which was into making instant foods; he worked there for two years. In order to fulfill his dream career in advertising, he joined Clarion Advertising Services (now Bates Clarion) in 1989 as an Accounts Executive. Within a short time he was elevated to handle big accounts such as HMT Watches and Kwality Biscuits. His career took a leap at Ogilvy & Mather Advertising in Bangalore in 1991. During his tenure of nine years at Ogilvy, Shenoy got six promotions, which speaks enough about his performance. He handled major accounts like Mico Bosch, Madura Coats, Lipton Tea, Allen Solly, BPL and IBM. His last assignment at Ogilvy was IBM, for which he worked as Client Services Director leading about 15 members in his team. Shenoy considers working on the IBM account as a turning point in his career as his association with the global major developed in him a fascination for Internet-related business.

“While working with IBM I understood what big business means, and how technology changes business and trends in the industry. Thanks to IBM, our company attained 15-20 percent more than the target every year. Since I then developed a fascination for the Internet and related areas, I quit Ogilvy in June 2000 to pursue a career as a consultant in the Internet business in the days of the dotcom boom,” explains Shenoy.

He started his own independent consultancy under the name of NetLateral Consulting. In this capacity he worked with Indegene Lifesystems, a healthcare technology company, and guided the organisation to establish its presence online. During this period, Ogilvy & Mather also retained him as a consultant to guide the account management team on its Internet and tech businesses in Bangalore. Then in November 2000 he joined monsterindia.com as a Marketing Manager and moved to Hyderabad.

Expounding his future plans Shenoy says, “I always aim at building the brand image of monsterindia.com, apart from getting new users to our site. We are going to dominate the Internet when it comes to e-recruitment. We have tied up with Rediff and Sify. To attract Internet users, we also advertise on 18 sites. Media Matrics recently rated monsterindia as the number one job site in India. At present, IT recruitment accounts for more than 42 percent of total e-recruitment, while it is 18 percent in manufacturing and 13 percent in the banking and finance sectors. We are focussing on expanding e-recruitment in the manufacturing sector, and penetrating other non-IT areas. Today the challenge for us is how to expand the e-recruitment market beyond the IT industry.”

Monsterindia has a reach of 73.6 percent among job seekers who use the Internet in the country, and gets 70 lakh visitors per month. More than 1.4 lakh applications are received everyday through its site, and it gets about two lakh resumes per month. It now has around 45 lakh resumes and 4,800 employers who advertise on it, including 1,500 recruiters. Monster has a presence in 26 countries, and in terms of traffic, India stands second only to the US.

Shenoy has two elder brothers. One is in Indian Airlines and the other is in Udipi. Shenoy has two sons, and his wife, who earlier worked as a teacher, is now a homemaker. His hobbies include photography, reading non-fiction, and playing table tennis and chess.