You’ve prob­a­bly already heard about the ‘merg­er’ of Career­Builder and Mon­ster. It’s actu­al­ly Apol­lo Glob­al Man­age­ment acquir­ing a con­trol­ling share of Mon­ster, and Rand­stad back­ing out of the job board busi­ness. This news comes on the heels of reports con­cern­ing Indeed’s drop in traf­fic and Seek’s exit from Latin Amer­i­ca.

Is any of this con­nect­ed? Well, maybe. And there may also be a les­son in there for the rest of us.

First – Career­Builder and Mon­ster. As has been dis­cussed pre­vi­ous­ly, Apol­lo has been busi­ly sell­ing off parts of Career­Builder for years. Why? Well, that’s what pri­vate equi­ty does – it max­i­mizes prof­its, usu­al­ly by break­ing apart com­pa­nies and sell­ing the dif­fer­ent parts to the high­est bid­der. Appar­ent­ly Apol­lo decid­ed that they’d scraped enough from Career­Builder, and would now look at oth­er ways of max­i­miz­ing rev­enue. Enter Rand­stad, with Mon­ster, a prop­er­ty they prob­a­bly nev­er should have bought. Like Career­Builder, Mon­ster’s biggest asset was its brand. Despite years of mis­man­age­ment, it con­tin­ued to remain a (some­what) known enti­ty amongst the globe’s job seek­ers. What do you do with two dam­aged but still some­what valu­able brands? Well – we don’t know yet. Apol­lo has­n’t been clear on whether they will merge the two, keep them sep­a­rate, or re-sell them.

Both sites have already seen sig­nif­i­cant depar­tures (will­ing­ly or not) of employ­ees. So what do the respec­tive boss­es (at this point in time) say about the prop­er­ties?

“Through the com­bi­na­tion of Mon­ster and Career­Builder we bring togeth­er two trust­ed brands and best-in-class solu­tions to cre­ate a stronger job board for our tal­ent and employ­ers,” Scott Gutz, CEO of Mon­ster, said.

“We are thrilled to make this announce­ment; bring­ing togeth­er two indus­try lead­ers to cre­ate a force in the mar­ket,” Jeff Fur­man, CEO of Career­Builder, added.

In oth­er words, not much.

I’m bet­ting that in fact they will be merged, and that the Career­Builder name will be retained. Why? Because it’s already gen­er­at­ing rev­enue for Apol­lo, while Mon­ster has been hid­den in the Rand­stad offer­ings. I actu­al­ly think that Mon­ster has more brand equi­ty. But who’s ask­ing me? As the AIM Group points out in a recent arti­cle, the merged prop­er­ty would be a sol­id num­ber 3 in terms of traf­fic in the U.S., behind Indeed and ZipRecruiter. Then I sus­pect Apol­lo sells Career­Builder and looks for anoth­er vic­tim.

And Indeed? Well, the site that built its rep­u­ta­tion on SEO exper­tise and lots of traf­fic has seen its traf­fic decline. Not a good look if your brand is “num­ber 1”. And Seek, who was known in the job board world for job board prop­er­ties in lots of mar­ket, has backed out of Latin Amer­i­ca. Although their brand is not as well defined as the oth­ers, the move had to affect clients’ per­cep­tion of the com­pa­ny.

In all of these cas­es, you have job board brands at var­i­ous stages in their lives – and let me point out that his­tor­i­cal­ly all have been very effec­tive in devel­op­ing and using their brands to gen­er­ate high lev­els of rev­enue. It’s kind of amaz­ing that old­er, dam­aged brands like Career­Builder and Mon­ster are still kick­ing and throw­ing off lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars. But there are lim­its to what even his­toric brands can do in the face of new com­peti­tors and declin­ing traf­fic. Par­tic­u­lar­ly if the own­ers don’t invest in them.

Indeed – well, I have no doubt that it will bounce back. But traf­fic declines and failed prod­uct launch­es – plus com­pet­ing with for­mer clients in new mar­kets – seems to be mak­ing the job hard­er. Is there still a clear Indeed brand out there? I’m not so sure. And Seek – well, I don’t count them out at all – but I would­n’t want to be their VP of Mar­ket­ing right now!

So the les­son for the rest of us? Whether or not you’re Career­Builder and Mon­ster, Indeed, Seek – or you, it’s crit­i­cal to keep your brand clear­ly defined – and to invest in it. This is a job that only gets hard­er as your suc­cess increas­es. It takes a long time to build an effec­tive brand – but not so long to destroy it.

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