Yahoo hires new HotJobs head

Web portal Yahoo on Monday appointed former Knight Ridder executive Daniel Finnigan to oversee its job-listings subsidiary HotJobs.com.

Finnigan's appointment comes a few weeks after Yahoo unexpectedly announced Dimitri Boylan, CEO and co-founder of HotJobs, would step down at the end of March. Yahoo in February completed its acquisition of HotJobs for about $439 million in cash and stock in a move to boost its online listings services.

Since 1999, Finnigan had served as president of Knight Ridder Digital, which develops and manages the Internet properties of newspaper publisher Knight Ridder. He will report to Greg Coleman, Yahoo's executive vice president of North American operations. Finnigan will be based in New York City.

Yahoo's purchase of HotJobs underscores the company's effort to augment its banner-advertising revenue with classified listings. HotJobs generates the bulk of its income from employers and recruiters looking to advertise job vacancies.

Terry Semel, chief executive of Yahoo, has publicly stated his intention to reduce display advertising revenue to 50 percent of the company's total sales to avoid dependency on the revenue stream. In the fourth quarter of 2001, 28 percent of total sales came from "non-advertising" sources; Yahoo includes job listings in this category. The increase reflects a 39 percent drop in display advertising revenue from the same period the year before.

Still, HotJobs faces stiff competition from online job-listings leader Monster.com, a division of TMP Worldwide. TMP came close to buying HotJobs last year, but Yahoo offered a sweeter bid for the site.