Like a lucky survivor sprinting from a burning jumbo jet, Monster.com was one of the few local tech companies that emerged from the dot-com crash in 2000 pretty much unscathed.

The Maynard-based website had changed the way people hunted for jobs, and the way companies filled open positions. It owned two blimps emblazoned with its trademark monster characters, advertised on the Super Bowl, and became a sponsor of the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. By 2003, its parent company, New York-based TMP Worldwide, which bought Monster.com in 1995, changed its name to Monster Worldwide to reflect the career site’s importance to its overall business.