WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Paul Pickthorne is not a huge fan of Monster.com.

The founder and “Chief Free Officer” of Alexandria-based Smuz.com spent 15 years in the recruiting business and was frustrated with how much it cost for employers to post job listings on that site and on its competitors.

Pickthorne saw the opportunity to do something about it when job-related search engines such as Indeed.com and Jobster.com started getting popular. Instead of being destination sites, which list jobs, they search through all the job listings out there and come up with what fits a particular user’s criteria.

“Search changes everything,” Pickthrone said, arguing that if candidates are finding job postings through an engine rather than a particular site, destination sites lose their dominance.

Smuz.com requires no payment for its career posts, much like the popular Craigslist became famous for doing with jobs, classifieds and other listings. But Pickthorne countered that Craigslist has now begun charging employers for job listings in major cities, though the fees are much lower than those on major job sites.

Monster.com, for example, charges for individual job listings and for packages — for example, one job listing and a resume search normally cost $1,045, according to its Web site.

Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com did not return requests for comment Thursday.

The plan is for Smuz to make its money through advertising, Pickthrone said. In the four weeks since its public launch, it has had more than 100,000 job views and 1,300 employers list jobs on the site, including Marriott International and Intel. It receives about 100 resumes per day right now, he said.

The company is also playing around with new features including A Commute To Kill For, where users can search for jobs within walking distance or within their own ZIP code.

Other sites are following suit. In a statement last week, Texas-based information technology job site itzbig.com announced it is switching to a no-fee model.

melissa.frederick@dcexaminer.com