Monster Worldwide appears to be emerging from the recession with increased bookings across Western Europe and China, although North America appears to be a bit more skittish and the U.K. and India can be best described as sluggish. Overall, bookings were up about 19 percent for Q2, compared with the same quarter of 2009.

And while a sour global economy certainly had its negative impact, one explosive trend hasn’t fazed Monster a bit, according to CEO Sal Iannuzzi: social media.

“We simply have not seen any type of significant impact on our business,” he said in answer to an analyst’s question during Monster’s quarterly earnings call. “As I’ve said before, I think certainly [social media and professional-social sites] will be utilized by some of our customers. It’s a technology that certainly has a place in the recruitment process. But in terms of impact on our business, we just haven’t seen any significant impact at all.”

Monster Worldwide’s Q2 revenue was flat compared to Q1 — about $215 million in North American and International operations combined — and only off a combined 4 percent from Q2 2009. The good news there for Monster and its investors is that revenues aren’t headed south, generally speaking. North American revenue was about $97 million — down 5 percent from Q2 2009 — while international revenue was about $97 million, off 3 percent.

When you factor Monster’s bookings (the dollar value of contractual orders received in a quarter) they’re up a year-over 19 percent at $208 million — and down 5 percent from Q1 to Q2. That’s a mixed message. But if July bookings are an indicator, Q3 bookings and revenue might very well be ahead of guidance, an optimistic Iannuzzi told analysts. He said to expect Q3 2010 to be the first positive quarter since Q3 2008.

Iannuzzi attributed Monster’s growth to new technologies that seem to be sitting well with recruiters, notably its premium 6Sense semantic-search product and its Career Ad Network which “are creating significant value for our customers” and growing Monster’s market share.

“It’s clear we’re moving the company in the right direction,” Iannuzzi said. “Our ability to provide unique solutions to customers is differentiated from both traditional and new competitors. Bookings are expected to grow on the high end of the 15 to 20 percent range. Customer retention — and rate of acquisition of new customers — are improving. Customers have indicated that they’ll allocate more of their recruitment budget to Monster’s products and solutions.”

Monster has also managed to hold down operational costs — about $213 million for the quarter or about a 1 percent year-over growth. One notable expense has been about $15 million spent YTD on legal fees and related costs associated with the acquisition of Yahoo HotJobs. And even though Monster expects to “continue to incur significant acquisition-related costs and integration fees,” the deal is still on track to close this quarter, Iannuzzi said.

Monster is managing the acquisition on several fronts, not least of which is cooperating with the Federal Trade Commission in its regulatory review. It must also negotiate with not only Hotjobs’ newspaper partners, but its own newspaper partners as well, to solve competition issues. Monster isn’t commenting on the processes, nor should it while under federal review.

Monster’s financial releases are here.