Indeed - A Hiring Powerhouse
Some of our most successful portfolio companies are household names and get tremendous coverage in the press. Others are equally successful but have done it quietly, mostly under the radar of the the media and the blogosphere. The poster child for the second group is Indeed.
Over the past couple years, Indeed has emerged as the top jobs site on the global web. This is comscore data below. 
But even more impressive is the fact that Indeed drives more hiring than any other web service. One of the leading applicant tracking services, Silk Road, did a survey using real ATS data from 700 of their clients and here are the results. 
So not only has Indeed surpassed the leading job sites in terms of usage, it has also surpassed them in terms of sourcing hires, which is the whole purpose of these services.
And they've done this without much fanfare, without much notice, but with flawless execution and a great service. Well done Indeed.
Comments (Archived):
Indeed.
i knew i was going to get that comment!
Sorry. You set yourself up for that. And as the first commenter, I had to oblige. 😉
You beat me to it 🙂
Indeed.
Stop it
I’m done.
You gave up too soon.
@VictusFate:disqus I was going to reply to “You gave up too soon” with “Indeed” but alas, the Disqus comment thread had ended.
and that’s not easy to do!Indeed!
John Revay has given me reason to believe that I own the patent for this word in this community.. I’m coming for you, Jim.. Meet you in court.
if yahoo doesn’t get him first…
Bring it on, Jedi
Begun, the clone wars have..
thats amazing. I knew something was going on when i got our CTO using Indeed for pennies compared with the traditional way. i was chatting with a a founder of a recently financed start-up here in Boston a few weeks back – he was waxing on about the 30K he spent in fees to secure 2 top developers. I dont get it.Indeed disrupts on priceIndeed disrupts on sorting, searching, filteringIndeed makes it easier to build a great team. period.
Two things nobody has solved yet though…sifting intelligently through the volume that an Indeed will funnel your way (especially in the current economy). Hard for my team to break through the noise when most corporate recruiters are carrying at least 25 openings at any given time (and that may be light). Easier when it is one or two hires. And two: the black hole of responsiveness to applicants. Even if its a no.Over the past 12 years of me doing this nothing has improved on the above…
I can’t understand — with all of the automation in the recruiting/hiring process — why it’s not a standard to send polite rejection letters.
I think being able to spam back to those you did not choose a “Dear John” letter still does little to solve the responsiveness issue. You know it is automated. The same as a ‘no response’, some would argue.
It’s not a personal response, yet it at least allows the job seeker to eliminate that opportunity from his or her list. Having lived through 2008-9 with many friends in the finance sector, I watched as they suffered the “no response” response. In the language of David Allen, the non-response was “open loop” and something to potentially hope for, follow up on, etc.(And every follow up note or call saps time and attention on the receiving end, too.) In the end, I guess it depends on a company’s values, and how they’re expressed as part of their brand. Do they want to be thought of as “no-responders”?
ATS data – what’s that?
ATS is applicant tracking system
Is that a standard? A platform?
Recruiting industry acronym, jargon. Think of it as the deep technological black hole that companies put their mass of candidates through. Also helps larger companies in particular stay compliant with fun things like the EEO/AA, etc.If integrated an applicant that turns into a hire will start out with a resume/cv submission online, and do everything on up to on-boarding paperwork via an ATS.
Thx
It doesn’t really help with the problem of resumes not being helpful in describing a person
Nope. In fact, nothing does. No matter what any new “People Clues” esque startup tells you. I try to do the best with the rudimentary tools that persist, while making sure my employer is abiding by all appropriate laws ->one other factor that most folks are unaware of and its impact on how we recruit in the labor market.Not be ignored is also the human aspect of talent assessment.
There seems to be some sort of existential problem – none of us really know the other person well
ATShttp://www.taleo.com/ comes to mind
congratulations on your success, indeed!speaking of jobs today the US senate votes on the jobs act, which is a crowdfunding bill. crowdfunding is one of the most important measures out there to re-building the global economy, in comes in second place in my opinion to competing currency legislation. of course congress generally prefers to speak the language of money but if there was ever a reason to harass congress that did not involve the uncomfortable subjects i usually prefer this is it!there are some people saying the jobs act is bad because it will enable more financial crimes…..pfft. those people are wrong and misunderstand the financial crisis. hooray for the jobs act! it will enable the creation of new markets and thus will create jobs!
Support the Jobs Act here:http://angel.co/jobs-act
How do you look at monetization of a property like this? Clearly, its much lower than others (on a per user basis). It must be great to have investors who are this patient when it comes to revenue.
i can’t divulge their revenues and profits, but all i can say is i wish all of our portfolio companies could monetize like indeed
Sounds like a capital efficient investment – looks like they only did Series A.My sense is most of the USV companies are unable to scale quickly enough w/o additional follow-on fundingPay per click model is nice – if it works for app you are trying to build/launch!#CapitalEfficientInvesting
Pay per lead work great for all advertising models that transitioned from print e.g. jobs, auto, real estate etc. We used it for pretty much all verticals operated by carsales.com Ltd. where the advertiser was a business.
As the founder of a vertical search engine – http://www.nestoria.comI can confirm that when done correctly search is a highly profitable business, especially in a category like classifieds.Unlike content plays where advertising competes with editorial, in classifieds searchusers are coming to your site to find ads.
heard of nestoria.who’s your main competitor in the uk? zoopla.
No, they’re one of our close partners.Glad you’ve heard of us. You should immediately tell everyone you know 🙂
i’ve been recommending zoopla. i’ll add nestoria to the list….i like these services. been recommending indeed for a while, as well.
indeed hires you less experienced people, LinkedIn hires you more experienced people, old fashioned networking and referral gathering lands you your best people.
i agree with your last point. but not your second point. i think linkedin helps you hire more expensive people, but not necessarily more experienced people
Disagree slightly, especially if you are talking about larger companies. Linkedin is getting better at being old fashioned networking. As that improves, so has our company’s hit rate on candidates via linkedin. People cost what they cost. A pay stub from the most recent employer answers that question.
Why do you say that about LinkedIn, Fred?
that’s what we see in our portfolio companies hiring
The more important point here is that referrals and networking hires drives better quality hires (performance report data) that stay longer (length of service). That big blue line next to indeed matters less if you are not hiring quality people. Find a way to prove that hiring through indeed = quality of talent vs quality and I’ll give my entire bad ass yet puny recruiting budget.The other thing we should consider is the entire way we communicate with each other as prospective employees and employers needs to be disrupted badly. A few 30 minute meetings is a guessing game. Imagine if you had to sign up for dating someone for 2 years after the second date, and if you separated, you had a non compete that says you can’t date anyone in your city until the end of the 2 years. I have a wire-frame Fred, when I hoss my pitch deck I’ll let you know.
Drew, can you share specific information that shows that Indeed does not provide high quality and/or experienced candidates?
Sure. As soon as you share specific information that shows which indeed office you work in Guest-y-Guest-er-son ….And my point was not that indeed does not hire quality people, I have a few sitting right next to me and it is an important part of my hiring strategy. My point was that referral driven hires are better performers and last longer overall than all of the other sources of hires, which includes indeed. Common sense more than anything should tell you this is fact. If someone excellent here referssomeone they have worked with – there is a significant advantage.
Drew,You said: “indeed hires you less experienced people, LinkedIn hires you more experienced people”Do you have data to support that, or are you speculating?
Indeed faces the same strategic threat as Google. Increasingly people “search” by asking their social network rather than typing a query into a search box.In the case of jobs this especially has potential to be hugely disruptive, as many companies reward current employees for finding new ones. LinkedIn obviously aggressively working on this for salaried jobs, probably something on top of Facebook for hourly jobs. Social networks have an advantage in that users are using them all the time. Vertical search engines have to convince user it is worth going “out of their way” to do the search.
MAIN REASON SOCIAL NOT DESTROY SEARCH YET?MOST PEOPLE NOT ON SOCIAL.ONCE MOST PEOPLE ON LINKEDIN, IT WIN SEARCH FOR JOBS.ONCE MOST PEOPLE ON STACKOVERFLOW, IT WIN FOR FIND ANSWERS.ONCE MOST PEOPLE ON FACEBOOK, IT WIN FOR FIND ANNOYING ADS.THIS WHY GOOGLE DESTROYING SELF TO CATCH UP.
MORE PEOPLE ON LINKEDIN THAN INDEED. INDEED STILL WINS.
Agree with you on Google killing itself. Having worked at Yahoo! on search 10 years ago when Y! was trying hard to compete with Google, yet getting left behind, I learned the lesson: trying to be something you aren’t is impossible. Yahoo! was not a search engine. Google is not social.re: social and jobs, I think Linkedin has the potential to be the winner, but their biggest problem is themself – the service is way too cluttered and pushy. I think they confuse usage with value. Stop trying to get me to “engage”. Instead just offer a useful (and understandable) tool I can turn to when I need it
GOOGLE KILL SELF TO BE SOCIAL JUST RESULT IN DEAD GOOGLE.LINKEDIN HAVE SAME PROBLEM. IS GOOD ONLINE RESUME. THAT IT.
LinkedIn is not a good online resume. It’s a partially completed online resume. You can find fully complete online resumes at Indeed – http://www.indeed.com/resumes
The secret sauce of Facebook is that it allows people to brag in a way that is now deemed acceptable and to be someone they’re not. In the old days the only guys would could appear to be cool were the ones that were really cool or got to be on a team or in a band (with the cool band picture).Can’t really do that with linkedin because the “micro brags” don’t really fit well into the linkedin format and nobody would care anyway that you exceeded your quota for the quarter.(Speaking of bragging people in the 70’s used to leave the sticker on their car window so their neighbors would see the price of their new car.)
yup. it is the web’s resume database. at least that’s how i use it.
There is a limit to search, and it has reached its limit. Until search reaches the point to where it gets beyond words or phrases and allow the user to create a matrix from which the search can be started then it is limited.Social is limited, its limited by the fact that without actual human interaction, actual face to face, touchy feely relationships, it will never progress beyond being a glorified ads platform for people with more time than things to do.Until a jobs or HR website can not only give me a resume but also a way to grasp the mindset of a candidate then its nothing more than a glorified help wanted board.Just like I tell people about ecommerce, it has its limits too. Until you redefine the retail or shopping “experience” you are just a fad….Its not a revolution until it changes fundamentals…..
your comment reminded me of hireart…… http://hireart.com/
Actually Kid, I realize that I was just venting; venting at the fact that I am in an industry of stupid dinosaurs; people really need to change!I wish I still made my own shirts then I wouldn’t have to deal with contractors; I am so tired of listening to their lectures of what is wrong with the market and the world when the reality is they are the most incompetent lying jack asses the world has ever known.God, I hate the old economy!
i would like to beef with your assertions here. i think you only need a small percent of passionate users on these social services. they do all the work, then it is up to the platform operator to use that labor to disrupt search. yelp is sort of doing it, foursquare says they will do it.
YOU BEEF WITH WRONG ASSERTION.LINKEDIN NOT KILL RECRUITERS UNTIL 90% OF CANDIDATES ON IT WITH FULL INFO. USE LINKEDIN NOW IS SKIP 40% OF GREAT CANDIDATES.STACKOVERFLOW GET GOOD ANSWERS, BUT MOST LEADERS IN FIELDS NOT THERE. USE STACKOVERFLOW NOW IS ONLY 60% CHANCE OF GET RIGHT ANSWER. FACEBOOK CLOSEST TO WIN. IT HAVE MOST PEOPLE. WHEN PUT AD ON FACEBOOK REACH 90% OF TARGET AUDIENCE, THAT WHEN IT WIN.IT NOT ABOUT USERS MAKE CONTENT. IT ABOUT WHO META-USERS OF NETWORK CAN REACH.
hmm…..i’m confused about your position. are you saying soc nets need to have all users, or all relevant, quality users? i believe it is all about quality users, and that low quality users are actually a cost. that is why i think facebook and twitter are on the wrong trajectory, because both have a “lets get the whole world under one roof” strategy which i think is dead on arrival and will be beaten handily by amazon or google to the extent that it is viable. does stackoverflow have all the good question answering engineeers on there? i’m not too familiar with the service so i don’t know, but that seems like a much more attainable goal. and once they do, they are in a position to have that dense group of high quality engineering minds answer questions about software engineering from all over the world.
DIFFERENT USE CASE.NETWORK USEFUL TO AVERAGE USER = REQUIRE CONTENT (POWER LAW OF USER GENERATED CONTENT).NETWORK USEFUL FOR REACH LARGE NUMBER OF USERS = REQUIRE LARGE NUMBER OF USERS (ONLY PERCENT OF POTENTIAL AUDIENCE MATTER).FOR LINKED IN BE #1 PLACE FIND RESUME, MUST HAVE ALMOST ALL GOOD RESUMES. NOT SMALL PERCENTAGE OF GREAT ONES.FOR STACKOVERFLOW BE #1 PLACE FIND EXPERT KNOWLEDGE, MUST HAVE MOST EXPERTS, NOT JUST FEW.FOR FACEBOOK BE #1 PLACE FIND EYEBALLS FOR ADS, MUST HAVE MOST EYEBALLS, NOT JUST FEW ENGAGED EYEBALLS.
Impressive results, indeed. So, what do you attribute Indeed’s success to?
great product, great end user experience.
yes – i am a customer and will vouch
IT LOW BAR. ALTERNATIVES ALL SUCK.
I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.
FIND MARKETS WITH SLOW BEARS AND SLOWER COMPETITION.
New-2-me.Already forwarded them to a bunch of clients and friend’s companies.
Did they pioneer Pay per Click per job? https://ads.indeed.com/Post…It’s a creative monetization.
pretty much. but that was an obvious thing to do.
I do some part time CFO work a for a client of mine, we needed to hire some people – we were going to try Indeed..just got a little scared off pay per click model – we did not have a big budget. Next time I will push to give it a try
ppc can be crazy efficient if you restrict the keywords used. using exact match and phrase match. and then set a daily limit.
Thank you – Good advice
I lead talent acquisition for a large org and Indeed started surging in ATS systems as early as 2007/2008. At that same time, maybe even a year or two prior, folks in my role starting asking the basic question regarding job board spend: Careerbuilder OR Monster…not both anymore. There was no need. Careerbuilder often won because unlike Monster, their leadership did not pretend that surging resources like Indeed and Linkedin did not exist. That Monster spend was also then put to those resources. In my opinion this only delayed what is now tremendous headwinds for Careerbuilder, and even more significant the fact that Monster has essentially put itself up for sale http://bit.ly/GC3yLI. Monster has awful strategic leadership. I did a 10g beta with Indeed a few years ago, and was a big believer going in of the model, and my ATS stats drove much of my optimism. In the end the additional value added from keyword spend and other Indeed services did little to improve my candidate flow/sourcing. It was the same (which was still a good thing) as the free incarnation of it. That was a while ago and likely has a lot to do the types of jobs/volume and focus you can apply to an investment in Indeed. I will be curious to see how profitable this model becomes. As a sidebar I predicted the demise of Monster and the acquisition spree that the recruitment/hr technology space has been on this year. I even gave Monster leadership a road map fix everything and evolve…if they only listened ;). http://www.thesloppyart.com
you were well ahead of the curve john!
what type of ATS were you utilizing John?
I have been on a few. Currently iCIMS, have spent time with Silkroad, and other holdovers such as Vurv and for those recruiting dinosaurs out there Resumix – an aged product that Yahoo bought and killed off during the dot com era.
John I am a Manager at a very large recruiting firm and perhaps I can share some insight into candidate flow/sourcing when comparing job boards. Most people that are actively applying go to all major job boards: Indeed, Monster, Career, etc. and applying to all relevant openings. The limiting factor is more so the amount of “actively looking people” and not necessarilly the job board once you get into the biggest ones. Our analytics show around 15% of a given talent pool are actively applying, and more than 50% of talent pools are passively open to new positions, but not taking the time to look. We spend 85% of time targeting passive job seekers through referrals and networking through phone calls. This boils down to the difference between actively recruiting candidates versus the passive posting model. I am a Manager in our Engineering division, but even our general labor recuiters follow this model while getting 10+ manufacturing line starts a week and use postings only to proactively fill their networks for key skill sets.
You just echoed what every single staffing vendor states to me on my voicemail many times a day… 😉 and puts into every powerpoint presentation. Sorry, had to tease you a bit. :)The above scenario you described is also why I have in-house senior recruiters to do much the same (we do partner with some preferred vendors when the search requires it). We also run evergreen postings as you describe above while using a sourcing firm to consistently fill our high frequency talent pools.Best of luck to you. It is a tough environment out there.
“what every single staffing vendor states to me on my voicemail many times a day”I’ve always wondered why sales people are so lazy and clueless that they can’t be creative in how they approach someone. Isn’t that an obvious point that they should have figured out quickly and changed their approach? Or are they (in general) as well trained as car salesmen?
Does you hire many new college grads? Can you give me your thoughts on college student/employer networking platform designed for employers to look at the skills, in real time, of studentsthroughout their college years? Two of the tools that employers would have access to are a micro-internships board and use-case platform.
There’s 49,000 or so students at my university. Real time core competencies are procrastination, beer consumption, and various degrees of pleading for sex.
i hear ya! And all their resumes look the same. The idea that we screen college hires by the number of typos in their resume is humorous.
that doesn’t change once you get out.
You’re right! Although we give them official sounding business labels – meeting; entertainment; negotiation.
bwhahaha, I’m sorry but that comment is really funny
With my new organization we do very modest college hiring. Two lives ago we were aggressive on the software engineering hiring front (dot com era). Off the cuff, not seeing the compulsion for the above service (no insult intended). Here are the pitfalls of every new job board, candidate assessment, and hiring tool developed since the dawn of time:1. “I had a bad hiring experience and I am an engineer” so you write an algorithm to intelligently do the job – candidate search is in the same woeful place as it was a dozen years ago. Never works well, only the names have changed.2. “The eharmony of job boards” – this comes from the other side of the argument that we need to spend more time on “traits” and personality types, and emotional IQ. Algorithms “miss this because they only search keywords for skills”. This graveyard includes companies like Jobfox.3. AND LAST – the one thing that both the above services never consider, and founders of the next “job service” always flub is not considering the audience that will actually PAY FOR THE SERVICE. Those would be corporate HR folks and in some cases hiring management. Not the most dynamic forward thinking folks on the planet. See where Linkedin is getting the vast majority of spend though…So much of the “innovation” in the jobs space comes from the point of view of the frustrated candidate (who is not the audience you directly monetize) or the presumption that the budget spending audience are willing to adapt to a new mindset.The real answer is this: solve the candidate response blackhole, disrupt with light technology the ridiculous recruitment fee structure (20-25% of base salaries?!?!) and drive value for overstretched HR and hiring management to cut to the core of quality candidates that right now are somewhere piled in with hundreds of other non-qualified candidates who bog down your ability to get talent in front of the business. Good thing I have already drawn up the business case/plan 😉
Back in 2000 when job boards in general were doing well (we had 60,000 IT job ads) I began launching a new services for “Permanent Placement” hires that cut the fees to $8000-$12,000 per hire using a call-center oriented recruiting process combined with online skills testing (Brainbench) and online background checking. We were successfully placing IT professionals with IBM, UPS, Goldman Sachs and other Fortune companies as well as startups. We responded to each candidate and they LOVED it. It was working well right up until the dotcom crash when everyone stopped hiring.
Mike – that sounds like a terrific business and one that sadly would still be viable in today’s market…I guess that says something about evolution of the talent acquisition industry! I founded a company with similar deliverables around the same time you crashed and it was hugely successful right up until the 2008 crash (we hung in there and its still doing its thing today). Our difference was to create Talent Communities for companies that hired a lot of the same type of function, keeping the prospects motivated until needed and charged based on time spent – not an arbitrary % of compensation… Our pricing is not too much different than what you described from your Dot Com effort…with the labor markets beginning to heat up, you may want to consider relaunching 🙂
I think with the reduction of tech costs since then, you could cut that rate by 75%, with appropriate consideration for the level of time you will support the staffing effort, and balancing the costs of assessment tools.
A small team from Indeed worked out of New Work City (a coworking space) while the company was setting up a permanent New York office. They were some of the nicest and most diligent people I have met. Funny how that leads to success.The pay-per-application model is brilliant, but the real advantage in my opinion is that the search is significantly better than any competitor. Try to search for a job on Monster, then try the same search on Indeed. You’ll see the difference instantly.
better end user experience wins!
Have to agree. I prefer its search a lot more over most employment sites, but last night I was on the site looking for a web developer for a start up I’m working on and it was lacking 1 feature I feel could be useful. I wish my search results would include resumes that not only fit geographically, but resumes of candidates who are willing to work over Skype/online with my geography. Would help talent deprived areas in a certain area find potentially better candidates.
So true!
I’m not totally impressed – I’m seeing a lot of the same jobs being repeated on indeed, mostly because old school applications aren’t tracking well from an seo perspective.
There may be duplicated jobs on Indeed is a company post to a job board and also is using a staffing agency. The issue is Indeed is one search, all jobs, so if a job is on the web it will be on Indeed. Openhire is an automaticly tracked ATS so these results are as close to 100% as possible.
The duplicated jobs is probably a trade-off for the vastness from which they are drawing. Are you using the advanced search features?
not as much as I should be
I think that one of their best benefits is their advanced search feature.I’ve played around with it some — both the job search and resume search — not as much the latter. I search jobs just as a job seeker would because it is a good way to research hiring patterns for some of the job groups I’m interested in recruiting for. Also, it’s fun to occasionally peek at what is happening in my own field…and when things were slower I “peeked” more often.
I thought that was the whole point of Indeed — that you could find job postings from Monster and several other job boards collected at one site.
yes, all things considered- but i would prefer to see jobs that are only posted on monster, not monster, and three more weird job boards.
I have to agree with Dave. The whole point of Indeed is that it is a Job Search engine. I’m sure they could modify their algorithm to remove duplicate posts made my companies and staffing agencies.
Aside from the meta search thing what happens here is that company A retains recruitment agency B who post an ad, recruitment agencies C, D, E & F repost the ad and when a candidate expresses interest attempt to open up negotiations with company A.As an employer this is useful on occasion, but for the most part it’s extremely annoying.
its annoying as an applicant too – it makes it harder to actually get your resume in the hands of the person it should go to.
I have no idea who Monster is trying to appeal to? I mean that.Really nice to hear that about the people at Indeed. I firmly believe that the culture will influence the brand and the product/service.
Congratulations and it wouldn’t surprise you that I love the graph, especially the difference between Indeed and the company third up from bottom…
Search for a ‘good search’ never ends.
Wait, so indeed has more visitors AND leads to more hiring!? Where is this crazy unexpected correlation coming from and what could be its cause? Lesson: when companies establish themselves, market, approach the market with affordable pricing in a down economy, etc – people use them. This has no bearing on the level of service of differentiation or comparability of product.
Not ALL the blogosphere missed it. 😉 http://www.businessinsider….
yup, great post!
Thanks for sharing – great read
Wow. That was prescient of you
Especially good for SAI BI!
I love Indeed! Since I’m looking for my next opportunity for consulting and/or full time gigs, it has been a great resource to check every morning. It’s helped me discover positions in Austin that I didn’t know existed and learn about some really cool companies. The more I’ve been in business, the more I’ve come to appreciate how hard it is to find good talent.
I think that from a job seeker’s perspective, Indeed is one of the superior products out there — which makes it more valuable to the job poster.
Coming from you, that means a lot.
It does, actually. 😉
Indeed :DI blame @JimHershfeld for that
Donna, what kind of “hiring” are you mostly involved with / interested in? Technical? Creative? Legal? Management positions? All verticals?I would love to shoot you an email one day to share the tool we’re launching next week (private beta). It’s not a hiring tool at all but I could see it being used by recruiters in the creative industry. Thats’s of course if you have time, let me know. (alternatively, I could see myself in CA in the next months!).
Hi Ela — Please email me dwhite at bwasearch dot com.
will, give me a couple of more days so that I could send you an actual link, too to explain what I am talking about 😉 thanks!
Hi Aruni. I would love to make avc.com the 2nd or 3rd best source of hire behind indeed! Check out our jobs at http://www.vpusacareers.com (biz dev manager in particular).- Drew Krecruiting guyvente-privee USA
AVC.COM GOOD FOR RECRUIT ENTREPRENEURS. NOT HAVE ENOUGH ENGINEERS OR UX.WHAT SITE AVC.COM FOR ENGINEERS AND UX?
Well, I know one app (with a twist!) that might help with that in the next months 😉
GIVE TO GRIMLOCK!
Will be super happy to have you as a beta tester if you have time (you don’t seem to be busy at all anyway haha 😉 What’s your email?
We’re getting started here! http://g33ktalk.com
Is there someone I can run a business development model byat Vente Privee? I have 10+ years experience analyzing and building novel financialbusiness models and my sense is that the concept is ideal for the private sale /high end market?
Hi Drew – thanks for the link. That job sounds great and if I was in the position to move to New York, I’d love to talk about it. I have to be based in Austin, Texas for the foreseeable future. That might not have been the case a few years ago, but now it is the best place for me to be. Indeed is actually based in Austin, but they hiring mostly technical and some marketing folks.
A serial entrepreneur looking for a job?! why?I always thought “once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur … no looking back”.How do the recruiting company will look at you when they hire you? Does it not cross their mind that this girl will start her 5-th venture anytime soon and leave.
Hi Kasi – How do you define entrepreneurship? There are many ways to be an entrepreneur/intrapraneur and I believe it has to fit with what’s going on with your life.I think if the company is smart, they will want to hire a “girl” with initiative to make a difference during a time when the company needs fresh ideas and thinking. She can just as easily launch a venture/new idea inside a company as on her own.I have so many entrepreneur friends who contribute their talent to established or larger companies and even other start-ups during a time in their life when it makes sense vs. starting their own company. If you’ve ever started a company, you can appreciate what it takes.
Hi Aruni,Thanx for the clarification. I understand.
The data in this post is, inter alia, a good illustration of how far LinkedIn has fallen behind its potential. Huge user base, the CEO is idolised and he gives inspiring talks about the future of networking, but the actual product delivers a Web 1.0 service that hasn’t delivered a usable new feature in (literally) years. My profile there says digital media & mobile strat consulting, in London – LinkedIn emails me jobs as a petrochemical ‘consultant’ in Saudi or a PCI DSS ‘consultant’ (yes, I had to Google it too) – for added comedy value, requiring languages that aren’t on my profile. This is Myspace-level product.
I agree completely. LinkedIn is a total waste of time from a recruitment perspective. It’s only use is to check people out before you walk through their door for an interview (as I had to do last week). The opportunity didn’t come through LinkedIn.
As a recruiter, I disagree. Which is why many recruiters are paying $500 or more a month for their recruiter package. Even paying a fraction of that, I lean heavily on LinkedIn for recruiting people who aren’t looking for a job — and the best of those who are.But you may be speaking of recruitment from the job seeker perspective. The best job seeking at a certain career level comes through networking, not job boards. That’s where LinkedIn is especially beneficial. Looking for a job can be a job in itself.
Happens all the time – that being said linked in does cause recruiters to talk to me who are on point.
I’m glad to hear they are finding you.I won’t say it…
Not as much as I would like, alas
While I can not disagree with your personal user experience you have to keep in mind the context of the data. This is a traffic volume stat. Indeed essentially sprawls the entire global web for jobs and subsequently feeds candidates. Massive volume. Linkedin is an entirely different model. It is more of a passive seek and destroy for headhunting types, and/or corporate recruiting folks seeking typically more senior level talent.This also means the number of jobs and candidates routed will be much lower. Linkedin and Indeed (amongst many other resources) both have a key seat in my candidate source mix. But I pay nothing for Indeed. You have mentioned the Linkedin job postings specifically but the real growth in both use and revenues is from recruiter dashboard purchasing. And like the rest of my corporate brethren I have added multiple recruiter licenses for Linkedin as its effectiveness from my side has increased exponentially. Indeeds resume play is something I will revisit, but I also am looking at Indeed for a different type of hire. My two cents…
That’s a good point – though the volume data above is about hiring, not applications or clicks. But even so, as a potential candidate, what value do I get from being in LinkedIn? I might, through near-random chance, come up on a recruiter’s radar, but if I’m doing my job properly that should happen anyway. And that’s invisible to me. Even if I pay for a ‘see who viewed you’ account, all that tells me is that a recruiter idly browsed my profile – hardly worth my $5. So the fact that you might see me isn’t transparent to me as a user. So people leave their profiles there, passively, but LinkedIn isn’t doing anything to make me actively engaged with the site. That’s disappointing, and dangerous.
I would argue that the “hires” stat is proportional to the volume. Indeed is an aggregator of every conceivable job noted on the web. A portal that is easily 100x more listings than linkedin. Bound to have more hires. You make a good point regarding your compulsion to keep your profile active on Linkedin. But from the recruiter’s desk, we go where the people are…and right now, particularly for management roles and above, that is linkedin. I could care less if you have been active at all on Linkedin, but from my recruiter dashboard (which costs way more than the $5 you are asked to part with) it gives me a name, a company, a tenure, your related connects, etc. In our profession there is a network of sourcing pros you often pay for this work, or retained firms to tap passive happy talent on the shoulders for you. Linkedin chips away significantly at that need (and cost).As of now, Indeed, Linkedin, and niche job boards (that is the #3 source of ‘unidentified job boards’ noted above IMO) are merging to essentially make Monster, and possibly Careerbuilder, long-term irrelevant. Who could Monster strategically align with to rescue their ship? I think they should open source their job board service and go with a Fremium model. Otherwise they will go the way of Hotjobs which they foolishly bought as a play for yahoo traffic a few years back. At a time when they should have noticed everyone was starting to “google” for jobs…
Also keep in mind that the average person who applies to a job looks at least several times before doing so. This means that there is potential that they saw the job first on LinkedIn, a niche board, etc… then when their boss yelled at them, they immediately went to indeed to find the same one and apply because it’s faster and a better UX – which is certainly a hit tip to indeed (not the data in this report).
STACKEDOVERFLOW IS NEW LINKEDIN.PROOF OF SKILL COME FROM ENGAGEMENT, NOT RESUME.
True enough – LinkedIn is nothing more than a CV database. But not many professions are in a position to display their skills as publicly as Stack Overflow or Dribble. Other options are needed.
Only thing less useful than a resume is a college resume.
^10
Passive seek and destroy…exactly. I like that! However, not truly “destroying.” ;)BTW, I appreciate your comments here from the corporate recruitment vantage point. You know your stuff.
You could probably take that recruiting agency bar and use it to extend the LinkedIn bar.I am a recruiter — a headhunter. If I want to find you or someone like you, I will do whatever it takes, but I am going to start with LinkedIn. I receive several emails from LinkedIn each week, maybe daily — most of them for networking, informational and business development purposes. Because of my level of activity there, they pretty much have me nailed. Don’t tell them this, but I would pay significantly more for my premium account than I am currently paying.
HARD TO BUILD WEB 3.0 COMPANY ON 1.0 FOUNDATION.LINKED IN REQUIRE HEART TRANSPLANT BEFORE DESTROYED BY NEW COMPANY.
Hoffman isn’t the CEO, Jeff Weiner is. According to their Wikipedia page, anyway.
Hoffman left a while ago. As CEO.
In your work markets post, Fred, you listed WorkMarket as USV’s “one investment in this category.” Do you not consider Indeed apart of this category, or maybe you just weren’t thinking about them at the time you wrote that post? Just trying to get a better understanding on how you’re thinking about work markets.
Good question Brandon, didn’t make the kinda obvious connection until this moment.
i don’t see Indeed as a marketplace. maybe i should. i see it as a search engine.
To me, a digital marketplace is best understood just like a physical one: a big space I can navigate to find smaller vendors. Indeed is a big space where I can easily browse vendors offering jobs.The more interesting thing to me is in reference to one of @FakeGrimlock:disqus’s comments: “proof of skill come from engagement, not resume.” If i need to hire someone today (freelance or fulltime), that means I would have ideally engaged with that person before I even thought about hiring. Maybe what we need is a secondary marketplace that isn’t so focused on formal hiring, but casually getting to know people?
great point
Isn’t that what companies like Brave New Talent are trying to do? This notion of talent communities; I am not sure it is working as I don’t think communities can be ‘built’ I think you what you have to do is find existing communities and map yourself around them the way facebook did with students and flickr did with photo sharing. But in a way I think networks like Twitter and blogs do this better, we don’t need yet another platform to log in to.What I feel is lacking right now is good quality signals from job seekers. We have these horrid CVs that are obsessed with past achievements as if past performance were an indication of anything. It’s so hard to know if someone is the honest enough to do the things they say they are going to do. And now that we tend to learn ‘just in time’ rather than ‘just in case’ attitude becomes a much more attractive quality in a candidate than skills. So I think you’re right this secondary market place of getting to know people is just what we need. And perhaps I would add that it also requires a future facing element to it too; “what do you want to do next and what you done lately?”cc @donnawhite:disqus @KCDonovan:disqus
I think Brave New Talent is on to something, but I am not in touch with them enough to know how effective they are. But I like a lot of what I see them doing.Some response to our last paragraph:”CVs that are obsessed with past achievements as if past performance were an indication of anything.”There is a general rule of thumb in recruiting that the past is the best predictor of the future which will keep the CV/resume alive for a while longer. However, what I have found is that most people take this too literally. You can look for behavioral themes in a person’s background that transcend their actual experiences and use these to gauge future potential. This takes a lot more thought and skill than most recruiters have the time or knowledge to look for — and often more than the hiring manager has the imagination for — so it becomes a matter of searching through a resume for keywords. I think a lot of really good prospects for a job are missed because of this myopia. A few times the client has trusted me enough to allow me to be creative and has landed a candidate that others missed. And, yet, I still believe that the general principle of past predicting future is defensible.In terms of being able to trust the candidate, skilled and insightful reference interviewing (and a true desire to know the truth rather than merely confirm one’s own impressions) takes care of this.I am still not well-versed in the creation of talent communities, but believe you are right about not needing another place to log into. Your comment is actually generating some interesting thoughts.
how much seed money did they take?
found it.Series A, 5M, 3 participants.http://www.crunchbase.com/f…
I got my job thanks to indeed. I’m overseas, and it works great. To me indeed is to job seeking as google is to search engines. It’s simple, and it just works.
Even is google looking
I actually need to hire a couple of people — Seeing the chart above and the comments here, I’m going to try Indeed. Yay, serendipity.
Didn’t the Indeed portfolio jobs run on the right at some point?
maybe. but it still runs on usv.com
I was surprised by the comscore numbers but even compete seems to support this:http://siteanalytics.compet…http://siteanalytics.compet…http://siteanalytics.compet…
i find compete completely unreliable. i prefer alexa to them.
It goes without saying that both Silk Road and Indeed should be issuing press releases on this information.A blog post (which both companies did) is not the same as a PR release. I will assume they didn’t because the catchy statement from Silk Road’s post doesn’t turn up anywhere (and this info was released March 14th):”Have you ever wondered where companies find their most qualified candidates and new hires? The answer may surprise you.”
“A blog post (which both companies did) is not the same as a PR release.”agreed. i was following a company that has an affiliate based revenue model (in the public markets, so relatively large). they used to be very SEO, but since the shift to mobile, concentrate on other forms of promotion. they seem to be everywhere; driven by public relations.
It really is fascinating that this isn’t better known.
If you are looking for a Job – it is fairly well known – you do a quick search say CFO within X miles of zip code x – and you get a results page…if memory serves me correct…at the bottom of the page – it is REAL simple to setup an automated daily email w/ leads that fit your search criteriaREAL simple app to use – as Fred comment earlier today” better end user experience wins! “
I have to keep my comment short as my internet access will be coming to an end within the next few minutes and I have no idea when the new nifty difty internet service starts back up….Monster and Careerbuilder are old and appeal to a broad base of job applicants and companies while Indeed is more focused. Could it be that Indeed is doing so well because it appeals to a market and an industry that is the only one hiring right now? From what I hear the only offers job applicants get from Monster and Careerbuilder are for insurance sales, going back to school, or other scams (In other words, the advertisers run amok) and another complaint I get about these two is that the companies that post jobs NEVER respond or reply to applicants.Now, I have to go back to my self imposed “internet exile” (no internet from 7 am to 7 pm) because the sitting at my desk reading blogs and surfing the net is impeding my ability to get other things done! (Yep, when all else fails blame the internet!)I do read AVC everyday, but I am so busy I seldom respond (Oh, and note to JLM, I would have taken care of your tee shirts but right now all of our presses are set for big and tall and it would be a pain in the ass to break them all down to run regular sizes….)Back to the old economy work…..
“Yep, when all else fails blame the internet!”Quotable quote.
Why isn’t The Ladders included in the chart? Not comparable? I can’t imagine it’s too small…
Why do you think The Ladders is so big? Because they spent millions of dollars on funny TV commercials? If only TV commercials translated into performance.. The Ladders is scammy at best. Can anyone confirm this – most of their revenues are from job seekers, NOT companies?
I totally find that they look scammy. Why would you make jobseekers pay for your services?
BECAUSE WANT JOB THAT PAY HUGE PILES OF MONEY?
The Ladders now posts jobs for all compensation levels, not just six-figures and up.I personally think they’ve diluted their brand dangerously by doing this. I’ve been a paying customer (sucker? Dunno) twice. Never got actual value from it (like, a job) BUT I perceived value because of the continuous flow of excellent content they produce & make available to jobseekers. Which, really, is free.All that said, they sure know how to hire asskickers internally! Denise, Jeff, Will, Brad, and others–all awesome.
Look if you paid them money and it gave you hope and made you feel better and put you in a positive frame of mind what’s wrong with that?When selling did you ever notice that if you start out in the morning with a sales win you are all jacked up and your chance of getting another sale is greatly increased? Buyers smell that winning attitude and respond to it. Like you said “I perceived the value”.My mother doesn’t perceive any value in a nice new car. And I don’t perceive any value in jewelry. But we both derive psychic benefits from those purchases. I don’t question things like that. I just go with the good feelings.
i don’t think they have the same scale. it’s more of a niche business. they focus on the high end of the market.
Indeed is has overtaken monster and careerbuilder because of the fact that a “web wide” meta search of jobs posted across hundreds of web sites is a better value proposition than searching a proprietary database of “paid” listings such as monster or careerbuilder.Their recent move into resume search is more interesting but their strategy seems flawed or still “very beta.” So as a job seeker I can upload my resume and get a public resume url such as indeed.com/me/myresume – that’s cool, but suppose I share my resume url with a prospective employer, that employer needs to pay indeed in order to contact me.That just seems counter intuitive to giving me a public resume url !!Linkedin does the same thing, but the difference is that with Linkedin the employer also has the option to connect with me via my network for no cost.So, is it a public url or is it a closed resume database like Monster.com?Indeed needs to make up their mind. It cannot be both.Right?
it is very much a work in progress
Search engines are a great way to grow traffic and aggregate results. The problem is that the user is left to do all of the work.As a job seeker using a job aggregator, you have to apply to dozens (if not hundreds, depending on your motivation) of different employer career sites or referred job sites, having to create a new resume each time, and having to sign-up to a different service provider every time. In the process, there is no real control over where your private information ends up, and no guarantee that you are dealing with an actual Employer (rather than a head-hunter or third party service).Keyword search also limit the scope of “keywords” or job titles that can be shared, as terminologies are not standardized. I would strongly recommend checking out a free service like http://www.jobbook.com/ as a viable alternative to job boards and the job search model.People expect to be served, free of charge, in a an environment they have control over, and Jobbook may indeed be the answer.
I see that Jobbook is expanding its spam operation from Quora to AVC.
🙂
I see that you made a comment 4 years ago promoting an INDEED tool… I happen to disclose my affiliations, and am starting a real discussion about the state of job searching. In case you haven’t noticed, people care about these things, do not confuse supporters with spammers.To refresh your memory, here’s what you said 4 years ago about INDEED:USER Tummblr on “Developing a Website for User Interaction”, posted 4 years ago:”Another option if you want a job board on your site, Indeed’s Jobroll.https://ads.indeed.com/jobroll…”
Fred, my calendar says we had lunch 7 years ago at BLTFish, while you were doing your due diligence on Indeed! Paul, Rony & team havedone an outstanding job building a global business out of something that Inever thought was going to work — HR departments buying PPC advertising. It’s nice to be proved so very wrong, as itserves as a reminder that we are all just students and the world is ourteacher. Indeed has been the quiet, steady, dependable, inexorable player inthe business and has built a franchise of enduring value. Congratulations on Indeed’s ongoing success!
Marc, that was pretty classy.Kinda shocked if you last saw Fred 7 years ago though.
Kinda shocked, too, that he hasn’t said anything in the discussion about TheLadders going on here either!
we’ve had lunch since. that was our lunch when i was doing diligence on indeed.
you weren’t that negative on indeed at that lunch. just balanced. i appreciate your perspective on it very much.
The thing an online recruitment service can never afford to do is to lose touch with its users, both the job poster and the job seeker. Simplicity and giving the user a sense of control over results wins out. Admittedly, I have never posted a job on Indeed because, generally, I am trying to help my clients find candidates they can’t find on a job board. So, granted, my exposure is more superficial, but I am in a position to very, very quickly size up recruiting tools. Indeed as a service gives the feel that it is in touch. It feels “smart.” This may be an advantage of their size and stage of growth and that the people who envisioned it are still closely involved in ongoing development (an assumption). Whatever the reason, if the company can maintain this relevancy as it continues to scale, then they may very well keep their advantage.
it is a google style search engine (smart and fast) built by entrepreneurs who were veterans of the online jobs market (job boards)
I never heard of this Indeed before – did a few searches and it sure is lightning fast
Indeed is great. Monster is the most horrible career placement / job search site known to man.
I remember when Monster was the greatest thing since white bread….I just realized the other day that they were still in business! 🙂
It’s the natural progression of business. Happens in marriage as well. People get complacent, lazy and bored. Happens more often than not.
I have never gotten a job through Monster, except for one. My first job in NYC was from Monster. Everything else was relationships.
This is amazing to see such results and discover that there is a company that does better than Linkedin or Monster in the job search market. Congrats
The data in this post is, inter alia, a good illustration of how far LinkedIn has fallen behind its potential. Huge user base, the CEO is idolised and he gives inspiring talks about the future of networking, but the actual product delivers a Web 1.0 service that hasn’t delivered a usable new feature in (literally) years.http://goo.gl/Rywjp
Been in Talent Acquisition and HR Technology a long time and the majority of the comments on this thread are enlightening since many are NOT posted by people from that space…but by users…Just to add one thought…99% of people that apply never get a positive response which means that the industry consistently has been telling people – indirectly by providing no feedback, and what might be worse – directly with Dear John letters for the 99% to go away! Softening the blow does no good and in some cases adds to the mess…there are methods at play now to end this madness…Someone had mentioned the idea of creating a “secondary marketplace” for those not quite ready to apply yet…so they can engage at their own pace and interest level…I couldn’t agree more! The Engagement Economy provides opportunities for interaction that current platforms like LI, Indeed, and other Job Boards cannot and should not provide. Using Talent Co-ops, Communities or Clubs, engagement, interaction and networking with company execs can occur on an event basis limiting time spent on the activity. These are the cultivation tools for today’s employment marketplace and its the “next BIG thing.”
Resonate with much of this. Engagement is a key word here! How to make this a more significant aspect of the recruitment process and to remove the dehumanizing aspects. Even if I could find the candidates I am seeking through job boards, I hate the idea of dozens, even hundreds of people responding and not being given feedback. Probably another reason I shy away from using them. The last time I posted a job, I had to hire someone to respond to the 100+ people I chose not to interview because I have committed to no longer letting people fall through the cracks — at least the ones I’ve solicited. That’s a hard commitment to keep when already there is not enough time.Very, very intrigued by talent communities. Think this is the direction to move in!
Wow – I must say Donna that you are in the minority as far as recruiters are concerned…and Bravo to you for recognizing that times they are a changing…Most TPR’s want to stick with what they know and I think see Communities or Clubs as a threat to t heir way of doing business – and maybe their livelihood…Building and Maintaining a successful community is having a compelling story to keep member interest – we did it for years by telling prospects that we would consistently provide new challenges for them to evaluate (once every 1-2 months or so…) or to check in with the latest industry “scoops.” As the SoMe society has unfolded – people now get that on an hourly basis – so the effort today is creating “inside story” type content from our clients and sharing that with targeted “A” Players and Top Performers – in essence providing the “secondary marketplace” for passive job seekers – but proactive career consumers who want to map out their next career conquest!
Bandwidth/ability to scale make the above, while interesting (I would argue Linkedin has thousands of these communities in place online) impossible to provide significant impact. I do the above, when a specific role provides the opportunity, by tapping into industry associations specific to my regional hiring needs and by engaging in online communities where the “fish” are.Again, for success you need to consider the paying audience. And with aggressive req loads it is hard enough to spend time headhunting in the traditional ways, let alone engaging secondary talent communities. Not disagreeing the value, but I am looking at the practicality of it when you are on-boarding employees globally/weekly and are covering not only basic recruiting but other areas of HR.
Well John, you indirectly make the case beautifully – for SPENDING the time engaging in “secondary talent markets!” No question that as the labor markets heat up and the number of job openings (reqs) each recruiter increases, the ability to tap into a “manufactured” talent pool filled with prospects on target for functions a company regularly hires for should be seen as mandatory in the “social/engagement economy” we live in today…The organic groups you describe found in LI and FB are great as additional places to “fish” for talent, but these pools are not queued up with the prospects you would find in a Talent Club a company maintains for the direct purpose of hiring…there is a big difference between these two types of groups and for JIT Tactical hiring a manufactured talent pool is JUST what will help your recruiters succeed with speed…Look to third party Community Development and Management companies to build them for you and then reap the benefits…its a wave of new systems that is and will continue to drive the future of our industry…anyway that’s how I see it (disclosure: I am an executive at one of those third party companies…).
Having trouble figuring out why you think this is such a great idea… ;). I like your passion, just teasing.
I love the graph and indeed is trully effective!!great post.Geekslingo.com