Be thankful if you didn’t know
Those of you in Office Dork™️ circles may be unaware of just how indispensable yet how awful Indeed is. You’re probably like “what do you mean, James? Isn’t it just a job board? There’s a million of those!”
But if you’ve ever wondered how the rest of the non-Office Dork™️ business community hires – for people who aren’t on LinkedIn (like manufacturing, sales in non-SaaS/tech circles, skilled trades, retail, etc.) – Indeed is the biggest player in the space. That’s where people put their resumes to be found. And it’s a million times worse than LinkedIn.
A quick history lesson. Once upon a time, Monster & CareerBuilder were a thing. There was no LinkedIn. You wouldn’t just post jobs there, you’d search their database of people who were open and available. That second aspect was clutch, until LinkedIn built a user generated, worldwide company directory. Then they became just job boards.
Then Indeed came along. They came up with a brilliant market capture strategy: scrape company web sites and post their jobs for free.
More jobs ➟ more job seekers (users) ➟ dominant market share. Complete disruption of the space.
And because LinkedIn never became outside of the white collar echo chamber, Indeed’s candidate side database remained the dominant method for outbound talent sourcing.
You can guess what happened next. Cut off the free jobs. Charge more. And more. And more. Upselling, sponsored, highlighted jobs. The full spectrum of ensh*ttification.
For context: The professional subscription includes 100 messages per month (at nearly $3,000/year). Need more messages? That will cost you $4 PER MESSAGE. And you thought InMails were pricey.
And that’s just the start of how value was sucked away:
👉Completely gutting customer support. No need to help customers when there’s no real alternative.
👉Shocking terrible ATS integration. You have to manage everything with their crappy tools.
👉Their platform or nothing. There’s no getting emailing outside of it. And you’re relying on candidates to log back in and check it. Which is literally no one’s highest priority in their daily doom scrolling.
So before you (or I) rant on everything you hate about LinkedIn’s Office Dork™️ recruiting monopoly…other recruiting circles have it much, much worse.
Full episode of The 10 Minute Talent Rant, Episode 96 “Why LinkedIn & Indeed Are So Hard To Disrupt” here.
Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.
