Is Indeed Failing Job Candidates?

Another day, another job position opening to sift through with over 300 candidates. It's a part-time receptionist position, it pays $13/hr, and there's no experience needed. 3 years ago that same role would have taken a month to fill after receiving only 15 applicants. Now-it will take 2 months to fill, despite the extreme increase in (qualified) candidates. Why?

It's easy to blame a failing economy, large lay-offs, and overall job instability. Those are undeniably supporting factors. But I think there's another reason that recruiters and professionals aren't discussing, a problem that TikTok is littered with videos about, Gen Z hyperaware of. Indeed.

The app that everyone opens as soon as they think about a new job. Heck, if you're like me, you open it up just because you're bored. Recently though my fyp has been feeding me video after video of frustrated young professionals unable to specify their search on Indeed, or discouraged that a minimum wage position hasn't given them a courtesy response within 2 weeks.

It made me realize that when I think of career, I think of LinkedIn Jobs, when I think of flipping burgers, I think of Indeed.

Now Indeed has posts of high-level, high-quality corporate positions, but it's often lacking in the conversation when you're discussing true career growth. The platform itself lacks sophistication, professionalism, and engagement. They make it easy to mass apply, to build the blandest resume alive (thankful they finally updated that) and easy to get discouraged by watching the amount of applications you have not heard back from increase one by one. They don't make it easy to connect with hiring managers, recruiters, or to distinguish yourself in any basic way from the next candidate. Then it's their screening process...oh boy, the screening process.

I will admit to using AI to optimize my day and reduce the amount of time I spent to going through resumes. I still believe 100% that it is my duty as a hiring manager to lay eyes on every single application. Indeed pretends to make it easy. You give them the guidelines and basic standards you're looking for, they help sort things by what they think is priority.

This is not a perfect system. Technology fails or develops bias (just look up the current Workday lawsuit) and humans have gotten too lazy to clean up technology's mistakes.

However, I find that Indeed makes more "mistakes" than other hiring resources.

This is all purely personal opinion, but multiple times I have found an applicant at the bottom of the perfectly packaged stack Indeed has given me, who does not belong there.

If you're currently looking for a job, I'm sure you've assumed this is happening to some of your applications-dead at the bottom of the pile because AI didn't like enough of your keywords. And...yes.

It happens, but realistically there are sometimes just better candidates. I want to be honest about that before I continue my rant.

Indeed is just so bland, and they put bland candidates in front of your face and tell you that's the best out there. It's not, but Indeed seems to push those who are using their own resume template or builder (once again, not a fact just personal experience.)

I guess the conclusion I've came down to: Indeed has suffered from being the "generic" job board for the last 5-10 years now. Other boards offer things like direct emails (not DM's) to hiring managers, a chance to build out your profile and connect with like-minded professionals.

It seems that Indeed is developing a small rebrand/upgrade. So maybe they'll catch back up. Unfortunately it's hard to beat bad press and bad results.