I had the opportunity to speak with Kevin Walker, Senior Director of Employer Insights at Indeed to discuss how employers use Indeed to improve their hiring processes. With many of today’s hiring challenges Indeed’s data allows employers access to top talent while managing and optimizing their recruitment spends.

How does Indeed's data improve employers’ hiring processes?

KW: The sheer volume of data from Indeed and where that data source is coming from is the first part of this equation. Second is our algorithms, machine learning, and AI have to be up to date and integrated seamlessly to do the job right and match employers talent needs with the right jobs. We can help improve an employer’s hiring process by continuing to improve our algorithm so that any job search produces the most relevant jobs in real-time. When you are an employer looking to hire, all you simply want are candidates who are qualified and interested in the job that you are trying to fill to be the ones to apply. 

What is your strategy to directly impact employers?

KW: Our strategy is fully focused on the job seeker and we really believe when you focus on what is best for the job seeker, you inadvertently focus on what is best for the employer.
By making sure that every decision we make is in the best interest for the job seeker, we’re guaranteeing that 200 million unique visitors keep coming to our site and that’s good news for employers. When it comes time to source that talent, employers can count on Indeed to deliver that volume. We look beyond our core business application which is the search and continue to think of innovative ways to solve employers’ challenges. Many companies today struggle in their search for good tech talent, so we launched Indeed Prime as a white glove matchmaking service between the best tech talent in the world and the most innovative tech hiring companies. We are constantly looking forward to ensuring that not only core products but new products are serving the needs of employers.

What are the best ways for employers to optimize their recruiting practices on Indeed?

KW: Optimal application of Indeed services starts with the realization that Indeed is the search engine for jobs. It’s a powerful tool, a search engine. So you should be fully focused on search engine marketing and optimization. The first step is to optimize job content and titles to perform well in a search engine and the next is to apply the search engine marketing.

Employers need to make sure that when they are spending to drive applicants to jobs, that it is the most efficient use of that dollar and search engines to provide the most effective use of recruitment dollars.

Search engines allow you to manage and optimize that spend based on performance with charges only triggering when someone clicks and visits your job. There are 90 million resumes and growing on Indeed. Every month we add 2.5 million new resumes around the world and nearly as many are updated at the same time. We have both basic and advanced search capability for recruiters and employers to find specific criteria within the resumes.

What are 3 key takeaways for employers/recruiters?

KW: Realize and fully understand that Indeed is a search engine and as a result that search engine has democratized recruitment. People search for jobs today the same way that they search for plane tickets or restaurants. They visit a search engine, type in keywords, and based on the results shown on the search engine, they engage with that content.

To be best in class, recruiters and employers alike have to double down on optimizing for our platform.  I’m not just saying that because we are the number one job site in the world and have the most jobs and job seekers. You can actually deploy concrete tactics around search engine marketing and optimization to drive more candidates to your jobs and ultimately outperform your competitors in the talent space.