Simple, Indeed: Employment Meta-Search Engines

The way potential employees seek out new job opportunities continues to change as newer technologies and more sophisticated applications allow for new distribution and content consumption models.  Because our communication channels continue to evolve and transform, employers and the applicants they hope to attract are using ever-more innovative means to connect.  As a society, we have come from “signs in windows”  through “advertisements in classifieds,” beyond “postings on job boards,” to what we have now –  distribution feeds to/from “hundreds of job boards at once.”  (Note:  There is also social recruiting but we’ll talk about social media use in a later blog post).

Two of the major players in the business of aggregating job postings from across the web to a single web property are SimplyHired and Indeed.com.  According to SimplyHired’s website, “SimplyHired.com is a vertical job search engine that pulls listings from thousands of sites across the Web including the leading job boards, company career sites, newspapers, non-profits, government sites, and more. Simply Hired allows job seekers to search all of the jobs on the Web in one place for free.”  Not to be outdone by the competition, according to Indeed.com’s website, “Indeed is the #1 job site worldwide, with over 70 million unique visitors and 1.5 billion job searches per month. Indeed is available in more than 50 countries and 26 languages, covering 94% of global GDP.”

So how does this help you, the hiring manager with your online job marketing?  First, you must understand that the goal of these employment search engine companies is to have the most number of job seekers using their site for free.  Their sites are rightly positioned and sold as an easy way to find jobs without the hassle of searching multiple job boards at once.  Think, “Hotels.com for the job market, or even “Expedia.com for the unemployed.”  As such, it is no surprise that in October of 2010 Indeed.com surpassed Monster.com to become the largest job site in the US; Monster.com currently sits 3rd behind SimplyHired in terms of unique  monthly visitors.  See Chart Below:

So does it make more sense to pay to have your jobs on aggregator sites like Indeed.com or SimplyHired, as opposed to Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com?  Simply put: No! Remember your jobs are fed to the aggregator sites FROM job boards as well as from your company website.  This means that your job will show up on Indeed.com automatically anyway.  Why pay for this service?   Are you recruiting overseas?  If not, the 70 million unique viewers is not of much interest, is it?   Aggregate job engines may try to sell you on premium listings (meaning candidates will find your jobs “at the top of the pile”), but the truth is that these meta site have sophisticated filtering features built in, allowing job seekers to refine job search results by market, salary range, title, keyword, or even company size.   In other words, the candidates can find your job on the site very easily.  Premium listings are for generating website revenue, but offer very little in terms of increased applicant flow.   We recommend companies save money for recruiting solutions that have a higher rate of return.

To learn about how your company can leverage more sophisticated and effective job marketing solutions to drive qualified applicants to your hard-to-fill job openings, please contact TalentWoo today!