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Indeed’s Combing Its Data for New Tools and Tweaks

May 21, 2015
This article is part of a series called News & Trends.

Screen Shot 2015-05-20 at 7.52.51 PM‘Tis the season for user conferences; last week it was Cornerstone Convergence (where it launched a “platform as a service“), this week it’s Indeed Interactive in Austin, and some folks will head to HireVue soon.

Indeed, owned by a Japanese outfit, has done a small user event for a couple of years, but expanded it about 10 times the size this year, with attendance in the neighborhood of 500 attendees, many of these recruiters doing the plurality of their hiring with the job aggregator.

Indeed hasn’t blown out its product in the way some competitors have, like Monster and its 6Sense tools, like LinkedIn and its Bright purchase, and so on. It’s mainly been focused on job searches and job posts, not creating some sort of end-to-end system.

But the company is working on a variety of new tools and tweaks to improve its job board.

Screen Shot 2015-05-21 at 12.16.41 PMA new offering, for example, will match employers with “actively searching, motivated” candidates who have richer profiles and have passed through a screening process.

Indeed’s also working on a new tool at the campus.indeed.com address. A college student sees entry-level jobs first — which, despite the much-talked-about brouhaha about millennials not wanting to pay their dues, are the jobs college students will most likely get.

Also, by organizing this campus-recruiting site by major, students may come across a job they may not have otherwise searched for, had they merely typed a search into the main Indeed.com engine.

Heck, I didn’t know Victoria’s Secret was a top employer of psych grads (see right).

Screen Shot 2015-05-21 at 11.56.41 AMIn addition, the company has started using a “job seeker applicant tracking system” of sorts (see screenshot) for candidates to manage their applications. Once a candidate has starting tracking their applications, Indeed can push them information: Susie, don’t forget your interview tomorrow, and so on.

I mentioned before that Indeed, though it has a branding tool kind of like Glassdoor does, has stuck mainly to doing one thing, rather than developing a lot of tools for screening and other parts of the hiring process.

But watch for that to change a bit. With all the searches being done on such a massive site, Indeed has enough information about what candidates click on and don’t click on, and what resumes employers click on, that more matching tools are in Indeed’s future.

A great example the company gave about its job-seeker behavior knowledge is what it has learned about the use of location in searches. If you’re on Long Island, or Connecticut, a job may be close by, but with the Long Island Sound in the way, you may not want to commute to it. On the other hand, you’d go more miles for a job with an easier commute. Indeed examines the jobs people click on after doing searches, learns the complexities of job-seeker behavior, and modifies its search results accordingly.

Some more tidbits overheard here and there at the event in Austin:

  • American Cruise Lines has had some success with Campusjob.com, getting about 100 applicants in 24 hours after posting.
  • Not yet publicized, and quite interesting, AT&T has been running an ad campaign for its jobs on U-verse — in other words, on TV. From their remote controls, candidates who are interested in an AT&T job can indicate interest and get the job post sent to them to apply later.
  • A car service chain in Ohio with 80 percent turnover has found some ways to decrease it substantially. It’s having new employees, for example, help be an extra set of hands on oil changes and tire fixes during their initial weeks on the job, rather then getting trained and then thrown to the wolves. By the time they start fixing cars on their own, they know the ropes.
  • A real estate company is testing and in some cases rejecting potential employees for taking marijuana.
  • One word people are searching for more frequently: remote
  • Finding the customer service at its big, well-known applicant tracking system was lacking, one company switched to Pereless. “Small and scrappy,” says one recruiter about Pereless.
  • Says one attendee, on his third marriage: “I’m a recruiter, but I’m not good at relationships.”
This article is part of a series called News & Trends.
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