Our Verdict
Indeed is one of the most visited and popular job board sites on the web today. It became popular several years ago thanks to its simplistic design and ease of use. It continues to be one of the easiest tools for job seekers to search through and filter job postings.
Using Indeed to find potential job applicants is also extremely appealing to businesses. With its reasonable pricing and large reach, Indeed might be the best tool for you to find the candidates you need. While Indeed has jobs from all industries and levels, entry-level and lower-level professionals tend to flock to the job board. It’s not considered an executive search tool by any means. Read our comprehensive Indeed review to see if it’s the right solution for your business.
Indeed
Applicant Search
Yes
Free Job Posts
Yes, but limited
Paid Pricing
As low as $5 or INR 410
Applicant Search
Yes
Free Job Posts
Yes, but limited
Paid Pricing
As low as $5 or INR 410
- Can see applicants’ skills assessments that they’ve passed
- Can invite specific applicants to apply
- Offers job seekers job alerts to find your job opening more easily
- Costs can become pricey for sponsored posts to reach enough candidates
- Not all job types are successful on the platform, especially senior-level ones
Indeed at a Glance
Indeed has been an industry-leading job board solution for quite some time so, naturally, the product is well built-out with plenty of features for both the job seeker and the employer. Posting a job is very easy, and it can be done for free. However, to reach an audience big enough to get you a large applicant pool, you’ll have to sponsor your Indeed job postings, which can get expensive fast.
While Indeed is considered a job board for professionals, you won’t find a lot of executive roles on the platform. There are jobs from all walks of life but lower-tiered roles and applicants tend to be most prevalent. Indeed is also very popular in the healthcare industry, frequently filling roles across offices and hospitals from top to bottom.
Indeed offers job alerts and all job seekers have the opportunity to take skills assessments so that you know before you interview each candidate if their skills match the words on their résumé. The job posts themselves are easy to navigate and enabling the one-click apply option means more applicants are likely to submit their information to you.
Featured Partner Offer
Other Benefits
Indeed has a great internal team that helps employers who are sponsoring job ads. They’ll help you improve your ads and improve the overall spend on your account with location suggestions and even the copy of the job ad itself. This is a huge value-add for larger businesses that are going to spend a lot of money on a single job platform and can be an extension of your internal hiring team.
Indeed also offers products that let you take a more active role in hiring talent. Indeed Resume allows you to search through job seekers’ credentials and invite them to apply to your open roles, while the Indeed Hiring Platform service will screen candidates for you and schedule interviews with your team. If you are casting a wide net, this can be a helpful tool to narrow down the number of candidates.
Fine Print
One thing that employers need to be aware of is the costs of sponsoring job posts. Not everyone is eligible to post free job posts, and after the first 30 days, free posts perform much worse. Employers who have consistent needs for one particular job role are almost required to sponsor that post to see long-term traction.
Unfortunately, the costs can get out of control pretty quickly if you don’t monitor your spend or set up a budget. The system works similarly to pay-per-click ads where you’ll get charged per each of your posts that an applicant clicks on. While you only have to start at $5 or INR 410 per day when sponsoring a job ad, that will get you very few clicks and possibly less than one applicant per day, depending on your location and the popularity of your job type.
Budgeting $25 or INR 2,100 to $50 or INR 4,100 per day on a single job ad can add up and be expensive, especially for smaller businesses. Some healthcare companies can easily spend thousands of dollars per month trying to fill nurses and nursing assistants because they pay every time someone clicks on the ad and not by the number of qualified applicants they receive.
These costs can be mitigated by setting up a daily budget, but once your spending threshold is reached the job listing drops down in search results. It may take some experimentation to find the right balance for each role you post.
How Indeed Stacks Up
Indeed is a strong option if the location and types of jobs align with what you need. You can control the costs when sponsoring an ad, which you can also do with LinkedIn. ZipRecruiter, on the other hand, requires a steep monthly price and gives you a certain number of credits to use for job ads. If you have a lot of jobs to post, then Indeed is tough to beat.
If you only have a single job you need to advertise, and it’s a professional job, then LinkedIn might be a better choice. You can post your first job for free for 30 days, and the audience might be a better match for middle management or sales-related careers anyway.
ZipRecruiter is a better fit for more manual labor positions such as warehouse or restaurant workers. The pricing is difficult to understand when you first start, and the platform itself isn’t as easy to use as either LinkedIn or Indeed.
Overall, you are mostly in control of how much you spend on these platforms and the one that is right for you will depend on where you need to hire and in what industry.
Is Indeed Right for You or Your Business?
Whether or not Indeed is right for you will depend on the type of business you have and what your hiring budget is going to be. If you’re in the healthcare space and have many needs for non-physician support roles, then Indeed is a great match. However, if you’re trying to fill a single COO role in Montana, then Indeed may or may not net you a single qualified applicant.
If you’re going to post job openings on an online job board, Indeed should be considered as one of the leaders for this type of hiring practice. It’s important to do some research for your specific location and the types of jobs you’re wanting to hire for before posting a job. You’ll want to make sure that the platform will net the amount of applicants you’re craving to make it worth the money, in your eyes.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is recruitment software?
Recruitment software helps organizations hire people for open positions. The best recruiting software makes it easy to find, evaluate and select high-quality job applicants to interview.
Can I trust Indeed?
Indeed has very high reviews by job seekers across the web. Storing your personal information on the site is as safe as most places online, but it doesn’t mean your personal information can’t be compromised at some point. While data breaches still commonly happen, Indeed has proven to be as safe of a place when it comes to applying for jobs as just about anywhere else.
How long does it take for a job post to be live on Indeed?
Indeed reviews each job post before it goes live. According to Indeed, the review process typically is complete within 24 to 48 hours.
Do employers see Indeed reviews?
Employers can see all of their Indeed reviews, but not necessarily who each review was written by. No employer has access to your application history or any information you’ve shared on the platform where you’ve asked to remain anonymous. Employers can see your location, your phone number, your Indeed alias and your résumé, if you’ve made your profile public or if you’ve applied to a job at their company.
What does it mean when you are invited to apply for a job on Indeed?
An official invite to apply for a specific job means that an employer has found your profile and is interested in you as a candidate. The employer can go into their Indeed account and request that you apply for the position via Instant Match.
At that point, Indeed will send you a personalized note inviting you to apply. You may also get separate emails with jobs that match your search criteria, but not official invites.