Indeed is one of the major players in the online job search market as it allows people to find jobs quickly in all fields. It gets over 250 million unique visitors every month on its platform, and thousands of recruiters use its products. Launched in November 2004, the job site has managed to rise to the top of the online job listings industry.
If you still find yourself mystified as to how Indeed managed to be so successful, then you’re not alone. “How does indeed make money?” is one of the biggest talking points in the industry right now. If you too, are wondering the same question and want to know about Indeed’s revenue model, this article is for you. Let’s find out how Indeed makes money!
Indeed employs a pay-per-click advertising model to earn revenue. This approach has helped propel the job site to success, thanks to increased global traffic. Indeed makes money with a combination of sponsored job listings, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, subscription fees, and hiring events.
Indeed has developed a viable business model focused on job aggregation and search relevance enhancement. It developed an efficient platform that simplifies users’ job search activities. In turn, Indeed gained the trust and confidence of job seekers who find extensive listings in one convenient place.
In this guide, you will learn about how Indeed’s model works, the platform’s origins, and why the site became a success story. Additionally, the article covers key differences between LinkedIn and Indeed.
How Does the Indeed’s Platform Business Model Generate Revenue?
Indeed’s position as the leading job site bolsters its monetization potential. The platform leverages its competitive advantage to earn increased revenue than other job search sites.
As a result, an ever-increasing number of users visit the site directly instead of via search engines. In turn, the platform generates revenue through the service and product business model.
Employers looking to stand out in the listings pay a premium fee. These sponsored job listings maximize visibility because they remain featured above general search results. This pay-per-performance approach allows employers to pay when job seekers click on the featured listings.
The model is viable for both parties since employers only pay for results. Indeed adopted the model to help companies reduce their average cost per hire. In the end, smaller companies can compete cost-effectively for the attention of highly skilled job seekers.
Indeed’s sustained revenue growth provides a clear sign that the pay per performance model yields great results for employers. The increased average spend per employer account also supports this viewpoint. According to a Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) report, Indeed’s annual revenue for 2018 reached $1.98 billion.
Indeed Hiring Events
The platform allows employers to take advantage of the hiring events feature to interview multiple candidates. These virtual interviews take place following an initial screening process. Employers pay a fee to post events and conduct the interviews.
As a result, an ever-increasing number of companies leverage the feature to enhance their hiring processes.
Indeed Resume Services
The jobs site also offers resume review and rewriting services to job seekers. By using the services, job applicants can find it easier to stand out. Resume writing experts at Indeed organize and optimize the document to impress managers and recruiters.
With Indeed, users can generate an instant resume report for free, request a paid resume review, or get a rewrite for a fee.
The instant report option allows you to upload a resume or generate one via the platform. If you opt for a resume review, an expert provides feedback via a 10-minute video. Professional resume reviewers provide advice based on various factors, including the type of jobs you want.
On the other hand, the resume rewriting service helps you polish the document. An expert writer edits the resume and delivers the final draft together with a video commentary within six days. As with the resume review service, you need first to submit a brief questionnaire to help the expert tailor the document to your specific needs.
Seen by Indeed
This service makes it easier for employers to find pre-vetted tech experts. Indeed assesses the professionals based on work experience, skills, and educational qualifications.
Seen by Indeed takes the recruitment process to another level. It enhances access to high-caliber talent that could be challenging to find via traditional job postings, university recruitment, or staffing agencies.
Employers can access the tech talent via a free basic plan or subscription plans. The basic plan is ideal for employers looking to hire between one and ten tech experts annually. However, this option lacks the advanced features available to subscription plans.
For instance, a subscription allows you to enjoy first access to the database of vetted tech professionals. Employers on a basic plan have to wait 14 days to view the candidates’ list. The majority of hires occur in the two-week period.
Indeed Resume Search Subscription
This subscription service provides unlimited access to thousands of job applicants fitting specific requirements. You can identify the right talent and hire faster than inbound applications by accessing Indeed’s candidate database.
The premium version of the service provides access to candidates’ names. In addition, you can contact the job seekers.
Branded Company Pages
The paid company pages service comes with enhanced features. These premium analytics and branding features include:
- Follower metrics
- Featured reviews
- Competition analysis
- Review and rating filtering
- Branded alerts, job posts, and about page
- Featured jobs
Indeed Hire
With Indeed Hire, employers optimize job posts with the assistance of hiring specialists. In addition, the experts provide advice on salary ranges, job titles, candidate requirements, and position descriptions.
As a result, you can find the right candidates more conveniently, thanks to the support of Indeed’s hiring experts. Some key factors considered by the specialists when looking to pick the right talent include job clicks, applications, and search behavior.
Indeed charges for the service based on the number of positions you want to fill.
Tracing the Origins of Indeed
Founded in 2004, Indeed has risen to become one of the most prominent job sites globally. It attracted a significant amount of traffic after a few years of operating. At that time, the site recorded more than 170 million monthly page views.
Paul Foster worked for the International Finance Corporation and observed that there was a significant problem in hiring skilled candidates and professionals. The problem of a lack of candidates to fill essential jobs inspired Paul to create, Indeed.com.
Paul Forster and Rony Kahan founded the platform in Austin, Texas, with a vision to provide a one-stop shop where job seekers and employers could come together efficiently. Indeed has quickly become the premier online job board. They adopted a viable business model to keep the site growing.
Today Indeed has offices in many major cities across the globe. These locations include:
- London
- Austin, TX
- Toronto
- Düsseldorf
- New York
- Tokyo
- Zurich
Indeed introduced the pay-per-click job advertising model in 2005. Unlike the rest of the job search engines, it also allowed plotting the occurrences of words in job postings along the time axis. This showed how the trends in jobs changed.
This out-of-the-box approach helped Indeed to boost its earnings and attract investors. Venture capitalist, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, the New York Times, and Allen & Company put $5 million into the company.
In 2012, the platform became a subsidiary of Japan-based Recruit Co. Ltd.
To boost its portfolio, the holding company acquired Simply Hired in 2016, turning it into Indeed’s publishing partner.
How Did Indeed Become So Successful?
From its launch, the platform concentrated on jobs aggregation. It helps job seekers find employment opportunities via a single searchable repository. People found its platform useful, attracting millions of users. Along the way, Indeed accumulated a vast amount of employers’ and job seekers’ data.
This information helped the company enhance its algorithm and services. For example, search relevancy is a key area that benefited from insights gleaned from users’ data. These improvements contributed to increased traffic, peaking at 200 million monthly views. This trend turned Indeed into a leading jobs site in the United States and other key markets globally.
Indeed focuses on facilitating more hires, ensuring positive outcomes for job seekers and employers. This approach helped bolster the platform’s appeal and competitiveness.
It is no surprise that Indeed operates in more than 60 countries and employs thousands of talented workers. The company continues to invest in product development to drive future growth.
Key Differences Between LinkedIn and Indeed
LinkedIn is undoubtedly a prominent site that attracts millions of professionals globally. Although it has significant differences with Indeed, it also hosts a job board. The two platforms are highly popular with job seekers.
While Indeed focuses on job listings, LinkedIn has a strong social network component, which dwarfs the job listings. Indeed aggregates job postings from wide-ranging sources. Its database features millions of openings across various sectors. The platform’s business model entails subscriptions, sponsored job listings, branded company pages, and other premium services.
LinkedIn generates revenue through various enterprise solutions, advertisements, training courses, and subscriptions. Users can publish their profiles, which have a format similar to a resume. The profiles incorporate professional interests, educational qualifications, accreditations, employment history, and skills. Professionals can network with individuals in their fields and other sectors.
It provides access to forums and groups for professionals to discuss issues of common interest. Like Indeed, the platform also aggregates job listings from a wide selection of sources. The feature enables LinkedIn to compete with major job sites like Indeed.
Although most of its paid services target corporate users, LinkedIn also offers premium options to individuals. Professionals can opt to use the site under a free basic plan or a premium membership.
Benefits of the paid plan include integrated hiring, InMail messages, visibility of extended network, and the ability to track candidates automatically.
Conclusion: How Does Indeed Make Money?
Indeed makes its money by charging companies who want increased visibility. A job advertiser can pay for the higher placement on the search results. Similarly, they can also pay to make sure that their advertisement is only displayed when a candidate applies for similar openings.
Employers do not even have to request for those features, as Indeed will automatically seek out those employers willing to pay more money and place them in a more prominent spot in job searches.
It’s been a long journey to see how Indeed.com actually makes money and how it works. From providing search results to helping companies hire the right candidate, Indeed has a lot going on behind its platform.
The fundamental goal of the company is to help both job seekers and companies find what they are looking for. It does this through a variety of services on a number of mediums that it also monetizes. We covered its entire history. We also learned about the services it provides and the revenue channels used for different activities.
Indeed is one of the top job search engine platforms and it uses cookies to track your browsing activity on this website to provide you personalized job recommendations and help with your job application.
In conclusion, Indeed does make money by displaying ads to job seekers based on keywords that job seekers have used and by selling various other services to users such as resume services, resume search subscriptions, etc.
We have come to the end of this extensive study of Indeed.com’s business model so far, and you have hopefully learned a great deal.
Thanks for visiting and have a great day 🙂