How Indeed became the most popular job site
By Bartek Bezemer
Abstract keyboard
25 January 2024

Indeed has grown to become the largest job and employees website in the world. How was able to achieve this remarkable feat? 

Indeed is the largest job and employment website in the world. The website is available in over 60 countries, in 28 languages, with over 350 million unique visitors per month. The site, which launched in 2004, was bought by Japanese HR and recruitment services company Recruit in 2012 for an estimated $750 million to $1 billion. A remarkable achievement for a website whose sole business model is connecting job seekers with employers. How did Indeed grow to top all job sites?

Indeed the search engine

In 2009 SEM PDX spoke with co-founder Paul Forster about Indeed and its rapid rise to become one of the most popular job and employment websites. Forster, who ran a job board for financial professionals, launched Indeed as a job search engine. Indeed’s objective was to connect job seekers with career opportunities by providing the best search result.

At the time, Indeed already had 12 million unique visitors and 200 million page views per month in the United States. Outside the US, 16 million unique visitors came to the website each month. Indeed.com was growing exponentially, with Forster citing the Comscore Media Metrix, which put the company in the top 10 for fastest growing websites in the US. 

The job search engine Indeed started to mature in a market where social media was picking up steam. Forster didn’t consider these platforms to be the precursor for how people seek new job opportunities. The way job searchers look for new positions hasn’t changed all that dramatically. The core foundations remain the same, with job seekers looking for listings and applying to them. Social media relied heavily on close connections between users and not the vast network of employers. 

Forster points out that the growth of the platform is coming from a lot of various sources. The website enjoys high organic traffic, media mentions, word-of-mouth, and social media. He commented that a lot of its marketing budget went into search marketing. Once users discover how useful the job search engine was, they would keep coming back, Forster added. 

America online

Forster primarily pitched Indeed to be the superior job search engine. As much as that might’ve been the case at the time, there are important macroeconomic developments that allowed Indeed to see rapid adoption over the course of 2009 and into the early 2010s. In 2004, when Paul Forster and Rony Kahan launched Indeed, Google was gearing up to becoming the largest search engine in the world. In 2004, Google had just captured 39 percent of the search engine market, with sites like Yahoo! and Microsoft’s MSN was rapidly losing traffic. 

Unthinkable today, back in the early 2000s, search engines were becoming the gateway for internet users to access and discover new websites. Nielsen/Netratings found that of the 148 million active internet users, 76 percent used a search site, where they spend an average of 40 minutes on said website. The survey from Nielsen found that over the festive periods, 36 percent of internet users used Google for shopping, which resulted in massive traffic to websites like Amazon. 

The dawn of search engines rode the wave of rapid internet access, adding more and more new users that were embarking on their journey into the digital economy. In 1997, only 18 percent of households in the United States had an internet subscription. This figure rose to 41.5 percent at the turn of the millennium. The year before Indeed launched, 54.7 percent of American households had an internet plan. When Forster spoke at SEM PDX in 2009, this number had increased to 68.7 percent. America was coming online and Indeed was in the middle of it.  

Recruitment crumbles under economic fallout

Additionally, a few years after Indeed was seeing the job market transition from newspaper job listings to online platforms, the economic tides were about to drastically shift. The financial institutions that ran the world, started to topple over and take the whole economy with them. In 2008, in the United States alone, 2.8 million Americans lost their jobs overnight, becoming the largest wave of lay-offs since 1945. The unemployment rate in the US soared to 7.2 percent in December 2008, the highest since January 1993, where the rate sat at 6.8 percent. 

Combine the rise of internet adoption, search engine and the unfortunate surge in unemployment, and you have the perfect conditions for Indeed to thrive. Millions of Americans were coming online, whilst simultaneously millions were looking for jobs. Indeed was right in the middle of it and through its positioning as a job search engine, it was able to welcome countless new visitors month over month. 

Meanwhile the online recruitment landscape was falling apart. Monster.com, one of the largest job listing websites, drove into financial hardship and lost thousands of federal job openings to USAjobs.gov in 2011, further fueling traffic to Indeed. In November 2008, rising recruiting start-up Jobster, was having its own financial struggles due to the economic meltdown. The start-up was forced to lay off 38 percent of its staff, or 15 employees. The lay-offs at Jobster looked minor, but at its peak 150 people worked at the platform that raised $55 million in funding, who was struggling to turn a profit and with a bleak economic outlook, it was in dire need of money.  

Indeed gets acquired 

The strong success of Indeed however would get the attention of eager buyers. In 2012, Japanese HR and information services company, Recruit Co. Ltd. acquired Indeed. The price remained undisclosed but was estimated to be between $750 million and $1 billion. The acquisition price was greater than the $5 million funding that got Indeed to become the largest jobs platform. In the press release, Indeed noted that the acquisition would further support the exponential growth of the platform. Co-founder of Indeed, Paul Forster, told INC.com that Recruit could unlock new opportunities to expand the service into Asian markets.  

CEO of Recruit, Masumi Minegishi, said the company aims to become the global leader in recruitment and HR services. Through the acquisition of Indeed, it has unlocked a new pathway towards this goal. For Recruit, adding Indeed would immediately unlock a positive cash flow, as the job search engine has been profitable since 2007, with strong growth prospects. After Indeed became part of the Recruit family, an aggressive acquisition spree started. 

In August 2017, Indeed acquired US-based HR Technology company Interviewed. Interviewed, which was founded in 2015, created an automated screening solution, personality assessment and other candidate matching solutions. Through the automated screening tools, employers could gather valuable insights into, what Indeed called, candidate readiness. Job seekers in turn would get a better understanding of the company and the day-to-day tasks. A few years into the acquisition by Recruit, it would see American leadership once again. 

In May 2018, Indeed acquired Resume.com, an online platform where job seekers could  create personalized resumes. The site was home to 3.5 million job seekers, with more than 40,000 resumes created each week. SVP of Product at Indeed, Raj Mukherjee, said in the press release that Resume.com provided a vital service to job seekers through aiding them in creating strong resumes. Noting that by adding Resume.com to its portfolio, it would further fulfill its promise to enable job seekers to find new opportunities.  

Leadership change

In the beginning of 2019, Chris Hyams was appointed as CEO at Indeed, replacing Hisayuki Idekoba, who took the position in 2013. Idekoba would remain on the board at parent company Recruit. The New Statesman noted that Hyams, who had been working at Indeed for the last 8 years, would inherit a fast growing company with expansion plans on the horizon. Despite the job search engine seeing rapid growth, its core foundations remained intact.

Hyams, who comes from the Austin headquarters, where it grew into one of the most prominent tech companies, noted that its principles still stand today. In an interview with the Statesman, Hyams explained that Indeed puts job seekers first, which is the bedrock upon which the service is built. Secondly, Indeed wants to deliver the most pay per performance for employers. In May 2019, Indeed announced the acquisition of UK hospitality, industrial event and lighting  recruitment platform, Syft. Syft developed a platform that could effectively match companies for flexible and part-time projects. The company boasted a desktop and mobile app, which allowed for cross-platform talent matching for employers. 

A few months later in July 2019, Indeed announced the acquisition of UK-based ClickIQ, a company who developed an automated job advertising technology platform. The platform, which was founded in 2019, grew to become the leading AI-power programmatic recruitment technology platform. ClickIQ technologies allow enterprise clients to manage, track and optimize recruitment advertising campaigns in real time. In September 2020, Indeed acquired all assets of recruiting process automation platform ZapInfo

Promoting Indeed

A lot of the story around Indeed feels organic and riding the economic waves, but the job search engine has been pouring millions into promoting its brand around the world. In 2014, Indeed announced it would launch its first above-the-line global brand campaign. Ten years after its launch,and two years after the acquisition by Recruit, the job search engine decided it was time to start promoting the brand. Senior vice president of marketing at Indeed, Paul D’Arcy, told Marketing Week, the company had reached an important inflection point. D’Arcy explained the job website put all its efforts into developing its product. 

This has skyrocketed the company to stardom, making it the largest job and employment website in the world. But, as with any brand, there are still audiences that aren’t familiar with the product. The multi-million dollar campaign would include a television ad, highlighting the work that goes into creating a commercial. The TV ad would be supported by outdoor, digital and social media ads. The central theme is achievement, highlighting the benefits of collaboration and making people successful, D’Arcy explained. It wants to move away from the negativity surrounding job sites, showing sites like Indeed can be a force for good.  

In June 2017, Indeed and German soccer club Eintracht Frankfurt announced their sponsorship partnership. Indeed would sponsor the club over the span of three years, including all junior levels and teams. Managing director of Indeed Germany, Frank Hensgens, explained the collaboration was a perfect fit for both parties. Eintracht Frankfurt lies within the heart of a fast growing economic region, with many job opportunities lying ahead. Indeed will be able to support connecting job seekers and employers.  

Two years later, in August 2019, Eintracht Frankfurt confirmed the extension of its collaboration with Indeed as the soccer club’s main sponsor for another four years. Eintracht Frankfurt Fußball AG board member responsible for sales and marketing, Axel Hellmann, said in the statement that Indeed was a formidable partner in the past two years, with the partnership fitting neatly within the soccer club’s ambitions to being a digital leader within the Bundesliga.   

In January 2021, Indeed announced it would launch its first Super Bowl Ad. The ad would mark the start of a new brand campaign, reinforcing Indeed’s message that it aims to help job seekers find new job opportunities during economic hardships. Chris Hyams said in the press release that through its Super Bowl Campaign it wants to remind job seekers that new opportunities are out there. VP of Global Brand and Communications, Jennifer Warren, comments that by including real people in the commercial, the ad accurately portrays the experience of finding a job during economic uncertainty. 

In May 2023, Indeed geared up for another brand campaign in India. The marketing push is in cooperation with DDB Mudra, who conceptualized and created the campaign. The concept, which includes two commercials, aims to connect job seekers with work opportunities. The advertising message emulates Indeed’s previous efforts to push a narrative of being the perfect middlemen to help employers find the right candidates and enable job seekers to find new career opportunities.

Building a global brand

The campaigns launched after Recruit’s acquisition of Indeed have been part of a strong marketing push of making the brand globally recognizable. In May 2019, parent company Recruit reflected on the campaigns throughout the 2010s. Recruit noted that marketing has been a vital part of Indeed’s transformation and global growth. The overarching message throughout the campaigns has been to create an emotional connection and build brand salience, Recruit wrote. By incorporating emotion with the company’s mission into the advertising material, Indeed established trust and stronger relationships with its customers.

Recruit cites its 2018 global “Stories” campaign which featured personal stories of finding new career opportunities that allowed job seekers to get closer to their families or find connections with new people as they started their new job. Recruit pointed out the cinematic nature and optimistic tone of the campaign which had to motivate job seekers to upload their CV to the platform.

The multi-commercial campaign was running in a wide variety of regions, including the United States, Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Global campaigns were supported through localized ads. Recruit commented that regulations and work culture differs per region, citing regions like Australia, Germany, India and Japan among others where the definition of work varies heavily. Indeed had to find the right balance between becoming a global brand, whilst keeping the local markets in mind.    

Recruit highlighted its multichannel “The Complete Job Search” campaign launched in Australia. The marketing push across television, digital video, social media, out-of-home and local networks was tailored to the Australian market. The campaign message built on a survey revealing that only 1 in 10 Australian job seekers felt aware of new opportunities when searching for a new job. Indeed used these findings to promote the role of the job search engine as an extension to finding new career opportunities.

The advertising material used a dead-end bridge as the metaphor for job seekers reaching the end of their search. A dramatization of the search for new employment, Recruited commented. Indeed would symbolize the missing piece of the bridge, extending the search to more jobs, driving home the core message that no job search is complete without Indeed. The backdrop for the campaign was fully shot in Australia, featuring scenery from Canberra and Sydney, in cooperation with local talents. 

By integrating familiar local themes and scenery, the marketing teams at Indeed could create a tailored message that would resonate with domestic audiences. This is especially relevant for the subtleties in each region’s workplace, from its work ethos to the job search itself. By nesting itself among local job searches, Indeed carved out a significant portion of the market, with competitors vanishing into the background or disappearing altogether.  

Marketing as an asset

Indeed was spending millions to promote its brand, which in part was made possible by how the company viewed marketing, namely not as a cost, but as an investment into growth of the platform. At a surface level this way of thinking seems minor, but all too often, company’s see marketing as a loss making asset, instead of revenue generating vehicle. In August 2022, Fortune magazine spoke with Chief marketing officer at Indeed.com, Jessica Jensen, about how the company leveraged marketing to increase traffic to indeed.

Jensen explains that marketing budgets have seen a shift, noting that they have become less rigid and more focused on return on investment and keeping the costs of marketing within reasonable bounds. Marketing teams at Indeed are focussed on creating brand awareness and brand consideration. Jensen highlights that unaided consideration (UAC) is a key metric for her team. She explains that by uplifting UAC, customer acquisition activities become more effective, leading to lower costs of acquisition overall. 

This doesn’t mean the marketing teams at Indeed get a free pass to spend as much money as possible to create brand consideration. It has to translate these metrics into tangible revenue or client acquisition metrics that senior executives can understand. To properly communicate the impact of marketing activities, Indeed has been working on enhancing data that tracks and segments customer lifetime value (LTV), Jensen notes. She highlights capturing the LTV and the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) for segments like construction workers, truckers, nurses and more. 

In December 2022, Jennifer Warren, emulated the strategic decisions at Indeed highlighted by Jensen a few months earlier. Warren emphasized that a brand is not a luxury, but a necessary foundation for future growth. She highlights that technology companies, and even agency clients, tend to separate performance marketing from brand building. For tech companies that route is logical, as they grew through performance driven campaigns, with brand building taking a backseat. 

Warren believes that by separating them, both schools are being pitted against each other, fighting for budget. During these conflicts, performance driving marketing campaigns receive the upper hand as they can drive immediate business results. Brand building on the hand has a longer span before it starts to deliver results. Indeed has been expanding its web analytics efforts, which Warren calls commercial mix modeling, to prove that brand campaigns are a valuable addition to the overall marketing mix.  

She recalls the launch of Indeed in Germany, where the head of sales was frustrated as his team members had a hard time selling the product. He noted that no potential client was familiar with the brand Indeed and reluctant to try out the platform. In order to gain traction with its desired target audience, the job search engine partnered with a local agency to build a highly relevant campaign, which resulted in Indeed overtaking the leading competitor. Potential customers were now flocking to Indeed. That doesn’t mean that one campaign type is better than the other. Warren notes that performance marketing also contributes to brand building.    

Favorable market conditions

The founders at Indeed pride themselves for their technological prowess and customer centric philosophy. Those core principles might have helped it to build the culture necessary to craft a product that delivers on its promise of connecting job seekers with employers. But what has benefited Indeed most, was competitors slipping and an economy that forced millions around the world to search for new employment. Through tailored campaigns it tapped into local markets. Creating unique messages that went beyond the search. Indeed mixed emotion and familiarity into its messaging, quickly framing the website as more than just a mere job listings portal. Indeed was a platform that changed lives.

Bartek Bezemer graduated in Communications (BA) at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands. Working in the digital marketing field for over a decade at companies home to the largest corporations in the world.

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