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20 Things You Didn't Know About Indeed

If you're a job seeker or you've ever gone through online agencies to find a job, you're probably familiar with Indeed. It's a popular search engine that is used to find job listings for people seeking employment opportunities. If you haven't heard of it before and you're looking for work, then it's something that might be of interest to you. Here are twenty things that you didn't know about Indeed that you might actually be glad to find out.

1. Indeed was founded in 2004

The popular online job search engine has been around for a little over 14 years now. It was founded by Paul Forster and Rony Kahan who began the search engine under the website name indeed.com. The headquarters for the company is located in Austin Texas as well as a dual location in Stamford, Connecticut.

2. Indeed is all over the world

While Indeed is available almost everywhere that there is an internet connection, when we say that it's everywhere around the world, we're referring to the locations of its offices. Indeed has several real buildings that house the offices that are in charge of the search engines that they offer in more than sixty countries around the world. It is also offered in 28 languages so everyone can get in on the benefits of using the search engine to look for jobs.

3. Indeed is a subsidiary company

Here is a fun fact about Indeed that many people are not aware of. They are actually a subsidiary of a larger company that is Japanese owned called Recruit Co. Ltd. The company has co-headquarters in Austin, Texas, and Stamford, Connecticut. The fact that Indeed is not a stand-alone company is actually a good thing because it gives them greater financial stability along with the financial backing of a larger and stable company that can aid in expansion.

4. Indeed is bigger than Monster.com

As of 2010, Indeed.com surged ahead of the popular job site Monster.com. They finally had achieved a higher amount of web traffic. This catapulted them into the lead as the highest traffic job website that is in business within the entire United States. This is quite a feat as Monster was previously the top site. We're sure that they had a lot to celebrate at Indeed headquarters when they received this wonderful news.

5. Indeed is a multi-sourced service

Have you ever wondered how Indeed comes up with so many different job listings? There are so many that it can literally take days to get through them all and since more are added daily, you could spend hours searching every day and not get through them all. The Indeed.com website obtains its job listings from a variety of different sources which include job boards, company career pages, staffing firms, and associations and from thousands of diverse websites.

6. 2011 marked a new era for Indeed.com

In 2011, Indeed changed the way that business was conducted which resulted in a definite improvement for job seekers who were using the browser to find potential jobs. They implemented a system by which job seekers could post their resumes and store them on the Indeed.com site and they could apply directly to the jobs that they were interested in through the site. This added a big convenience for job seekers.

7. Usage for Indeed.com is in the millions

It's one thing to have a million users who use the site and then return to make more job searches. It's not too difficult to achieve the million mark on visitors to the site. What is so remarkable and noteworthy about the traffic that Indeed attracts is that they have surpassed the two million unique visitors mark. These are not repeat visitors that we're talking about. Unique visitor counts show how many people have visited the site versus how many hits have been made on Indeed.com. This is very impressive.

8. Indeed.com has kept their services free from day one

Another fact about Indeed that is worth talking about is that they have managed to maintain free access for millions of job seekers since they launched this service in 2004. Job seekers have access to information and a variety of useful tools that help them in locating and applying for gainful employment. When there are so many other sites that charge a fee for this service, it's not small wonder that Indeed has risen to become the number one source of online job searches in not only the United States but in the entire world.

9. Indeed has offices in most major international cities

Another interesting fact is that Indeed has placed their brick and mortar business offices strategically throughout the world in major cities. When you're in the United States, you can find an office in Stamford or Austin if you're looking for their shared corporate headquarters. They're also found in San Francisco, San Mateo, and Seattle in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. This is in addition to the offices they've opened in Sydney, Australia, Tokyo, Japan, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Dusseldorf, Germany, Dublin, Ireland, Amsterdam the Netherlands, London, England, Paris France and also in Hyderabad.

10. Indeed is the company that isn't talked about

We recently came across more interesting facts about Indeed. One publisher pointed out the fact that Indeed.com may have an outstanding record for performance and reputation for success, but it's still a company that hardly anybody talks about. We had to acknowledge that this observation, sadly, just happens to be true. It isn't that people have not heard about the company because if you walk down the street and ask a dozen different strangers if they're familiar with the name, overwhelmingly, you're going to discover that they know what you're talking about. We're not sure why it's not a topic of more conversations, but maybe it's one of those situations where it's enough for people to know that it exists and they don't really have much to say about the fact that they're unemployed and looking for work.

11. They make their money in interesting ways

One of the coolest things about Indeed is that they don't make their income from the people who are using the site to look for jobs. Instead, they bring in their income from other sources. Indeed makes its money from search advertising. It's really a brilliant system that allows them to maintain free services for the public. It works a lot like Google. Employers pay to have their job listings show up on the top-ranked searches for jobs. Even employers get a break on the rates because they only pay for clicks and the applicants are directed straight to their website so it's an efficient method for everyone that is involved.

12. Indeed has received accolades for their business model

It's also good news for Indeed users to hear that the company is highly regarded in the job search industry. They bring in a decent amount of revenue and it's been called the "best online business model in the history of search engine and search advertising history. They've come up with a plan that has evolved into one of the most highly monetizable verticals, referring to the jobs search engines. We're informed that Indeed has not had a need to raise money since 2005 so we know that it's been highly profitable.

13. Indeed was referred to as one of the best all-around companies

Fred-Wilson is the VC of Mixergy. When it comes to business he knows his stuff and the corporation that he heads with a controlling interest in Indeed has made no bones about the fact that he considers it to be the best company that they have within their portfolio. This includes the Zynga, Foursquare and Twitter companies. This is quite a compliment to Indeed.

14. The Silicon Valley version of Indeed couldn't keep up

There is a Silicon Valley company that is a lot like Indeed and it's called SimplyHired. While this area is known for producing some of the most successful startups in the world, their version of Indeed hasn't done nearly as well as our star in the industry. Even though the California startup has raised more than $22.3 million in startup funds, compared to the $5 million in funding that Indeed has had to raise, they lag pitifully behind Indeed and they've had to raise a lot more in funding. This says a lot for Indeed and the way that it's managed. It certainly is the star of the show.

15. Yahoo once tried to end Indeed

Before you let this upset you, it's important to know that in big business, quashing the competition is just the name of the game. When Indeed just started to grow as a serious contender in the industry, Yahoo made an attempt to crush them as competition by also joining in the jobs search service sector. Yahoo's attempt didn't really go anywhere and they weren't very successful in the venture. This showed that it didn't matter that they were bigger. Yahoo didn't have the special talent that Indeed had for this type of service. They ended up falling flat in their venture and it even made Indeed look all the better because they were accomplishing what Yahoo had proven that they could not.

16. Indeed even helps people who are new to the site

If you've never used a job search engine before to look for work, using Indeed.com won't be a problem for you. The reason that we can say this is because, through their useful Job Search app, you're guided through the entire process of finding a new job. Indeed provides useful information about how to use the site to get the most out of it and you're not alone as you complete the process.

17. One of the Co-founder downsized his title

We're talking about the co-founder, former CEO Paul Forster who turned over the reigns to another co-founder, Rony Kahan. He sold his part of the company for a more than comfortable amount of cash and then retired to the UK and went back to London, England, but he's not out of the business totally. He's the senior advisor at his new location.

18. There are some things that Indeed could improve on

There have been some complaints about how the system works. One reviewer posted that she receives between five to ten email confirmations each day along with rejections for applications that she has posted through Indeed for jobs to which she has never applied for. When contacted about this phenomenon, the staff at Indeed responded that the site does not auto-apply for jobs. They could only ascribe it to their system being hacked. This is something that needs to be tightened up.

19. Some employers are not pleased with their results

We also conducted research to find out what employers using Indeed.com to look for qualified job applicants had to say about the system. While there were many who were highly satisfied, there were others who were extremely displeased. Some shared that out of more than forty applicants they received through the site, there was just a handful who were actually qualified for the positions being advertised. They closed the posting that they had placed on Indeed because it was basically a waste of their time. Some suspected that they had been hacked, which is a suspicion that others had developed as well as the staff of Indeed.

20. There are a few cons associated with Indeed for employers

We also read a review from an employer who had used Indeed to fill vacancies in their organization. They had received several bad responses. A call came from a staff member at Indeed who treated the employer in a very rude manner, who told the lister that they could only expect to get better candidates if they increased their budget for advertising by somewhere between 8 and 10 times what it was set for. The staff member even went so far as to tell the employer that he should remove the ad.

Dana Hanson

Written by Dana Hanson

Dana has extensive professional writing experience including technical and report writing, informational articles, persuasive articles, contrast and comparison, grant applications, and advertisement. She also enjoys creative writing, content writing on nearly any topic (particularly business and lifestyle), because as a lifelong learner, she loves to do research and possess a high skill level in this area. Her academic degrees include AA social Sci/BA English/MEd Adult Ed & Community & Human Resource Development and ABD in PhD studies in Indust & Org Psychology.

Read more posts by Dana Hanson

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