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Today I will share some quick insider info from my experience working as a senior account executive at Indeed. I worked with around ~1,000 different companies during my time at Indeed so I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. These tips are for your average job post on Indeed for your average job seeker on Indeed: if you are hiring for some niche senior role then not only do you already probably know what you're doing, but these tips don't apply to you.
Hopefully this gives you some insight into the average job seeker on Indeed and how to tailor your posts to them.
1. Candidates are not reading your job description
Unfortunately, that job description you spent the afternoon typing will be briefly reviewed, at best, before clicking apply. The average candidate on Indeed spends 7-8 seconds looking at job posts. That's just the average, so imagine all the people who are on the bottom half of that number looking for just a few seconds.
Don't get frustrated by this - lean in. Make your job description just have the most important pieces of information I might want to look at before I apply - I can find out about the extra stuff if I actually get an interview. Make your job description a short bulleted list of experience or requirements you want out of me so I can easily see if I'm qualified or not. You don't need to sell me on everything about this position and this company in the job description and if you try it'll be too long for me to read. Just keep it short, and simple.
2. Most of your traffic is from candidates applying on their phones - keep it short
Really can't reiterate this enough - not only would I not read a 5+ paragraph job description, I wouldn't be able to. 60% of your applicants are viewing your jobs on their phones, so if you don't have a mobile friendly job description you're encouraging people to either not apply or not bother reading your post.
3. Sell job seekers on your company through branding, not in your job description
It's good to have a few quick sentences at the top about the company, but make it 1-3 sentences. I'm going to search for info on the company through Indeed's company page reviews, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, etc. You don't need to sell me on the company on the job description, and you need to trim as much of the non-essential text from your job posts as possible. Leave it to your company branding on these recruitment sites to sell me on the company.
(Note: if you don't have reviews and content on all 3 of those sites that I can find, I'm much less inclined to take a job from you)
4. Don't try to stand out
Coming up with creative job titles like "Sales Rockstar Wanted!!" or "Full-Stack Software Ninja Needed" seem like an easy way to show your personality as a company and stand out in the search results, but it's counterintuitive. Indeed works off of keywords just like Google, so whatever a job seeker types in, that's what type of jobs show up.
Having the right keywords not only in your job description, but in the title, is one of the most important keys to success on Indeed. So while you think these fun job titles will help you stand out in the search results, what it's actually doing is making your job posts show up lower in the search results by being less relevant. Most candidates just type in the title of the job they want, so just make the title of the job post the actual title of the job.
