Attention outsourcing and recruitment firms, you’re now getting charged to post job advertisements on the career website, Indeed.
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The company announced this new policy change on October 25, 2018, which went into effect on January 7, 2019. According to the announcement, Indeed is no longer accepting requests for “organic visibility” from recruitment-based company clients.
Instead, all recruitment-based companies and accounts in the United States and Canada will be required to “sponsor” their jobs in order to receive visibility on Indeed. Companies and accounts affected by this policy may include, but are not limited to:
- Recruiting firms, placement firms, or headhunters who search for, recruit, and place job seekers into roles at other companies, or
- Staffing agencies or outsourcing solutions (or business models similar to this), who employ job seekers directly to perform tasks, duties, and/or work that the company has been contracted to fulfill by its clients.
Sponsored Jobs
According to Indeed, a sponsored job is a paid listing that is prominently displayed at the top and bottom of relevant search results and doesn’t fall back in search results over time like free listings. Because of increased visibility over time, sponsored jobs help deliver more quality applicants to your job openings than free listings.
Indeed says you only ever incur costs when a candidate clicks on your job and how much you pay depends on the daily or monthly budget amount you choose.
When you post your job, you have the option to choose a budget after you provide job details. To help you decide how much to spend, an estimator tool next to the budget field provides an idea of how many applications you can expect.
This estimate is based on the performance of jobs—similar to the one you posted—and only appears if we have enough data to provide a helpful estimate. A higher budget will generally attract more applications for your job. The ideal daily budget depends on the type of job you are offering, the location of the job and how quickly you need to fill the position.
Why the Change?
This new change comes after the company’s Search Quality team identified a number of persistent problems with jobs from recruitment-based companies, including high rates of duplication, reposting, location blasting, and inaccurate job descriptions.
Indeed’s goal with the new change is to ensure that companies don’t use posting practices that unfairly inflate job visibility and adversely affect jobseekers, such as reposting or posting jobs in locations other than where the employee will actually work.
In a blog post, Indeed says, “Only showing high quality jobs remains a top priority for us, and we are constantly striving to balance the needs of job seekers with those of the organizations that recruit on Indeed. Analysis shows that impacted jobs represent approximately 5% of applies but just 2% of hires on Indeed. We believe this decision is in the best interest of the job seeker and will enhance their search experience.”