Let’s be honest: most recruitment platforms weren’t designed for job seekers. They were designed to sell ads. The candidate experience was an afterthought — buried under banners, login walls, irrelevant job suggestions, and slow processes. Even today, many platforms optimise for clicks, not for people.
But one company made a different choice. Indeed built their entire platform around one simple idea: the job seeker comes first. That decision didn’t just help people find better jobs — it made Indeed the most used job platform on the planet.
Designed around the candidate, not the customer
Where other platforms chased advertisers, Indeed focused on usability. Where others cluttered the screen, they kept it clean. Where others buried job search under marketing, Indeed made the experience fast, relevant, and intuitive — no distractions.
It was a long-term bet: that if you make job search better for candidates, employers will see better results too. And it worked.
From job search to job match
Today, Indeed is more than a job board. It’s a matching engine — powered by 595 million job seeker profiles, behavioural data, and continuous testing.
Candidates log in. They build profiles. They tell the platform what they want. And Indeed responds by suggesting jobs they actually qualify for — not just what they searched for.
Behind the scenes, more than 2,000 product tests run every day. Every change — from button colour to application flow — is evaluated against a single question:
Does this improve the candidate experience?
If the answer is no, it doesn’t go live.
Why engagement matters
In Sweden, the average job seeker spends over 5 minutes per visit on Indeed. On many competing platforms, it’s less than 2.
That difference matters. Because more time means more trust, more relevance — and more opportunity to convert interest into action.
And that leads to better outcomes. Not because candidates are pushed harder — but because they’re shown something worth staying for.
Not about balance. About focus.
Here’s what makes Indeed different: they don’t try to balance the needs of candidates and advertisers. They take a side — and they take the candidate’s.
That might sound counterintuitive. But the logic is simple: If you build a platform candidates trust, they’ll keep coming back. And when candidates return, stay longer, and apply smarter — employers win too.
That’s how you scale a job platform. Not by chasing attention. But by earning it.
What it means for you
If you work in HR or recruitment, you know the challenge: attracting the right candidates, faster — without compromising quality.
The best way to do that isn’t by shouting louder. It’s by showing up in the right place, with the right message, on a platform candidates trust.
Indeed didn’t become the world’s largest job platform1 by chance.
They earned it — by putting job seekers first. And in a market where talent is everything, that’s exactly where your focus should be too.
1Comscore, March 2024
