Amitai Givertz’s Recruitomatic Blog

Indeed.com is really in the advertising game. And they play it well. Part of their strategy is to drive traffic from as many places as possible and one way to do this is to have their search engine available in as many places as possible. Anyone who has a mind to, and a smidgeon of technical know-how, can add Indeed.com’s Job Search to their site. For Indeed.com at least, it's mission accomplished.

Bearing in mind that Indeed.com is for job seekers to use, and provides no service for employers, here’s the alternate use for you:

1. On your careers page/job profiles make a bold statement like: "If you think you can find a better job than this one, try it" and invite them to search thousands of jobs from thousands of job boards – and your competition too – with just a click. That should say something about your confidence as an employer, don't you think?

2. Take the candidate to a really simple registration page. Name, number, and email should be enough. Invite them to bookmark the page and to come back as often as they like for their job search. With their email address, market to them as you please.

3. Once they’ve registered, another you-branded page explains that you understand that, just as you are very selective about who you want to talk to, they – your candidate – should be equally selective about who they consider applying to. A little bit of fear and doubt might give them pause to think twice and click back. Otherwise, let them enter their search criteria and say, "Goodbye".

A few words of caution:

1. Don’t do this unless you are feeding your jobs to Indeed.com. You want your postings to show up and, hopefully, stand out. Getting your postings up is simple enough and you should probably be doing it anyway. You can learn how on Indeed.com.

2. You will be told by some purist that this is a crazy, half-baked idea! Mumble something about this actually being a branding/retention play and quote the old Chinese proverb: "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was. We do not possess anything in this world, least of all other people. We only imagine that we do. Our friends, our lovers, our spouses, our children [even our candidates and employees] are not ours; they belong only to themselves." Smile sheepishly.

3. This strategy assumes a) you have your employment brand under control; b) a half-way decent employment site that candidates would be inclined to bookmark; and c) you believe that you can compete head-on and win.

With these minor things under your belt, if you have the guts to try this, let me know how it turns out.