Top Five Websites for Job Seekers: #2 is Indeed

Indeed is a job board aggregator.  Basically they spider the internet and find job postings, and then you can search from just one place to find all the postings online.  That’s the idea – they don’t list everything, but they do have a lot of postings from a lot of different places.

I’m not a huge fan of job boards. I think most job seekers use them wrong.  I want job seekers to spend their time better than I did in my job search… which means don’t apply all day long on job boards.  That usually leads to a lot of frustration.

What could/should you do on a job board?  Here are five things to do on Indeed:

1. Learn about your profession and opportunities. No kidding… when I lost my job I had never heard of a “product manager.”  I finally learned about it while surfing around job boards, and coming across openings for a product manager.  For me, surfing through job postings helped me learn about roles I hadn’t known of, and hadn’t thought of.  It expanded my vision on where my career could head.  Also, reading job postings of somewhat similar jobs you are interested in might give you language to help quantify your skills and experience, helpful for interviews, networking, etc.
2. Learn how to network into a company. Sometimes postings have names, phone numbers and email addresses.  Record those in JibberJobber and try and network into the company.  Sometimes those contacts will be AWESOME.  Other times they will be dead ends.  But you can start to map out a path to network into your target companies.  Many times you’ll take that information to LinkedIn and do deeper research to network into the right people.
3. Learn about the industry. As you see postings in your industry from your target companies and their competition, you should be able to deduce changes and challenges within a company.  I recently saw someone on LinkedIn ask “why are there so many director level openings in our industry?”  This was information gleaned from surfing job boards.  Think about what you learn from this and what that means as far as positioning yourself and your expertise (and brand).
4. Find language to help you polish your brand messaging. Many people in transition haven’t had to think about this stuff for a long time.  Looking at current job postings should help you find trends in language for professionals like you, and figure out what catch-phrases keep appearing.  You can incorporate these phrases into your branding statements (maybe not word-for-word).
5. Find recruiters who might be right for you. I cringe when I see people say “I’m in a job search, do you know a recruiter in my area?”  I think: “if I told you who to talk to, I’m doubtful you’ll know what to say or how to say it!”  But spending a little bit of time on Indeed might help you identify key recruiters that you should develop relationships with… relationships that might be valuable to you over the duration of your career.

Can job boards play a strong roll in your job search?  Sure.  Use these tips and don’t waste time dumping submissions into the resume black hole.

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News: Did ya hear?  Indeed got acquired by a Japanese recruiting company for a lot of money. Most sites are guessing it was a $1B acquisition, one site said it could be as much as $4B.  Wow and congrats to them!