What is A Review Summary on Indeed.com?

First things first. Do not apply to any company at Indeed.com that hides their website or company information. See the graphic below. If the “Company Info ” field is blank, run away. That’s a sure sign of scammers and con artists and the lowest paying employers. Any good company will proudly describe itself.

If you try to find this missing company info on your own, you may find that no website exists and that the company posting may be operating for unknown and possibly scurrilous reasons. Some are linked to money launderers or thieves who may put you on their payroll temporarily just to get your banking information. Do not give them personal information like your resume. Don’t. And don’t expect Indeed.com to root out scammers. They don’t. They get paid by the employer, including bad employers and crooks.

Do Employers Look at Indeed Applications?

Indeed.com is a total fail. Since I am qualified for every job I have applied for, it must be that I am overqualified or asking too much money. I suspect the latter.

Indeed.com requires that you put down the hourly rate you are seeking in your profile. That rate or amount then gets put into all the applications you submit unless an employer asks otherwise. In my case, I wrote down what I started at with Infocus five years ago. I think that’s where most job applications end.

Even when an employer says they pay $20 to $30 an hour (internal link), they are probably rejecting everyone who asks for, let’s use a number, $15.00 an hour or more. That would explain why and how an employer can reject applications without ever looking at them. Backing that up, my writing website traffic is near zero except for the unusual but consistent bot hits from China.

I’ve been rejected for 17 jobs. I’ve received only two notices which said I was not selected, and only three notices that an employer had viewed my application. I asked customer support how I can be rejected when an employer never views my application. The answer was astounding.

Customer support says a viewed application notice gets sent only if an employer clicks  a button on their dashboard. It’s not required by Indeed. You will never know whether an employer actually looked at your application unless you get that rare viewed application notice.

Do People Really Get Jobs Through Indeed?

The employer makes the rules for applicants and decides how to treat them. Indeed requires little from the employer since the employer pays Indeed. As I have written before, Indeed leaves their site open to scam artists and to employers that pay as little as one cent a word. The applicant isn’t top of mind. Indeed does have excellent customer support for applicants but all of their answers dead end with the employer deciding the rules.

In The Old Days, you’d send off dozens of resumes in the mail, never to hear back. Oh, you’d get a form letter rejection now and then but never a statistically significant amount.  Back then, I kind of understood. To send rejection notices, an employer had to pay a secretary to stuff envelopes, label them up, and then pay postage.

Today, all an employer has to do is click that button. Yet, they don’t.

Why is Indeed So Bad?

I became so frustrated with Indeed that I went outside their system. I was rejected for a job through Indeed that matched the exact skill set I have. This was another content creator for law firms, just like the company I work for now.  I  looked at that employers’ website, found a client of theirs, and then rewrote the copy on a page the employer had created for the client. The page had typos and weird syntax and wordiness that went on forever. Not law office grade. I emailed my corrections and suggestions to the person who supposedly runs this content creation website.

The owner responded quickly but he was mainly interested in how I found this client. He said his hiring team would contact me if they thought I was a good fit for their clients and of course they never did. I did see web traffic to my site immediately after contacting him so I know some people visited.

This is probably the best approach: use Indeed.com to see who is hiring and then hunt down the email of someone who owns or operates the company. Bypass the hiring team which is most likely two or three employees tasked with evaluating resumes. If you are good, really good, these people will probably be scared that you would eventually compete for their jobs. If they are an outside hiring agency you will stand a much better chance. They would be independent and not concerned with you as a competitor.

How do I get Hired Through Indeed?

I’m debating whether a writing website hurts or helps a writer. Everyone says to build one but if you are talented and creative you will show yourself as something far beyond a beginning writer. An employer found through Indeed.com no doubt wants a simpleton who’ll take the lowest wage. Which gets back to what I wrote at the beginning, you are probably doomed from the start by setting a reasonable wage demand.

You’ll never get someone to review your application if they don’t want to pay a decent rate, even if they say they’ll pay twenty to thirty dollars an hour. Then again, you don’t want to work for a company like that. Keep looking at Indeed.com if desperation forces you. Or isolate hiring companies through them and then contact those companies directly.  Better yet, use a different job board. Again, Indeed.com is a total fail.

My writing website is here: https://thomasfarleywriting.com (external link)