In my frustration with finding qualified writers for my sites, I explained this to two women I met at a restaurant event yesterday. We talked about what I was looking for and what kind of candidates I was getting then one of the women asked me what service I was using. I told her I had been posting jobs on Indeed, and they both immediately told me I was making a mistake and that I was wasting my time and money.
To their point, one thing I have noticed that I found rather suspicious as of late while posting jobs on indeed was that I was seeing a lot of resumes from people in other countries who are also on Fiverr responding to my postings.
I’m not sure how they end up on Indeed but the women informed me that Indeed allegedly takes resumes from other sites to post on their platform too. It’s no secret that you can get someone in another country for a cheaper rate and if I want that I can go directly to Fiverr.
I’ve been posting jobs on Indeed for several months now and it’s been quite costly to find … well NOTHING.
They have an annoying feature asking you to sponsor your post and they even give you a coupon to do it for $300.00 but I ended up spending over $400 for candidates who did not qualify. I hired two people who could not deliver like they said they could and it was a waste of time and money.
This was after a review of their resume and a video interview. I will honestly say a majority of the candidates I have interviewed via video on the site failed miserably when it came to qualifying for the position. I was literally shocked at some of the answers I got from people who were merely looking for a check instead of a job or a career.
Indeed claims they charge you per application but you have to decline the application within a certain amount of time not to be charged. That’s not how it worked for me. The system is confusing because it appears I was still charged for some if not many of those fake applicants that I declined.
The way their system works is cumbersome and confusing for busy entrepreneurs.
Candidates on the system often know their way around the qualifying “deal breaker” questions that ask how many years of experience they have, they simply put in a random number of years like 5 to answer all the questions and they are able to get through and apply.
The problem is when you look at their resume for a writer, for example, you see they have experience working at Circle K and as a cashier at Walmart and that’s it.
They have no experience as a writer and you could be charged anywhere from $11 or more for that application even though they don’t qualify. Imagine getting 50 applications like that and you are wasting a ton of money and time.
I got a call from someone from Indeed who told me I would get a better response rate from candidates by increasing the salary I was paying. I did that but still got a ton of under and overqualified candidates.
It is imperative that you absolutely do your due diligence when and if you hire someone from Indeed as I hired someone once without doing my diligence (checking their references which most people don’t have on their resumes).
He turned out to be a complete fraud who hired other people to copy and paste stories from other sites to post on my site and he split the money with them while he scammed other job posters on indeed doing the same thing.
This could have been a major security issue for my site and I ended up paying him quite a bit of money (over $5k) during the period that he worked for me and had to delete all of his posts when I found out he was copying and pasting. Something I was adamantly clear on not doing when I hired him and informed him about it.
When I complained to Indeed about it, instead of investigating the issue they shrugged their shoulders and told me there was nothing that they could do about it. He should have been removed from their platform but they didn’t do it.
That should have been my final warning with Indeed but I foolishly kept giving them more chances. I will admit, that was not the smartest thing I could have done.
After my experience with Indeed and the conversation with the two women at the restaurant and getting another bill from Indeed for over $400 and not finding qualified candidates, I will not be using Indeed again. The women in the restaurant I was at told me to use LinkedIn to find actual qualified candidates and that’s what I will be trying next.
Some mistakes can cost you a lot of time and money, Indeed is one of those mistakes.
