startup story

In this era, jobs are hard to find. Also, job hunting stands as a headache for a lot of working professionals, who want to change or start something new for the better. But every problem has its own solution, and when it comes to job hunting or searching, Indeed is there to find the ‘perfect job’ you seek.

Indeed is American employment search engine that works at a global level. In simpler words, you can refer to it as the ‘Google’ of job searching. Indeed was founded by Paul Forster and Rony Kahan, in November 2004, and Paul shares an interesting story about how he came forth with the idea of making the biggest job searching site of all time.

Paul was born in Buckinghamshire, England. He did his M.Sc. from Oxford University, followed by an M.A. from Cambridge University, and an MBA from INSEAD. After completing his education, he started looking for a job and ended up working at many. It was his dream to start his own business and was not short of ideas, but wanted to work on something that troubled him the most. In 1988, he worked for International France Corporation, Washington, in the Human resources department. That’s when he realized that there was no job site that focused on providing jobs for the finance professionals.

He discussed this idea with his friend Rony Kahan. They both co-founded Jobsinthemoney.com. It did not take long when the site became a great hit because it, specifically, looked upon the ‘finance department’ of the industry. Jobsinthemoney was bought by eFinancialCareers which is a British Job site.

The next thing that Paul wanted to do was to start a new business. Soon after, with all the creative ideas and knowledge in his head, in November 2004, he launched ‘Indeed’, the first job search engine. In 2005, Indeed launched a beta version of pay-per-click job advertisement network which was similar to that of Google’s idea in 2004. Its working is also very much similar to Google’s. The site drew investments of only $5 million from Union Square Venture, The New York Times and Allen & Company. Indeed is headquartered in Austin (Texas) and Stamford (Connecticut).

Once again, Paul’s idea became a hit as the company became profitable in 2007. Indeed was selected by ‘Time Magazine’ as one of the top 10 websites in 2007 and one of the best 50 websites by ‘PC World’. It also won Weddle’s Users’ Choice Award in 2008 and was named the best job hunting site by Job-hunt.org.

The website’s working is done by aggregating job listings from thousands of websites, job boards, staffing firms, associations and company career pages. The site indexes your content for free but if an employer would want to come up on the searches on the site, Indeed takes a specific amount of payment. It also attracts more traffic to the company site which stands fruitful for both Indeed and the employer company.

Paul, when asked in an interview about “what tool Indeed is”, replied, “We want job seekers to find exactly the right jobs that fit their skills and interests. Our proprietary search algorithm is very effective at doing this with just a few keywords and the location of the job seeker. Users may refine their searches by job title, company name, location and other criteria; and more sophisticated users may conduct advanced queries. Job seekers can easily save their searches by email alert or RSS feed to receive new jobs matching their criteria. They can also set up a ‘My Indeed Account’ to track their job searches. This allows them to save jobs, add notes to jobs and manage their job alerts. These are great ways for both active and passive candidates to track and apply for jobs they are interested in.”

In 2012, the company who ran on just a $5 million funding was sold to Japan’s Recruit Co. Ltd., by the cost of nearly between $750 million to $1 billion, which came as a surprise. The company contributes more than 94% in GDP. The yearly revenues vary between $2 to $5 billion.

The site surpassed Monster.com in traffic job website. As of now, Indeed is the number 1 job site, with more than 250 million visits per month. The site is working in 60 countries and runs in 28 languages. There is a total of 120 million resumes and more than 100 million ratings in and about the site. An approximate of 10 jobs are added per second globally. Indeed has more than 7400 worldwide employees. The site holds the account for more than 500 million salaries which are the greatest number for any industry.

Paul stepped down from the position of CEO of the company in 2012, and at present, is a senior advisor in the company itself. He keeps on investing in technology products and startups that match the meet of the future.

The story of Indeed and Paul Forster is something that tells us that sometimes, the problem itself has the solution which can be easily found if one thinks with a calm and composed mind. Paul Forster, Founder of Indeed, indeed created a site that helps you in the biggest aspects of your life, i.e. job hunting, making it easier with the simplicity and transparency it holds.

Raghav

Raghav is a student and a content writer. He loves to write about emerging as well as the existing technologies around and about the ones who bring them to you. Music is the other passion that Raghav processes. It is like the fuel to his body. He is also in writing songs and poems. He believes that life is short, so live the best out of what you have got. Raghav considers himself a sci-fi guy, having stories and tech all around in his head, all the time.