Recruit Holdings is one of the biggest HR companies in existence today, with 45,000 employees around the world and over $21.7 billion in revenue. Two of their most recognizable brands, Indeed and Glassdoor, also happen to be two of the largest job sites in the world with 250 million and 60 million unique monthly visitors, respectively.
In an interesting move, Recruit Holdings recently announced a “partnership” between Indeed and Glassdoor that looks and feels a lot like the merging of the two brands.
So, what does this “partnership” between two of the biggest players in recruitment look like? How will Indeed and Glassdoor themselves change, and how will this impact online recruitment marketing, hiring efficiency, and the candidate experience?
Let’s take a look.
Indeed and Glassdoor: Some Background
Before we get into the partnership, let’s look at the differences between these brands.
Indeed, above all else, is a job posting site with an emphasis on traffic…Glassdoor is known as the authority of employer reputation.
About Indeed
Indeed, above all else, is a job posting site with an emphasis on traffic. While Indeed does have other features including reviews and salary estimates, it’s clear that Indeed as a brand is focused on getting employer job advertisements seen by as many candidates as possible.
Indeed’s lack of targeting and optimization gets employers many views & applicants on their jobs, but not necessarily the great candidates employers are looking for.
It’s also not positioned as a brand for candidates & job seekers, with many bemoaning the poor job targeting and lack of optimization in search. In fact, one study found that only one to four percent of applicants actually get a job from job board sites like Indeed.
There’s no true sense of transparency or really any sense of dedication to either the employer or the candidate experience.
Clearly, Indeed needed to do something about their employer branding.
About Glassdoor
Glassdoor, on the other hand, has a well-known and incredible brand. Employers and job seekers alike view Glassdoor as an honest and reliable source for information on employers.
Glassdoor is known as the authority of employer reputation. Their main offering is transparent and anonymous reviews and salary information of businesses from their actual employees.
Glassdoor also has areas to post and apply to jobs, but it’s definitely not the main focus for this brand.
The Partnership… and Why You Should Care
Indeed is essentially taking the best parts of Glassdoor and integrating them into the Indeed platform while also shifting its job ad & posting applications to Glassdoor.
This is a huge move for Indeed, but it could mean the end of Glassdoor as we know it. Indeed is taking the core of Glassdoor’s brand — transparent employer reviews — and making it a part of their brand. Which is not known for its transparency.
Indeed and Glassdoor executives emphasize that this partnership will work to make hiring more efficient for both employers and job seekers.
But is that the truth? Let’s look at what the partnership entails along with its true impact.
Taking Over (and Taking Out) the Competition
For now, it seems as though Indeed will be pushing its job postings to the Glassdoor platform. Or, as Joel Cheeseman said on the Chad and Cheese HR Podcast, “it’s pretty clear that Glassdoor is going to be a filler site for Indeed jobs.”
So what’s Glassdoor left with to call its own? Its strong brand authority over reviews is going to be overtaken and integrated into Indeed while its lesser-known job posting capabilities will be overrun with duplicate Indeed listings.
As this partnership evolves, it seems more and more clear that Glassdoor will likely remove job postings as an offering… once Indeed takes all it can from Glassdoor, that is.
How can we tell? Well, Indeed has done this before.
A few years ago, Indeed acquired Simply Hired, the known “number two” for online recruitment. At the time, it was also predicted that, “SimplyHired will most likely become backfill for Indeed’s listings.” Eerily similar to the Glassdoor prediction on Chad and Cheese, isn’t it?
Soon after that, Simply Hired as a distinct brand was all but dead. You can still visit Simply Hired today, but you’ll see that it exists as an Indeed clone with Indeed listings.
Is this what’s in store for Glassdoor? Only time will tell, but it’s a safe bet that Glassdoor will evolve to only support Indeed with its one major asset (its reviews) and as a dumping ground to place more Indeed listings.
The Impact
With Glassdoor now to be overrun with Indeed listings, the question remains whether Glassdoor will continue to integrate listings with Google for Jobs…Indeed could increase their prices for job listings and cost-per-click without much competition to challenge them
Besides changing up the online recruitment space, the impact of this will likely be widely felt.
First of all, let’s talk about Google for Jobs (GFJ). This partnership will be a big blow to Google for Jobs, and just how big will depend on a number of variables that, for now, remain unclear.
The biggest problem is the battle between Indeed vs Google Jobs search engine. Indeed does not integrate its jobs with the Google for Jobs program, which means that Indeed listings do not appear on Google for Jobs.
With Glassdoor now to be overrun with Indeed listings, the question remains whether Glassdoor will continue to integrate listings with Google for Jobs. If not, GFJ could lose a huge amount of its listings pushing Indeed back into the dominant position.
This partnership could also have a huge impact on the cost of recruiting. With this partnership, there are fewer competitors in the market, meaning that Indeed could increase their prices for job listings and cost-per-click without much competition to challenge them.
Learn more about the Google for Jobs vs Indeed debate here.
Moving Forward
No matter Glassdoor’s eventual fate, the Indeed Glassdoor partnership has significant impacts right now. Pushing Indeed listings over to Glassdoor is going to harm both the employer and candidate experience on the site. The current experience on Indeed isn’t what we would call candidate-focused, either.
You can make the recruitment process more efficient for both yourself and your applicants by integrating your listings with Google for Jobs.
Our recruitment technology makes the hire with Google process simple & easy helping you get your jobs viewed by high-quality & targeted candidates using Google for Jobs ranking signals, optimizations, and Jobiak machine-learning tech.
The recruitment industry is changing; let us help you evolve with it. Learn more about how Jobiak can help you here.
