See you later aggregator!

Posted by Dr Glyn Brokensha | February - 4 - 2014 | 1 Comment

indeed2

It’s said that Australian consumers are early adopters while Australian businesses are often the reverse.  It’s certainly true that many of our Expr3ss! customers have been more than surprised to see so many of the little Indeed.com icons   tagIcon241    pop up in their Applicant Source column.

Indeed.com is a job aggregrator, think of it as Google® for jobs [more here].

It seems that applicants have discovered Indeed.com and adopted it with great gusto!

But what does this mean for you?

In last month’s post [here] I showed how simply by making your Job publicly-visible in “Apply” mode it becomes automagically searchable on Indeed.com within only an hour or two.

And again in last month’s post [here] I showed how applicants sourced from Indeed.com are most assuredly from Australia and are of equivalent quality to those from the Job Boards.

indeedCompositeHere’s a reminder of where all the Indeed.com applicants were domiciled and the percentage up to quality standard across three different industries.

Here at Expr3ss! we began to wonder about these Applicants.  How old are they?  What age group do they fall into?  And how might they differ from Applicants coming from paid Job Boards?

And, what proportion of Applicants would come from Job Boards and might there be differences between industries?

Well, we compared the biggest Job Board [Seek®]* with Indeed.com and the results are fascinating… as you’ll see…

 

Age and Gender Overall

Here’s how the data look for males and females coming from paid ads on Seek and coming from what Indeed call their “Organic” Search [which means free].

Proportion of Seek vs Indeed Applications by Age Group

    Men                                                                                               Women

seekVsIndeedProportions

This shows that whilst Seek still holds the majority of males aged 19 – 69, it does so only by a slim margin for older and younger workers.

And it seems that women are even more early adopters than the men.

Of course in each age band this view shows the percentage of all Applications received.  This is a great way to see the proportions attributable to Seek and to Indeed.com … but what about the actual numbers?

    Men                                                                                               Women

seekVsIndeedNumbers

The actual number of Applications shows an even more interesting picture.

The men show the pattern you might expect, with Indeed contributing about half the number of Applications compared with Seek.  But this proportion increases significantly as we look at younger workers (16 – 23) and older workers too (40+).  Now that is interesting!

And the position for women is even more interesting again.  For women, Indeed.com is actually equal to or superior to Seek in numbers except in the 21 – 39 age bracket.

So let’s dig a little deeper…

Age and Gender in Different Industry Segments

Here’s how the data look for 3 different industry segments.  I can’t say the data are exhaustive yet, it’s early days but I have tried to provide legitimate and meaningful comparisons.

Labour Hire and Blue Collar

   Men                                                                                               Women

seekVsIndeedBlueCollar

Both men and women lag behind the average but do show an almost identical pattern.  The overall number of older workers is striking.  This changes the shape of the charts in the older age bands.  Regardless, the Seek/Indeed split is still similar to the overall figures above.

Commercial Cleaning

   Men                                                                                               Women

seekVsIndeedCleaningHere we see a very significant shift from Seek dominance, with the “new kid on the block” aggregator turning the tables.

The age distribution is similar to the overall charts above but there is a much more significant contribution from Indeed across the board.

Again, women are heavier users of Indeed, albeit by a smaller margin.  The men are catching up!

Retail

Men                                                                                               Women

seekVsIndeedRetail

Once more Indeed seems even further ahead here.  Although very much reduced, we still see the pattern of Seek’s performance being best in the 21 – 49 age group, this time peaking in the 30-39 age band.

And it’s younger workers who are dominating in Indeed.com  with the women showing the way big-time.

What does this all mean?

Firstly, let me say that it’s early days yet but that to me these figures show a few telling points:

  • Older and younger workers are adopting Indeed.com fastest
  • Women are showing the way, significantly outshining the men
  • Early adoption is very well-advanced in Retail, a little less in Cleaning and only just beginning in Blue Collar/Labour Hire

My interpretation?  I believe the trend we are seeing here driven is by three factors:  awareness, speed and ease.

Indeed.com is easy to find (Google “all jobs australia”), very quick to use, mobile-friendly and increasingly is a “one-stop-shop”  where job-seekers can quickly find and pursue all the vacancies they may find of interest, all together in one fast, efficient package.

So… what do you think?

What next?

At the moment I’d say it sit tight, hang on and enjoy the free ride.  Your Jobs on Expr3ss! are automatically indexed and searchable on Indeed.com.  So local applicants of good quality across all age bands and both genders are going straight to your Expr3ss! site with one click.  And that’s for free of course!

And here at Expr3ss! we recommend you make your Jobs Publicly-visible in Apply Mode several days before you pay for a Job Board Ad.  Many of our customers are finding that’s enough to get a broad range of high-quality Applicants.

Thanks for dropping by.

 

 

* Actually we did compare with the Big 3 [Seek, CareerOne, myCareer] and the results were almost identical.  So here I’m just talking about Seek.

One Response so far...

  1. Kate Terry says:

    Legend!