Indeed Feed Frenzy

Strap in as Chad & Cheese welcome back the one and only Indeed Whisperer Jim Durbin for a deep dive into Indeed’s latest chaos-bomb: the quiet nuking of single-source XML feeds from agencies. That’s right — if you’re not plugged in via an ATS, you’re out. And if your ATS data sucks (spoiler alert: it does), good luck.

💥 Major topics include:

• 🤖 Why Indeed’s communication strategy feels like “chaos on purpose”

• 🧼 The death of data hygiene and what it means for job posting quality

• 💸 “Healthy Budgets” that seem more like unhealthy cash grabs

• 🔌 Agencies getting cut off at the knees — and not even knowing why

• 🕵️ Disposition data obsession: helpful tool or just another way to charge more?

• 🔮 Is this all part of Indeed’s final boss move to control the funnel?

It’s part whodunnit, part job board therapy session, and all-out war over who owns your job data.

🎧 Listen now before your XML feed gets ghosted.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:30.364)

This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, riding shotgun is Chad Sowash. And please welcome with us, Jim Durbin, the self-proclaimed Indeed Whisperer and VP of Recruitment Marketing at responsible.io. Jim, welcome again to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast.

Chad (00:42.751)

Jim Derbin.

Jim Durbin (00:50.431)

Pleasure to be here

Chad (00:52.536)

lies already already is the beef tallow on the face

Joel Cheesman (00:53.084)

He looks so excited. Yeah, he looks so excited to be here.

Jim Durbin (00:57.674)

that's beef tallow on the face. That's it. That's just moisturizer.

Joel Cheesman (01:02.62)

All right, Jim, some of our some of our listeners actually won't know you, believe it or not. Give them give them the elevator pitch on you. What did I miss in the intro? Give us a little bit about you and what you do.

Chad (01:06.616)

Huh? That's crazy.

Jim Durbin (01:13.518)

Sure, I'm a consultant for TA, for talent acquisition. I've ran the gamut of staffing, recruiting, corporate, RPO, headhunting. In the last couple years, I've been focusing on recruitment advertising internally and with RPOs. And then decided, what we need to do maybe is focus on how we change our processes in tech for the internal stack. So I tend to work with TA departments on how to better work with their vendors. And that's the whole point, is to build that next generation of leaders by showing them data, finance, AI, tech, and how to get...

More candidates when you need it, less candidates when they're too much and I'll get them cheaper. So it's kind of an interaction piece where I train young folks.

Joel Cheesman (01:48.604)

In short, Jim is a wild man at parties, everybody. He loves talking and all that stuff.

Chad (01:57.272)

So being the Indeed Whisperer, you have Indeed News. So if you could go ahead and kind of consolidate and we'll run through some of what is happening at Indeed so our listeners know what the fuck is going on. Healthy budget requirements, all the fun stuff. So let's chunk it out. Let's chunk it out.

Joel Cheesman (02:14.364)

Feel free to dumb it down, Jim. Feel free to like lower the, yeah. Like I'm a sixth grader.

Jim Durbin (02:17.912)

Well, it's probably best to go upstream real quick and think about the story you broke last year where Himes came out and they talked about the total addressable market and how they're going to start to move further up the funnel. They've been paying for years. You just pay for clicks. Now you're paying for applications. And the idea was eventually to start paying for hires and healthcare and technology. So everything has to be seen through that lens because there have been a number of moves they've made. And in trademark indeed fashion, they're not communicating them well, which is why I got a phone call and then another phone call and my phone was blowing up.

from about last week and continues to do it today. What's going on? And the big news coming out of them is that single source feeds coming out, basically XML feeds from agencies are no longer going to be accepted. So the official announcement, the email announcement says no more single source feeds. And I already know one person that they've been rejected. What that means is all the data's gotta come out of your ATS. So it only counts, there's always a couple caveats, it only counts if you have

Chad (02:52.703)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (03:18.254)

integrated with an ATS. But that's like over 350 of them now at this point. So pretty much every major company has an ATS that's been integrated with Indeed. So if you're using an agency now, this is quite a big chunk of their work. The reason you even have an agency is because the job data you have, all your job postings put together by recruiters over the years,

Chad (03:24.216)

Mm.

Jim Durbin (03:44.012)

There's lots of errors in it. It's user generated information. So it's not clean. It's not a good source for advertising. And every time you try to look at that data, you're just kind of horrified. So the agency takes it, cleans it up, sends it in this pretty little thing called an XML feed and chooses which jobs are sponsored, how they're supposed to look. It's a way of making sure that the data that gets to Indeed is better. And they're cutting that off. So I've talked to a lot of agency heads. They had calls with each of them.

Chad (04:13.944)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (04:14.232)

They're a little confused as to why, but of course it's always hard to figure out the perceptions. And they're all seem to be, what's scary is they're all have a different take on it. Some are like, we already have a programming fixed for it, which I don't see how that's possible because you can't clean up user generated information. You can't fix your recruiters unless you fix the process, which means the only people I've ever seen do it are RPOs that you have teams of admins whose whole job is to make that data clean for reporting.

Chad (04:19.224)

course.

Chad (04:30.71)

in the ATS.

Yes.

Jim Durbin (04:42.87)

Almost no TA department has that kind of resource and they're not going to go back and clean things up. I mean, we have folks that'll open up a job and leave it for three years because it's an evergreen. The only way to get that advertised without spending a massive amount of money is to put it into an XML and have it new. So I'm not sure it'd be terrifying if Indeed doesn't understand this, but we're looking at changing the way that we do processes internally because the agencies won't have that access, but no one's told the clients.

So it looks like it's not gonna be a happy thing. And it really is an asteroid changing impact. The agencies are restricted from doing more and more, and now they don't have the data. They're gonna have to change their business models. If any of this is remotely true, because now you had some people say, it's just new ones. No, it's just some minor fee difference. It's over an override. This goes right to the heart of what I do with every client. I clean up the job descriptions, the title, the databases, the ATS.

Chad (05:21.282)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (05:40.684)

I work with the vendors to make that clean. That's not an easy job to do. And I don't see how it's even going to work without having really, really terrible data starting to come out of these ATSs.

Chad (05:40.792)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (05:52.92)

Well, indeed, yeah. Indeed, they're really bad about communication. Now, is that on purpose? Because it feels like they're trying to create chaos, and it's just moving from chaos to chaos, right? So this healthy budget bullshit, now they're moving directly into this, and they really suck at clarification around what is happening.

Joel Cheesman (05:53.18)

So you're optimistic about what's going to happen, it sounds like, Jim.

Jim Durbin (05:56.672)

I'm gonna make a lot of money, so I guess that's happy. mean...

Jim Durbin (06:06.594)

Right.

Chad (06:18.944)

Right. And really the devil's in the details, especially things like this, especially when you're trying to, you've got to, you've got an API to the, to the applicant tracking system. Obviously, if you've ever worked with applicant tracking system before, you know, the maintenance cycles and those types of things, they fucking suck. It's, hard. Right. And it's not that it's an easy system to actually manage. So do you think this, this, this narrative control and this, controlled chaos is really just a part of the process for them?

Jim Durbin (06:47.342)

I really don't think so. I mean, I've heard some people talk through that. I think the issue is this, it's a big company with a lot of different competing issues. When we talk about recruiting, someone will yell at you because you talk about something you did in executive headhunting and that's not how they do it in high volume. I think there's a lot of that. If you go talk to a CSM, I've been fortunate enough with enough clients, I've sat in front of their enterprise CSMs, their Arpreo CSMs, their agency ones. It's not just talking to agencies and clients.

Chad (06:51.832)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (07:15.182)

you're going to hear different things from inside, indeed. The funniest thing about this, I think, was that the agency reps themselves didn't know. So this came from up high. Hey, we're going to make that change. So they don't communicate to each other. And in the past, I've been OK with it because it's kind of like the way Google's not going to tell you exactly how to rank number one on the page, because people like Joel and I used to take advantage of that. That's how we made our money. So they can't tell you everything. So the CSMs, the customer success managers,

Chad (07:35.256)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (07:43.534)

are stuck telling you what another client did or what bits of information they got from trust and safety or from product or, so they're not given all the information because they don't want to spread it all because then we'd game it and we'd try to figure that information out. This feels different though. If you talk to different people and indeed we had some joker jump on one of our pages and begin to try to insult us that we didn't understand how stuff was going. And I was like, dude, you're a sales guy. It's been there 10 months. I...

I wasn't sure if I corrected him or just hushed him to do so, but then that disappeared. It's scary when they don't know. I think that's the hardest part is where do you go to to find out this information? If what I'm saying is true, it's remotely true. Every, every TA leader who's going to be sending stuff, everyone, this impacts and who knows, maybe it's 20 % of the agencies, maybe it's 60. They're all going to have to change the way they post jobs. That is not easy to do. I've lost quite a few clients when I say you have to, you're losing.

15 grand a month because you refuse to make this change. And they don't want to make that change because internally then they have to ride shotgun on it. So do they even understand how we do business? Because it reminds me of a couple years ago when they ran that CPA test. And what did they do? They would tell you, you have to hire people. Or you have 72 hours to respond or you're going to get charged. And small businesses lost their mind about that. And the response from Indeed at the time from multiple account managers

You're just going to have to hire somebody to do that. That's a breathtaking amount of arrogance. And it feels like that's too. It's like, they understand? But this isn't something you can easily roll back. Some of these agencies that just had to trash some programming they've done, it's cost them real dollars already. So it's, it's not minor. If someone says, I just lost 30 K that can't be applied to this, or we're to have to make these changes. So this is, this is bigger than they've let on.

Joel Cheesman (09:30.97)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (09:35.394)

And they haven't even communicated to every agency. They've only talked to the programmatic agencies, which is why my fund was blowing up. They're like, did you hear about this? Did you follow up? I mean, it definitely, I think this is bigger news. You can't get rid of the thing that cleans up your data and then go, wait, what happened?

Joel Cheesman (09:47.824)

Which-

Joel Cheesman (09:52.39)

I want to go back, go back to the Y a little bit. And by the way, Jim and I had a lot more SEO money before our ex-wives went loco, but that's a different show altogether. You touched on why, but you, you and I, we've all three of us have been in this industry for a long time. What, why is indeed really doing this? Is it to stick it to programatics? Is it a LinkedIn, a defense mechanism like

Jim Durbin (09:59.917)

you

Joel Cheesman (10:18.5)

Really, do you think it is, if you're reading between the lines, why is Indeed really doing this?

Jim Durbin (10:24.28)

So it's gonna be to do that without being tactical. I try not to guess motives since I'm not in the room and it's not like Heims or Decker were calling me and saying, hey, this is why I'm doing it. But I do know this, quality has become a real issue. What did they tell us when you broke that story last year? You're get better quality candidates, they're gonna cost more. And that's actually happened. In fact, when you start looking at what happens, the new algorithm, they have smoothed it all down, they've added smart sourcing, which now is attached to the brain.

So you can actually figure out the algorithm by just looking at the smart sourcing panel. You can see how it works. And once they tell you how it works and you have a good sense of how it's going to fit in. So they are selecting for good candidates. So if you have a good job description and you have a good resume that's accurate, it does a pretty good job of matching until it doesn't. And this is something I just did it again yesterday. Once they can no longer give you your top matches, which is their behavior, their IPs, what you've clicked on, other information.

It reverts back to the simple search, which is a text search of the title. So if you're looking for CNAs and you're a certified medical assistant, which is not a CNA, but the word certified's in it, you're gonna pop up with one of these jobs and they're gonna invite you to apply for it. If you're looking for texts of some kind and you write technician or technologists or just the word tech, you'll get EMT texts and firefighter texts. Not at first, but once the algorithm basically gets its stutters and it breaks,

Chad (11:25.4)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (11:49.966)

So you're getting these great people, but the second they try to expand it, then you're getting it sometimes 40, 50 % just garbage wrecks coming out of it. And this is something we knew earlier in the year. That's a big deal. That means that they are either running out of supply or the algorithm has been so smooth. And the reason they're mad at programmatic is programmatic keeps changing what they're doing. Every CSM will say, do this, post your jobs, leave them 30 days, and then just give us 20 % more every time we ask for it. That's their basic pitch.

And the problem is, is programmatic kind of gets around that. I mean, it's the whole point of programmatic is to smooth it, decide which jobs go up and down. So you're not getting waste. The real question is, is this model mature now? Like the old joke in marketing, Joel, you know, this one is 50 % of my budget's wasted. I just don't know which 50%. I think we might've reached a point where indeed can't grow. have too many, they have too many candidates that are sitting out there. They've made it too easy with easy apply.

Chad (12:28.386)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Durbin (12:49.678)

How do they actually begin to add to that when they're sending out emails saying, hey, take this other job? Or if I quit my job, I can get another one instantly. So they've reached the law of large numbers. I don't think they can grow. And I think this is a big aspect of that. How do I get more money? Because we're not going to be able to grow our size in the industry.

Chad (13:08.024)

Well, first off, mean, they're saying that better quality costs more. Totally get that. Makes sense, right? I don't want a thousand candidates that are for shit, right? And I have to weed through them, number one. So that makes sense. I get it. This doesn't make sense because you're gonna get worse data to be able to match upon, right? Not to mention, let's dig it a little bit further into that. Disposition data, going down funnel. It's not their fucking job. Fixing the top of the funnel is their job. Plus, it's none of their goddamn business.

who your company is pushing into interview stages, knocking out and hiring. If indeed did their damn job and matched candidates up at the actual job requirements and provided companies with the market data around the amount of talent actually available within their ecosystem, which matches said requirements, that would be a great service that companies would pay more for, but they don't give a fuck about what the company needs or actually fixing the real problem.

That's the thing that drives me crazy the most. This is not the problem. You don't need disposition data. You don't need those signals. What you need to know is you have to have better data, which is what the agencies were trying to give you. And now you've just ripped that away from them to be able to make a match on the top of the funnel. Stay out of my systems. That's the thing that gets me. I don't get it.

Jim Durbin (14:30.779)

Well, I think the disposition data why they're so interested in it If you look back to the way marketing used to work they went from search and SEO and SEM to conversion companies they were forced to move down the Pipeline because no one cares about clicks and impressions anymore nor should they ever of the dissolved fake marketing stuff how for us it's when somebody starts Yeah, because because you're buying you're buying a product you're buying a service a person is not like that it goes much further than that so

Chad (14:47.756)

That's different between qualified, right? That's different between like a.

Yeah.

Jim Durbin (14:58.606)

They're not gonna be able to gather that data. What they're really looking for, I think, is what disposition data is. And that's schedule, interview, did someone get hired, how far along they went. That's pretty valuable to figure out what kind of people that you're picking, but are you gonna give that to a vendor? I think that is the answer for those. The scary thing is they're gonna come back and they're gonna use it, so they want your data so they can justify charging more. That's it, that's the whole game. Hey, you did this hire, now it's $800. That's how we justify it. And here's how you justify it up the chain.

And I get the reasoning behind it, but they're still missing that it's a big ecosystem and what it takes. I don't know what company out there that has all of their disposition. I mean, sometimes it's all in the hands of the hiring manager. Sometimes you'll go in and you'll have recruiters with negative five days contact to hire because they went in after the fact when they were busy and put that information in. You can't trust your disposition data because no recruiter got hired or promoted and even praised for having the cleanest database.

Chad (15:41.208)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (15:57.708)

It's just not something that we do. It's the whole point you have to clean it up. So I do think that's a bit of a fool's errand. If they actually got that data, it's going to give you false positives. Like the company that was telling me that one out of every four candidates from LinkedIn was hired. I was like, that's not possible. And he showed me in his ATS. I'm like, careful with that. Careful, because he had some recruiter cherry picking what was going on. entering, so one out of four of candidates submitted is, but that's what the report said.

Chad (16:12.918)

No.

Chad (16:20.908)

It was probably a drop down. It was a drop down.

Joel Cheesman (16:22.748)

And LinkedIn was the first one.

Chad (16:27.448)

Yes, yes.

Jim Durbin (16:28.366)

Oh, terrifying for those kinds of things, yeah. But it's not just that, it's also the $25 minimum one that came out. they announced that like a year, two years ago, the 20, you need $25 minimum for every job, which makes sense. It really affects small businesses more than the large ones. But they just recently came out. And I know this is happening because I've had accounts that are flagged for it, that if you add jobs,

Chad (16:31.2)

Yeah, but okay, so.

Chad (16:36.578)

Yes. Healthy budget.

Jim Durbin (16:54.126)

And this is where the confusion gets. Let's say you have 100 jobs and you're spending $10,000. 15 of those during the course of the month are closed and you want to add 15 more. They're telling you you have to add to that budget, to that $10,000 budget. Where before it was, here's my budget for the month. I can move as many jobs in or out of that, like it's described as a parking space, or parking lot. I can move cars in and out of it. So I've talked to agencies that said that's still operative. That didn't make any sense.

why would they have a new announcement if that's been around for two years? So what it's really leading to is people having to cut their budgets in half. And so if you have a $50,000 budget, you start with 25, and as you add jobs over the course of the month, you add to the budget, that's gonna cause a massive amount of spending, and that's the exact problem now. All that money you had in the beginning is gonna go to your old jobs, which means they're gonna be more expensive, they're gonna pop up, they're gonna send them to worse people.

If that's really the case, that's probably, it's just shocking that this isn't communicated and they haven't really told you. All they're telling you now is you're getting flagged for it. You have too many jobs they're adding without your budget. So, it's just, it's just fascinating. You can't get answers about any of these things, but both of those are pretty huge for us who actually do the work.

Joel Cheesman (18:08.326)

Jim, is historically speaking, and I hate being an old guy always doing this, but this sounds really familiar with like the job board drama. So back in the day, job boards used to like want to plug in redirects on indeed. like the traffic would get redirected to them. So they look like the source for the applicant instead of indeed. And indeed had to like play whack a mole.

Chad (18:20.927)

yeah.

Joel Cheesman (18:33.86)

And eventually like got so sick of the job boards that they started like algorithmically destroying them. And then the stories is this, is this a similar, is it, does this rhyme with history or is this a totally different beast altogether? It feels like whack-a-mole like indeed is like the programmatic providers are the new job boards and indeed is sick of their shit. And they're like, okay, finally we'll just go to the ATS and that's the final solution. No.

Jim Durbin (18:47.19)

I think without guessing.

Jim Durbin (18:58.894)

Uh, it would not surprise me. mean, I can't, I can't predict or say it without having someone tell me, but man, that would not surprise me. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find out that's the case because programmatic comes in and it makes all the adjustments. They want you to just leave your jobs there. They want you to hand you the money, hand you the jobs that go away and you can get what you get. Programmatic literally goes and interferes with it. A lot of the stuff that I did, the way I posted jobs, I mean, I figured out how to change job descriptions to get higher quality.

Joel Cheesman (19:01.008)

Okay.

don't be so nice, Jim.

Jim Durbin (19:28.654)

But I run that through test. If they're not allowing you to do that and you're going to edit it to the job API instead of the XML, a lot of that ability to test things goes away. And I think that ultimately comes down to is it's, stuttering their algorithm. And, I mean, if you think about all those companies putting in, if they can control it, that's exactly what they're doing is they're controlling their bids. They're controlling how their jobs go up and down. They're stopping a lot of waste. Why get 300 candidates for one job when it should be distributed? Well, then you put caps on it.

Joel Cheesman (19:41.862)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (19:57.148)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (19:58.456)

That's very difficult to do manually if you have hundreds of jobs and you have to communicate with the managers. That's the whole point of using a programmatic solution, but that makes it harder for Indeed to track the data. And I think that's what a lot of this is about, is cutting off those avenues. The same way LinkedIn used to, you know, you go to SourceCon and someone from LinkedIn be sitting in the back and whatever tips that you got that day, stop working two or three days later. It kind of feels like that. You know, quit telling people what we're doing.

Joel Cheesman (20:12.859)

Yeah.

Chad (20:21.804)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joel Cheesman (20:22.298)

Yeah.

And if, his let's go back to history, Jim, before when SEO dropped, none of the ATS has understood like readable URLs and title tag. Like they didn't know any of that shit. And consultants had a really nice time for four or five years of like creating a landing pages that were SEO friendly, like the jobs to webs and those services.

Jim Durbin (20:28.483)

Ha

Joel Cheesman (20:51.556)

Is this similar? Are the ATS is just eventually going to say like, we have to have our data cleaned up. We have to like appeal to indeed. And three or four years from now, all the ATS is just do it right. And we're not even having this conversation.

Jim Durbin (21:05.612)

I don't think there's enough money to fix that. Look at this way. Who do you? No, not at all. What are the favorite ATSs that are out there? The brand new ones. Greenhouse and Lever were the darlings.

Joel Cheesman (21:09.724)

You don't see ATS as saying, we are an ATS that is friendly to indeeds. Really?

Chad (21:15.618)

They don't know. They don't give a shit about that. know they they've said that for years. They've said that for years. They've said it for years.

Joel Cheesman (21:17.574)

They will if their customers say it means something to them. Yes, they will. Well, they SEO. They put little like buttons on their jobs. Like they do respond to customers saying they want shit. And if their customers say, look, Indeed wants this. You guys need to provide that. I think they will. But if customers don't get it and don't do that, then they won't.

Chad (21:36.12)

That's.

Jim Durbin (21:36.384)

I think that you should go look at some of the integrations that have been done. All integrations are not equal just because you're integrated. It's not possible though. It's not, they're not built right. So greenhouse and lever were the two favorite ATS is a couple of years ago. Now everybody's onto Ashby. It's real simple. The most recent code base tends to be better because it's built for the modern web. What do do when you have these old places that are out there? They can't change because they go in and they customize and they customize and they're customized. Then they have tactical debt.

Chad (21:55.778)

Easiest.

Jim Durbin (22:05.92)

It's not possible to fix unless you tear it out and start over, which is what Oracle tried to do. They went from Taleo over to the Oracle infrastructure. Those are nightmare implementations because there's so much built. We've automated things. Sometimes you just tear it down and start it over. It's very hard to go back when you don't even have the engineers anymore. mean, and there's so many vestigial tales in those ATSs. The quality of the data really is astoundingly bad.

Because of course no one's minded the store for years. We've let agencies take over for us. Or we just didn't think about it. I mean, how many times have you, I have 300 jobs. God, I have 700. I just couldn't see them. Well, the system sees them and now I've got to sort through those 700 to pick the 300 I want. and the title's wrong on this one. And this one has the percent sign in it. and this one lacks salary data. And my God, I posted it in New York city. I've got 300 jobs in New York city without salary data. Now I'm getting fined.

I this is serious stuff. This is why this needs to be addressed. And they've just got to do a better job of explaining it. Here's one for you. Single source. So based on the letter, because they didn't discuss this, no one knows this yet, the ATS data, if you're integrated with the ATS, you can't have a single source data, a single source feed. Does that count Phenom, Paradox, Chatter? Those all have integrations.

Joel Cheesman (23:05.148)

Okay, different beast.

Chad (23:26.754)

Yeah?

Jim Durbin (23:29.038)

Not all of them are turned on. Maybe it's just the indeed applied, but Phenom covers everything up. That's one of the problems is the source data comes from Phenom because they're scheduling interviews, they're talking to people. That's a big question. Nobody knows that yet. Or maybe hopefully they've gotten some clarity, but I mean, if they go by the letter of the law, those are all there. By what they said, that's not counting.

Joel Cheesman (23:31.484)

They're all now ATSs.

Chad (23:50.975)

Yes, well, mean, in.

Joel Cheesman (23:57.724)

Ultimately indeed we'll be able to say you're an ATS and you're not. They're going to be judge and jury on this, right?

Jim Durbin (23:57.9)

or is it going to be selective?

Chad (24:03.19)

It'll be source of, and again, you go back to a lot of these companies have more cosmetic layers over top of the applicant tracking system because they're the cosmetic piece of the applicant tracking system just as ugly as shit, right? So they've got cosmetic layers, right? And those cosmetic layers fix in some cases those problems where the agencies come in or the RPOs come in and they actually clean all that stuff up. But it's not happening at

Jim Durbin (24:03.81)

But yeah.

Chad (24:32.756)

at the applicant tracking system. It's going to be interesting to see who they take the actual feed from, right? And who they actually get the integrations from.

Jim Durbin (24:40.856)

That's the question.

Jim Durbin (24:44.846)

And they're not going to cut all the feeds off overnight. That'd be insane. Everybody would die if that happened. It's too much money coming in for Indeed. But they were clear. They were shifting that letter. New or maintain. You can't create new or maintain. So is this the sunset provision that occurred, like they did with the CPC, where you could leave your campaigns up for a few months, but you couldn't create new ones? Is this three months all those feeds will be gone or will be selective as they go through?

Chad (24:48.662)

now. Yeah. Yeah.

Chad (24:57.42)

Yeah.

Jim Durbin (25:12.342)

Again, we're not sure because they just said further updates for your existing customers. I mean.

Chad (25:18.21)

So back to the agency side of the house, right? So I've talked to a lot of agencies back and forth messaging and actually had some calls and a lot of them were just soft-shoeing around it because they weren't really sure what the hell was going on, right? And you can't trust indeed when they tell you what's going on. But at the end of the day, let me see here, I've got a nice little text, is that this move is about centralizing control.

reducing agency influence and extracting more value from employers by getting closer to the source of job data. That was from directly from an agency executive. To me, again, getting directly to the source of job data. This is this is over engineering a problem. They want all of those signals. They don't need all of those signals. There's no reason for them to have all those signals. They need to do their job up front at the top of the funnel. They're not doing their job at the top of the funnel.

Why? That's the big question. That's what they're trying to get to this disposition data. They're not doing their job.

Jim Durbin (26:18.402)

I mean they are.

Joel Cheesman (26:21.66)

I think it goes back to Jim saying they can't grow anymore. They've hit a ceiling.

Jim Durbin (26:21.752)

I mean, they're getting better quality candidates. yeah, they're just...

Chad (26:25.91)

They can grow. Their models, if they move to, like you said before, they said, more quality is gonna do what? It's gonna cost more, right? Which means they will be able to drive more revenue, right? It's gonna cost more, you're gonna drive more revenue. Which means I can give you less candidates that are more qualified and it's gonna cost you more. Makes sense, makes sense. Plus, I'm not feeding your system with a bunch of individuals who are qualified that you haven't hired. And we just talked to,

Megan over at Marriott and they have 10 million people in their database and they're going there first before they go to Indeed. Right? So what Indeed is actually looking at doing right now, which is the stupidest fucking business model I think I've heard is we're just going to pour all these people in and then we're going to see who you hire. Well, the next time I go into the process, I don't need to send jobs to you because you just sent me a shit ton of candidates.

This, none of this makes sense to me. You don't need the disposition data. You're not doing your job at the top of the funnel. And you want to send me a shit ton of candidates that literally UPS hired 35,000 of the 150,000 out of their database that they didn't have to go spend money on indeed. This, none of it makes sense, man. Yes.

Jim Durbin (27:41.806)

Well, that's certainly what we should be doing. Again, TA has got its own problems with this. We've let them put us in this situation. We refuse to change what we're doing. So, but it's same. We're also burnt out. They're laying us off. They're talking about getting AI and aspects, and we're not rewarded for those. And this is all brand new. Most TA leaders don't come from a data tech finance background. Why would they? They know how to manage recruiters and put people to work. So a lot of this is new. You start talking XMLs, APIs, web hooks.

Chad (27:49.208)

Yeah.

Jim Durbin (28:11.234)

They don't know what it means necessarily. And a lot of their HRS teams don't either. Yeah, I mean, yeah, well, yeah. Apparently, XML is not good enough.

Chad (28:12.664)

We've been talking about it for 20 years. We've been talking about APIs for 20 years, Jim.

Joel Cheesman (28:18.662)

We could be talking about it for 20 more. All of us might not be around in 20 years, but I hope none of us are around in 20 years. Jim.

Chad (28:20.566)

Yeah, we could. Could be API plus. sorry.

Jim Durbin (28:28.43)

And 2000, remember this guy coming to with this great idea for HR XML was going to revolutionize the ways what we're doing was 2000 when he was like, he was a big thing. were taking money and building HR XML to standardize. Didn't go anywhere, but XML took over everything. mean, that was everyone use it. It's real simple. It's just, it's just clean. Yeah. It's a, then they got rid of readers.

Chad (28:34.178)

Yes. Yes.

Chad (28:45.688)

I think Sherm got behind that, which is probably why it didn't go anywhere.

Joel Cheesman (28:52.806)

Jim, me your breakdown of the winners and losers in this, and most importantly is indeed ultimately gonna be a winner or loser in this deal.

Jim Durbin (29:02.126)

I think that this is going to be a slow rollback. think I I Can't imagine them actually cutting everybody else off and if they really try to go for that ATS data They're gonna have a lot of angry clients Because it it just doesn't work flat out does I wouldn't know what to do if I couldn't have access all that some of the programatics They think that there's a lot of native new automation for this. I'm not sure I think this goes back to changing the way we post jobs

Chad (29:31.448)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (29:31.522)

Which isn't the worst thing in the world for us to do is just galling for Indeed today. You have to do it. You take this expense because we're just to keep shoving candidates at you. If their quality was 90%, if there was someone like Vivian, like Vivian does travel nurses and allied, they tend to be really high quality, but they also tend to be pretty, they tell you what they're going to allow and what they're not going to allow because they, went from market to market and they're careful not to give you people who are on good fits.

Chad (29:57.656)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (29:58.136)

There's no way, the only way they could grow is just more volume. So I think what's really gonna happen is the small and medium players are gonna pick up people who can actually prove that they have quality, which is not a lot of the boards that are out there, but the assessment companies that are coming along, there's a bunch of new tools for that that are judging intent. So you apply for a job and it starts asking you questions. And because of the way that you move forward, you're like, I actually care about this job versus if it's fully automated, you end up ghosting everybody.

So the problem is where do those sit? Does that sit in front of the agency? Does that fit in front of the ATS? And if you're paying for 60 % of the slop, people who just clicked and have no clue who you are, that cost begins to add up after a while. So I think people who are focused on quality are going to do really well. think recruitment marketing consultants are going to make a little extra money. And honestly, they're going to be start paying because we don't pay consulting dollars. That's the dirty thing of the agencies is that they do so much for free because of the money they're getting from Indeed.

So you don't pay for vendor hours. You don't pay for them cleaning up your data. You don't pay for the CSM sitting up at night putting together giant list of Excel of all the jobs. That's hard to do, guys. No one's paying for that right now because so much money is coming on the other side. What will be funny is if Indeed captures a bunch of people and they end up coming back into the fold, you may end up with a two-tier thing here where you have one budget for Indeed and your agencies cover everything but Indeed.

Chad (31:06.882)

Baked into the cost, yeah. Yeah. it's heavy lifting.

Joel Cheesman (31:14.172)

they will going forward.

Jim Durbin (31:25.954)

which will then push everybody else to innovate because you can't have one source of hire. But I think it's going to be a muddled mix. I don't think they're going to be clear winners. Some small companies are to do great. I think the agencies are going to start to be restricted and not all of them are going to make it. I've heard that. If what they're saying is true about the single source and they really do cut them off in three months, what does that do to your reporting?

Chad (31:42.712)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (31:52.554)

What's the what's the even point of having an agency if they can't clean it up can't report and they can only edit something at the API? Like if that if that's the case, that's a dagger through a heart if they really go that far That's gonna be a big deal. A lot of the agencies aren't gonna be able to make it from there I don't think that's the case Because that'd be there's too much money flowing to indeed from the agencies But again, we're gonna have to learn more just as an industry we're gonna have to start fighting for budget be clear

Chad (31:59.17)

Yeah?

Chad (32:08.696)

Well, not on day one.

Jim Durbin (32:21.696)

Look for alternatives, focus in on our own databases. Yeah. Maybe some of these AI sourcing tools will take some of the pressure off.

Chad (32:25.944)

Yeah, but the behaviors are already there. The behavior is already there. I remember back in the day of the Monster Hay Day, they bought Monster and Career Builder. Why? Because of the name. That was it. That was because of the behavior. That was what it was. And it feels like, indeed, slowly starting to try to, again, as my agency contact said, trying to knock them down wrong so that they don't have as much control and they're not as close to the customer anymore.

Joel Cheesman (32:26.8)

That sounds like a lot of work, Jim.

Chad (32:54.424)

And the customer is just like, yeah, just go ahead and throw it into Indeed. That's how we do business. That's how they did business back in the Monster days. This does not feel different.

Jim Durbin (33:01.614)

Yeah, this, this has the potential to interrupt how we do business. And when I say we, mean, internal, not consultants, not agencies. This is the way that it's going to impact. TA in a way that they can't just ignore. And I think there's enough anger out there. I mean, we've seen enough people spit when they say the name indeed. That's not a good sign, but as you pointed out, Hey, you made the bed. If you're not willing to make changes, you don't get a cry. If indeed does something for their own business. So it's not even, they're not, they're not some evil empire with.

Chad (33:05.805)

Yeah.

Jim Durbin (33:31.79)

15 steps ahead planning all this 5d chess nonsense, but it, but this, is part of a long-term, but if this fits in exactly with what they told us that they were going to do, which is try to become for the only way for them to grow is to basically take over as much of the data as they can control it then come back to you and say, you got to spend more. mean, that's, that's, you can't complain if you're not doing anything about it.

Joel Cheesman (33:33.542)

Sure they are. Sure they are. Totally evil.

Chad (33:35.35)

Maybe not 15 steps ahead, but they are the evil empire, yeah.

Jim Durbin (34:00.504)

But they're just so big in the market. They really are 90 % for a lot of companies. A lot of companies, so.

Joel Cheesman (34:03.74)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (34:07.106)

So we've heard from many individuals that they don't think that the competitor that's out there for Indeed are job boards or programmatic players. They feel like it's more like the paradox, the gem, the fountain. mean, all of those systems that allow you to finally dig in and start matching and engaging the individuals that you've already bought because

Joel Cheesman (34:24.38)

conversational AI.

Chad (34:35.914)

Most of these companies are starting to realize they've bought the same fucking candidate six or seven times over. Right. And now it's like, wait a minute, time out. We're just going to do the same thing over and over. We don't want to do that. We are. We already have a limited budget as it is. We need to start using the candidates that we've already we've already paid for. And some of them, again, like Marriott, over 10 million in their database. I mean, you're going to see enterprise companies start moving that way, which means there's going to be less money for indeed.

I don't think this move for indeed is going to get them what they think it's going to get.

Jim Durbin (35:10.796)

It's the same thing I think is what happened with LinkedIn when they charged charging three year contracts and they came to everybody at one point said, Hey, by the way, you have 700,000 more. We've been misclassifying how you used recruiter. And we're like, no, we don't. We're just not going to do it anymore. So.

Not at all. You've got to go in and I think what happens is the good news is everyone's going to look at their budget. But as we know, it's waste. Why wouldn't you just turn your budget off for the last four days of the month? If it just ends up getting crying. If you're actually looking at the quality day in and day out, once you start looking at it, like I do for every client, it's very easy to cut budget. The problem is nobody wanted to do that because they didn't have other places to put that money. And there's so much pressure. Don't add something new. So if you're not careful and they cut that budget, you don't get it back.

Chad (35:50.381)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Durbin (35:56.952)

So the question is, if we can get better fungible budgeting, we're going to start taking it from somewhere. And I guarantee you there's waste in every Indeed advertising budget. Once you're aware of that, then you start finding solutions. So it'll take a little courage on our side. think overall, I think it's going to end up dropping the revenues overall. All of these little steps together.

Joel Cheesman (36:18.012)

indeed the gift that keeps on giving everybody and Jim Durbin, thanks for coming back on the Chad and cheese podcast for those listeners that want to know more about you. Where should they go?

Chad (36:24.568)

the clown car.

Jim Durbin (36:34.723)

respondable.io or you can go to LinkedIn you'll find me on there just search the Indeed Whisperer it'll take you where it's probably the easiest

Chad (36:43.192)

If you need help with this problem, I don't know, maybe reach out to Jim.

Joel Cheesman (36:47.484)

Call the whisperer. How many times is this on? How many times is this for you on the show, Jim? Two, three? I know it's two at least.

Jim Durbin (36:48.142)

When you're in trouble, look for a man in a hat.

Jim Durbin (36:54.402)

This is the third time I think I've been on because we did. Yeah, it's the third time always about indeed. I guess I don't have anything else interesting to talk about.

Chad (37:02.04)

That's what happens when you are the indeed whisperer. mean.

Joel Cheesman (37:02.908)

We wish we knew how to quit you, Jim. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out.

Jim Durbin (37:07.566)

you

Chad (37:08.024)

We out!