With the unemployment rate still above 9 percent, a lot of people are hitting the job boards. One set of companies that are growing under these conditions, at least in terms of Website traffic, are the job search engines. But the one that seems to be growing the fastest is Indeed. In July, Monster’s job search engine was up 33 percent in U.S. pageviews, CareerBuilders’ was up 56 percent, and Indeed’s was up 90 percent (comScore).

Not only is Indeed the fastest growing job search engine it is also now the largest in terms of pageviews. In July, it passed CareerBuilder, with 171 million pageviews in the U.S. versus 159 million for CareerBuilder. Yahoo’s HotJobs had 96 million (which Yahoo is reportedly abandoning), Monster had 73 million, and SimplyHired trailed far behind with 26 million.

In terms of unique visitors, CareerBuilder is still larger with 10.1 million in July versus 8.7 million for Indeed, which is No. 2. But Indeed is growing faster in that metric as well (up 76 percent versus 19 percent for CareerBuilder).

All of these numbers are for the core job search at each site, and do not include other parts of their sites such as resumes, advice, or career tools.

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The unemployment rate in the U.S. was still 9.4 percent in July, but some cities are better than others to look for a job. Of the top 50 metro areas, Washington, D.C., is the easiest for unemployed workers to find a job, while Detroit is the hardest, according to a new Job Market Competition index put together by job search engine Indeed.

The index ranks cities based on how many unemployed people there are compared to job listings. For every one unemployed person in Washington, D.C., for example, there are six job postings. Whereas in Detroit, there is only one job posting for every 18 unemployed people. The higher the ratio of job postings to unemployed, the more chances there are of landing a job.

The top ten cities in the index for finding jobs (and their corresponding ratios of job postings to unemployed) are:

1. Washington, DC (6:1)
2. Jacksonville, FL (3:1)
3. Baltimore, MD (1:1)
4. Salt Lake City, UT (1:2)
5. New York, NY (1:2)
6. San Jose, CA (1:2)
7. Hartford, CT (1:2)
8. Oklahoma City, OK (1:3)
9. Austin, TX (1:3)
10. Boston, MA (1:3)

The worst ten cities for job searches are:

41. Buffalo, NY (1:6)
42. Orlando, FL (1:6)
43. Sacramento, CA (1:6)
44. Rochester, NY (1:6)
45. Chicago, IL (1:7)
46. Portland, OR (1:7)
47. Los Angeles, CA (1:8)
48. Riverside, CA (1:9)
49. Miami, FL (1:10)
50. Detroit, MI (1:18)

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Tech layoffs may have hit 300,000 since the financial crisis began, but there are at least 395,629 job openings in information technology, enough to re-employ all of those now out of work. Job search engine Indeed this morning launched a new Industry Trends page filled with stats on job openings in the U.S. across major industries. Although there are more job openings in IT than in any other industry except healthcare (which has 581,625 job listings).

Even so, IT job listings are down 43 percent from a year ago. Again, healthcare is holding up the best with only an 8 percent decline. Job postings in banking and financial services are down 48 percent (to 144,569), and media and newspaper job listings are down 47 percent (with only 24,104 postings).

Indeed CEO Paul Forster explains why he is making these stats available (besides hoping to spur more job searches):

For people working in rapidly declining industries, it will help them identify industries in better shape to which they can try to transition.

Our data are an alternative to government payroll statistics, offering a more forward-looking insight into hiring activity. If government data show the job market in the rear-view mirror – jobs that have been created or lost – Indeed’s Industry Trends provide a view through the front windscreen: job openings that companies intend to fill.

You can click on any industry to get more detail. For instance, in the IT industry, while job postings have decreased 43 percent, clicks on job postings have increased 84 percent to 9.8 million. The most clicks are coming from New York City (San Francisco is No. 7 in terms of clicks). Some of the most sought after jobs, as measured by the top keyword searches are project manager, business analyst, engineer, and graphic design.

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Salary is one of the most important criteria when hunting for a job. Unfortunately, finding compensation information amid the countless job postings online can be a daunting task, and few employment sites have done anything to make this easier.

To remedy this problem, leading job-aggregator Indeed has released a unique feature that will allow users to narrow their job search results by salary. Users can now choose to eliminate jobs below a certain salary level, or they can browse jobs that have been grouped by income bracket.

Because most companies do not include explicit salary information in their job offerings, Indeed relies on an algorithm to determine the compensation for many of their posts. The system takes data from the 20% of job postings that do include this information, and uses a number of different details to infer salaries for the remaining positions.

In practice the system doesn’t seem particularly helpful for finding a job with a specific salary, as there isn’t any way to confirm if a job posting has been classified correctly. This could easily lead to headaches as prospective job applicants apply for positions under false pretenses. That said, the filter seems good for eliminating jobs that are obviously out of the desired range, which helps make the process considerably less time consuming. Along with a little common sense, the new search system seems like it could be helpful for job-seekers.

Indeed’s CEO Paul Forster says that the site receives over 1M new job postings per week, with 7M unique visitors each month. These traffic levels make it one of the web’s leading comprehensive job search tools. Competitors include SimplyHired, HotJobs and Monster.

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There’s a problem though: Comscore shows no such increase in traffic – Indeed is still far ahead of Simply Hired in terms of unique visitors. The Comscore data is shown at the bottom of this post.

Here’s what the source of the discrepancy might be: We have heard that Simply Hired may have started buying a very large number of “pop-under” advertisements from WhenU. Comscore says that they filter this “push” traffic out of their stats. I suspect Alexa and Compete do not.

WhenU is regarded by many to be nothing more than malware, and users who’ve had it infect their machine spend a lot of time trying to get it removed. There are a number of forum threads where people try to help others remove it.

So, the question is, is Simply Hired associating itself with WhenU? Why? Is the only purpose of the ads to drive Simply Hired higher in the rankings of some of the metrics services? I have an email into their PR group, and await an answer.

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Newspapers have long been the place to go for jobs — then the job sites (and Craigslist) popped up to provide an online version of the same service electronically. Now specific vertical job search engines (including Google Base) have evolved to aggregate and index job postings from online listings.

Enter social networking. The next evolution of online job searching would seem to be within social networking websites where users could refer friends to a job. As of now, Facebook and Friendster don’t have job searches yet. Look for partnerships in the future.

Jobster is a start-up that is heavily funded and focusing on adding some social networking aspects to the job hunt process. Another stealth start-up looking to “revolutionize” the online job search is itzBig, which we are told is backed by an investment bank and is being run by CEO Hank Stringer (founder of Hire.com) and Chairman Jim Hammock (former CEO/Chairman of Hire.com).

Online job websites have been around for 10 years now — they haven’t made much change since originally launching to improve the process of candidates looking for jobs, and recruiters looking for candidates. Recruiters have to paw through tons of resumes (that lack format consistency), and candidates have to search through multi-level marketing scams and other spam.

In all honesty, finding a job online sucks. Indeed and SimplyHired have taken it to the next level by aggregating all jobs into one search, but I want to see a company come out and eHarmony-ize the job market. Make it so candidates go through a 15- to 30-minute application process that might include various tests related to their claimed skillsets. Allow recruiters to specify what skillsets are required and make them somehow rank the importance of the required skillsets.

I’d also like to see some social networking aspects along the lines of LinkedIn — allow people to refer their friends to jobs. Yahoo! could integrate HotJobs with their 360 service. Monster.com could integrate with the Facebook API to add some social networking. IAC has put a hault on acquisitions, but a jobs website seems like a good addition to their extensive consumer portfolio — their own Ask.com search engine doesn’t offer a vertical job search. Possibly an Indeed or SimplyHired acquisition?

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Steve Poland, a guest contributor. Steve is the founder and web strategy consultant for Vested Ventures, a firm specializing in website consulting, internet marketing, and high-end custom web development.

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Indeed raised $5 million from the New York Times, Union Square Ventres and Allen & Company. This comes on the heals of Simply Hired’s $3m raise last week (Profile).

Congratulations Indeed! The money aside, a strategic partnership with the NYT is absolutely tremendous. Having access to Union Square Ventures (Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham) and Allen & Co. is also worth more than the money they’ve raised. This really is very important news.

My bet is the Simply Hired guys are not enjoying their day.

The New York Times Company Acquires Interest in Indeed, Inc.

NEW YORK, Aug. 8, 2005 – The New York Times Company announced today an
investment in Indeed, Inc. (www.indeed.com), a search engine for jobs
that enables job seekers to search millions of job listings from over a
thousand Web sites. The Times Company, Union Square Ventures and Allen
& Company, LLC are together investing $5 million for a minority interest.

“We are pleased to join Union Square Ventures and Allen & Company in
backing Indeed, an innovative new firm that provides compelling job
search capabilities to Internet users,” said Martin Nisenholtz, senior
vice president, digital operations. “The Times Company has strong
help-wanted franchises in print and online, and we believe it is
important to invest in new technologies and services in this advertising
category.”

Indeed is the most comprehensive search engine for jobs, adding over
110,000 new jobs per day – more than any other job search engine.
Indeed includes jobs from over one thousand unique sources, encompassing
company career pages, major and niche job boards, national and regional
newspapers, and hundreds of associations. Indeed indexes all new jobs
from each source every day, making it the freshest and most accurate
source of jobs on the Web.

“Our relationship with The New York Times Company, Union Square Ventures
and Allen & Company will help us extend our lead as the number one
search engine for jobs,” said Paul Forster, CEO and co-founder of
Indeed. “We look forward to working with our new partners in our goal
of revolutionizing job search.”

The New York Times Company’s highly successful Web sites – which include
NYTimes.com, About.com, Boston.com and 35 other Web sites – are visited
by more than 31 million users each month, and include the leading
Internet sites owned by a news organization. The Times Company is the
11th largest corporate online network. NYTimes.com alone generated 472
million page views in June.

About The New York Times Company
The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), a leading media company with
2004 revenues of $3.3 billion, includes The New York Times, the
International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 16 other newspapers,
eight network-affiliated television stations, two New York City radio
stations and 35 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and
About.com. For the fifth consecutive year, the Company was ranked No. 1
in the publishing industry in Fortune’s 2005 list of America’s Most
Admired Companies. The Company’s core purpose is to enhance society by
creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and
entertainment.

About Indeed
Indeed is a search engine for jobs – with a radically different approach
to job search. In one simple search, Indeed gives job seekers free
access to millions of employment opportunities from over a thousand
sources, including company Web sites, job boards, newspapers and
associations. With the familiar look and feel of general search
engines, Indeed makes it easy for job seekers to drill down by keyword
and location to jobs that fit their requirements precisely. Job seekers
may also save their searches as email alerts or RSS feeds. Indeed.com
was selected by Time magazine as one of the 50 Coolest Web sites for
2005. Indeed is a privately held company based in Stamford,
Connecticut, founded by Paul Forster and Rony Kahan. For more
information, please visit http://www.indeed.com.

# # #

What is it?

Indeed is not a newly launched site, but the job space seems to be heating up and so we are going to profile a number of web 2.0 jobs-related sites and services in the coming week. Upcoming profiles include simply hired, Yorz, Glendor Showcase and others.

At its core, Indeed is a vertical search engine for jobs. It has a huge data set – Indeed gathers jobs from nearly every job website (including Monster.com, CareerBuilder, Hotjobs, craigslist and others), makes the jobs searchable via title, company, keyword and/or location, and presents results to the user. Search results can be further narrowed via suggested keywords.

Importantly, once you find the job results you are looking for, you can have future job postings that meet those search criteria delivered to you via email alerts or RSS. This “prospective search” functionality is a key web 2.0 feature.

All services are free for users. The site includes advertisements to generate revenue, and also partners with other sites.

Additional Tools and Features:

Indeed has some other interesting features and tools as well. For instance, click on their Job Trends link and see a map of the United States showing total number of job postings visually. You can easily zoom into any specific area. This page also shows major metropolitan areas, ranked by total number of job postings per 1,000 people. Today (August 4, 2005), San Jose is #1, with 73 job postings per 1,000 people. Oklahoma City is last, with just 12 job postings per 1,000 people.

Indeed also has a Webmaster Tools area, where you can get code to display a jobroll or Indeed search box on your blog. You can also access Indeed’s XML API to integrate Indeed’s job listings in a more customized way on your website.

Indeed’s corporate blog is here.

Founders:

Paul Forster
Rony Kahan
Link

Additional Links:

Indeed’s news site, Joel Cheesman, WSJ, John Battelle