Master Your Job Hunt: A Guide to Navigating Indeed.com

If you’ve followed CareerAlley for a long time, you will have read some of our posts regarding the “Four Legs of Job Search“. One of those “legs” is job search sites/engines. Whether you are new to job search or have experience, setting up a job search engine to focus on your search can be frustrating and time-consuming.

Indeed.com has been around for a long time (although not as long as Monster.com) and helped create the popularity of  “job aggregators” (sites that pull in job search leads from recruiters, company career sites, and many other sources). The great news about digital job search sites like indeed.com is that it makes it incredibly easy to search and apply to many job opportunities very quickly.  The bad news is exactly the same, it is so easy to apply to jobs that responses to ads can be overwhelming, and most hiring managers have all the resumes they need in the first few days of the job posting.

There are several steps you can take to focus your search and maximize the time you spend on your search:

• Apply only to positions where you have matching qualifications.  If you have work experience that is “close” but not a match there is a high probability that someone with specific qualifications will get the interview (and not you).

• Look only at postings that are no older than 7 days (and preferably, much newer than that).  There is a high likelihood that postings older than 7 days have more qualified candidates than needed.

Getting Started – Sign-up

If you already have an indeed.com account, you can skip to Set-up below.

• Click “Upload your resume” at the top right-hand side of the screen
• Now you can either build your resume online or upload your resume (choose the method that works best with your resume).
• Create an account – Type in your email and the password you would like to use (the password must be at least 10 characters long). As a word of advice, it is sometimes easier to set up an email account that is specifically used for job search. This will leave your main email account “uncluttered” with job search stuff and will allow you to focus on any job search-related emails.  There are plenty of free email services you can use, just pick a name that includes part or all of your name (even if you have to put a number behind it).  Don’t use or pick an email address that is problematic (like “[email protected]”).

• Once you’ve confirmed your account (you will get an email from indeed.com), upload your resume or create a blank resume. Uploading is the easiest thing to do, but if you don’t have one, the online resume form is very good.

Set-up:

The next few steps are really important.

1. Posting Your Resume – When you get to the last part of the resume submission is whether your resume is visible or not.  If it is not visible, the only time anyone will know you exist is when you apply for a position. If it’s visible, recruiters and hiring managers can do searches on your resume (so maybe they contact you!). More on that later.
2. You will be asked to review your company in order to continue.  They are confidential, but if you provide too many specifics your employer is likely to know it’s you. Be careful.

Find Jobs:

A very simple interface to start, it’s probably best to click “Advanced job search“.

1. 1. This is where you narrow your search to return only (hopefully) those positions that best fit your background.
   2. The rest of the fields on the advanced search are self-explanatory. You should be as specific as possible, but be careful not to make it so specific that nothing shows up.
   3. Click the type of job that best suits your work needs.
   4. Select salary estimate (be honest here).
   5. Location (where do you want to work?).
   6. Age (not your age, the age of the posting). Select “within 7” or “within 3”.  The second choice is the best.
   7. Go!

Automate Your search:

Once you’ve perfected your search skills, you will want to set up a few (1-3 at max) email updates.

1. You can click the “Get email updates for the latest “name of your job” salary/+ jobs in your zip”.
2. Click on your email address on the top right-hand side of the screen and select “my.indeed”. This is where you can look at your searches, jobs, alerts, account, and resumes. You can do the following from this screen:

• • Update your resume.
  • Look at your searches and re-run by clicking (no need to enter that information again).
  • My Jobs shows you the jobs you’ve viewed plus the jobs where you’ve submitted applications.
  • Alerts (add or delete).

That’s it for the basics. Also, take a look at ==>> job search Boards.

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