Client Testimonial: How Crossmark Transformed their Casual Recruitment Strategy using Indeed Data

In this interview, we delve into the experiences and recruitment strategies of Luke Johnson, the Director of Operations at Crossmark, a key player in the casual recruitment and brand representation for some of the most powerful and iconic retail brands in Australia. Luke discusses the challenges Crossmark faced in the casual recruitment space, and the pivotal role Indeed’s data and insights played in helping transform Crossmark’s casual recruitment strategy into a well-oiled machine that consistently delivers quality candidates.

Kamellia: To kick us off, can you tell us a bit more about your role at Crossmark and what you do? 

Luke: I am the Director of Operations at Crossmark. What that means is that I look after all of our casual merchandising team across three divisions, that’s about 1,500 people nationally. I also oversee the business intelligence data and reporting side of things to make sure that our recruitment efforts are as efficient as possible. 

Kamellia: What do you love most about your job, and what do you find most challenging? 

Luke: What I love the most about my job is the variety of the work. There are always new projects, new clients, new models, etc. I love the variety. 

The most challenging part about my job is definitely this time of year as casual hiring starts to pick up in the lead up to summer and the holidays.

Kamellia: Would you say COVID-19 and/or the border closures impacted your casual staff recruitment strategies? Have things gotten a bit better this year? 

Luke: I definitely feel like it’s a lot better now, we had a tough few months after COVID. But I have to say I also think we're just better at strategising and planning our recruitment so we are spending money in the right places. 

Kamellia: You’ve talked a lot about what you do at Crossmark. But for those who are still not sure of what Crossmark does, can you explain in two sentences or less? 

Luke: Yes, I'd simplify in 2 ways. I say, we send people into a store to do a job. We also represent brands in retail outlets to help improve and increase their presence in store, provide better customer experience, and ultimately sell more products. So on top of what I do, we also have other divisions that send out full-time sales representatives to go into retail stores to help train staff. 

Kamellia: Before you started working with Indeed, what were the biggest pain points you experienced in your recruitment strategy, and what was the number one challenge Crossmark faced?  

Luke: To be honest, I think we've always worked with, Indeed. When I took over, it was around the time of all the resourcing challenges. And I remember the number one challenge we faced was just trying to get some relevance in the market because at the time we were up against a competitor that was spending a lot of money to build up their team from scratch.

So when I took over, we spent a lot of time with our Indeed representative to understand how the algorithm and the data worked, and where we stacked up against our competitor. Coming from the BI side of things, I knew there was a lot of valuable data coming from Indeed that we weren’t taking full advantage of and I wanted to take the time to really understand the data before putting together a strategy on how to improve our ads. 

Kamellia: So once you took the time to dig into the data and understand it, what did you find? How did you improve your ads without having to spend as much money as your competitor was? 

Luke: In the data, we found our competitor was ranking high for ‘merchandising’ keyword, which has a large search volume in our industry. But we also found that the word ‘retail’ was also getting a lot of searches. So instead of trying to compete in an already saturated keyword, we decided to shift over and build our own space under the ‘retail’ keyword. And now, we're really dominant in that space. 

Kamellia: Would you say the data Indeed provided helped you uncover these strategies? 

Luke: Yes, working with my Indeed representative to understand how much share we have in certain keywords, which keywords are popular, which ones are competitors are dominant in, etc. helped us get more eyeballs on our job ads more efficiently. 

Kamellia: Given all the success you’ve had recently with Indeed, have you tried other solutions? 

Luke: To be honest, we’ve actively worked hard to try to avoid using Indeed, and I think it's a testament to the algorithm and how it works, because we keep coming back. 

We've tried digital marketing, social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok, ads on other job platforms, and we’ve even gone old school and printed flyers that we posted up on shipping centres. At the end of the day, nothing has been as effective as Indeed. I would say 70-80% of our hires come from Indeed.

So yes, I've worked really hard to spend less with Indeed, but it’s really difficult because of your data and insights, we really do get the best results from Indeed.

Kamellia: How did you first hear about Indeed? 

Luke: When I first started looking after recruiting for Crossmark, one of my colleagues always talked about Indeed and said great things. But he didn’t quite understand the data, so he would always just say ‘it works’, but wouldn’t be able to elaborate on how it worked. Our Indeed representatives would also often invite us to conferences and events Indeed hosted, and at first I thought ok well this is why you like Indeed so much. But then obviously when I started working with your team and digging into the data and seeing just how the platform works and the results it drives, I realised my assumption was wrong and Indeed does really work.

Kamellia: I think you’ve touched upon this already, but how has Indeed impacted your day to day? What is the main benefit Crossmark has experienced from working with Indeed?

Luke: It’s definitely our go to platform. As I mentioned 70-80% of our successful applicants are coming from Indeed. We've tried everything else, and we've had some success with certain things. But Indeed is doing the bulk of the heavy lifting when it comes to our recruiting.

The data and insights that we receive from Indeed has been quite revolutionary. I've always really been into data and interested in uncovering what’s working and what’s not working. And it really was a joint effort with our Indeed representative, they gave us a fair bit of feedback on how we're spending the money and saying, look, based on your requirements, you’ve got more important roles here that you should be funding more heavily, and these roles are ones you can remove some funding from to make your job ads more efficient. 

Kamellia: Can you tell us about a specific hiring success and how Indeed played a role in this?

Luke: We recently had a huge project where we had to hire a lot of casual staff for hardware roles. No matter what we did, we weren’t getting anywhere with these roles. After digging into Indeed’s data, we found that the name of a hardware store kept coming up, as people wanted to work there. Job seekers didn’t seem to care that much about the actual work, but when they saw a name they recognised, they were drawn to it. So we started including the name of the hardware store in the job ads and saw an almost immediate increase in clicks and applications. 

Kamellia: You're a long-term user of Indeed, why have you stuck with the platform?

Luke: Honestly, just because it works. As I mentioned, we tried other tools, and we thought we could outsmart you and do it cheaper, but at the end of the day, Indeed works. And since working closely with our Indeed representative and digging into the data and insights, our impressions are going up and our cost per application and cost per click is going down, so we’re heading in the right direction. 

Kamellia: What advice would you give to others facing the same challenges as you did before working with Indeed? 

Luke: I think you have to roll up your sleeves and get across Indeed’s platform. If you’re not in the data, analysing it and making improvements, then having your jobs on Indeed is kind of like having a high performance car and just cruising around the streets to get you shopping, you’re not going to get the results you were hoping for. 

Kamellia: If you were to recommend Indeed to a colleague or friend, how would you sell it? 

Luke: Well, I would just say that it works. You know, it's like we've got an abundance of data that tells you why it works

Kamellia: Is there anything else you would like to add about your experience with Indeed?

Luke: It’s been a great journey. The account management and the support has been great, particularly in those early months when we were struggling for relevance. Going through Indeed’s data and insights and really understanding how it works, that whole experience and the support was crucial to getting our recruitment strategy to where it is today.

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