Recruit Smarter, Not Harder, with the AI Efficiency of Indeed Smart Sourcing

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in April 2024 and has since been updated with product enhancement information and new insights.

Indeed’s Smart Sourcing product uses advanced matching technology and AI to help expedite the talent-sourcing process without losing the personal touch candidates want.

Key takeaways 

• Indeed-commissioned survey data shows hiring managers struggle with manually sourcing unresponsive candidates, while candidates wish companies would more thoroughly review their qualifications before contacting them about new opportunities.
• Indeed’s Smart Sourcing tool combines the power of matched candidates with AI features to make talent sourcing more efficient.

Australian employers are also facing significant challenges in sourcing qualified talent. According to the Indeed x YouGov 'Skillfully Aligned' report (April 2024), 69% of employers recognise an existing skills gap impacting their organisation and 56% say recruitment difficulty is not easing. In fact, 1 in 3 recruiters expect recruitment to get even harder, and 36% of occupations in Australia are currently in national shortage.¹

Now, imagine using a sourcing tool that automatically delivers a list of quality candidates who match the requirements of a job description you already wrote. That’s the experience with Indeed’s AI-powered Smart Sourcing.

Leveraging over 345M sourceable Job Seeker Profiles Indeed has from around the globe,² Smart Sourcing adds the efficiency of AI to your talent sourcing. Rather than manually filtering through talent, Smart Sourcing’s algorithms match active candidates to your open roles. Custom-generated messaging and collaboration tools can further streamline your workflow while maintaining an individualised approach to candidate communication. In fact, 90% of users agree that Smart Sourcing is the preferred product for sourcing quality talent.³

Get quality matched candidates fast

The Indeed-commissioned Harris Poll survey found that 74% of hiring managers would prefer to match with qualified talent based on skills and relevant experiences instead of manually searching for them. Smart Sourcing does exactly that – its unified search integrates AI-matched candidates directly into your search results, dramatically speeding up your review process and helping ensure you never overlook a great hire.

Matches are based on the keyword relevancy of your job post and job seeker resumes, as well as job seekers’ search activity on Indeed and how recently they’ve been on the site. This helps Indeed’s matching algorithms present you with the most relevant candidates who are demonstrating interest in new opportunities. On the Smart Sourcing homepage, users can quickly locate candidates through previously saved searches, recently posted jobs or keywords. 

Universal Health Services (UHS), a leading hospital and healthcare provider with 400 facilities across the US, Puerto Rico and the UK, has reported its candidate-response rate improving 30% since using Smart Sourcing. 

‘Smart Sourcing serves up appropriate candidates that tend to be more eager to respond and are active on Indeed. So we get both quality candidates that are a fit and a higher response rate than with another similar tool’, says one director of recruiting at UHS.

In the survey, 70% of 1,107 U.S. workers agree that companies that have contacted them in the past could have done a better job of reviewing their skills and experience beforehand. This lack of preparation, personalisation and attention to detail in recruiting can reflect poorly on your company. 

Imagine reaching out to candidates and hearing back in record time. With Indeed Smart Sourcing, employers are seeing just that – on average, job seekers respond in only 10.5 hours. This means you can connect with quality talent faster and keep your hiring process moving efficiently, all the while ensuring a positive experience for both you and your candidates.⁴

Optimise recruiting workflows and team productivity

Recruiting and hiring can be complex, with work distributed across multiple people and platforms. To simplify the process, Smart Sourcing Professional Subscriptions allow you to invite your team to sourcing projects and accelerate the candidate-feedback process with collaborative task-management tools. 

For example, say you’ve used Smart Sourcing to curate a list of suitable, responsive candidates. You can easily share contacted candidates with members of your team who also have a Professional subscription, add notes to stay up to date on the candidate throughout the hiring funnel and invite the hiring manager to provide feedback.

Smart Sourcing in action

Through Indeed’s Customer No. 1 program – which aims to help Indeed employees better understand the client experience by directly using Indeed's products and providing their feedback – the Indeed talent attraction team put Smart Sourcing to the test. They use the product to hire internally across the US, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Ireland, India, Australia and France. 

By leveraging Smart Sourcing’s advanced matching technology, the team has been able to quickly identify and engage qualified candidates. For example, one recruiter found two qualified candidates for an open role in just two minutes. ‘When you're sourcing passive candidates, you never know what could happen,’ says Christina Rippo, Indeed Senior Program Manager of Talent Attraction. ‘Our recruiters have told me that, with the quality and responsiveness of the matched candidates, we’re engaging candidates faster. 

Getting started with Smart Sourcing

Smart Sourcing subscriptions are available in Standard and Professional options based on your organisation’s needs. All subscriptions include access to candidate search and filters, matched candidates, AI functionality and collaboration tools, though features may vary by country.

Ultimately, no one gets into talent attraction for the groundwork – it's for the people. ‘AI can and will make hiring way simpler and faster’, says Maggie Hulce, Indeed Chief Revenue Officer. ‘But together, we can ensure the ‘human’ is always at the heart of hiring’.

Learn more about Smart Sourcing and try it for free.

Survey methodology: This survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Indeed from 12 – 20 February 2024 among 1,107 employed adults, ages 18 and older and 300 hiring managers (those with sole or primary decision making in the recruiting and hiring process) with 2,000+ employees. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the employee sample data is accurate to within +/– 2.6 percentage points and the hiring manager sample data is accurate to within +/– 5.6% using a 95% confidence level.

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Sources

¹Indeed x YouGov 'Skillfully Aligned' report (April 2024)

²Indeed data (worldwide), job seeker accounts set to public that have a unique, verified email address

³Harris Poll survey of US hiring managers with 2,000+ employees (n=300) and employed adults, ages 18 and older (n=1,107), conducted on behalf of Indeed, February 2024

⁴Indeed data, worldwide, Q1 2023