Title Fight: A Showdown Between LinkedIn and Indeed

LinkedIn v. Indeed. The ultimate showdown between the two most prolific resume and candidate search platforms on the web today. As a recruiter or talent acquisition leader, these two sites should be a large part of your strategy in looking to attract the best talent possible. Whether or not you have a large advertising budget dedicated to these sources is irrelevant. They should be a major source for your team regardless of whether you’re paying for sponsored jobs or only use the free features. At Kinetix, we’ve spent a lot of time and resources using both of these platforms and have enough knowledge to form well thought out opinions on the pros and cons of each. We’ll be pitting the two sites against each other in various categories and ultimately declare an overall winner to help you as a TA pro navigate the vast recruiting landscape.

1. Volume of Candidates: With over 470 million global profiles, LinkedIn rivals other social media platforms like Instagram, SnapChat, and Pinterest. Even with a healthy 75 million users, Indeed lags behind LinkedIn due to the nature of the site. It‚Äôs less of a platform and more of a traditional job board in a candidate‚Äôs eyes. Give the first round to LinkedIn. 
2. Ease of Contacting Candidates: Both platforms allow recruiters to contact candidates via their own internal email platforms that run through their system. But both also limit the number of cold candidates you can contact before you have to start shelling out some dough. If you‚Äôre connected to an individual on LinkedIn you may send as many InMails to that person as your heart desires. Indeed also requires that you receive an acceptance from a candidate before you have access to their contact information. But candidates who post their resumes on Indeed should be considered more active and therefore are more likely to respond to your request. Many people get spammed on LinkedIn and are more prone to tune out random solicitations from recruiters or salesmen. For this reason, we‚Äôll score Indeed as the winner of this round.
3. Sponsored Job Listings: If you‚Äôre looking to post jobs and throw ad dollars at them to boost their performance, both sites allow you to sponsor these listings in different ways. Indeed operates on a Cost-Per-Click model that allows you to set your bid per job category or campaign and hits you with a small charge every time an applicant clicks on that listing. LinkedIn offers recruiters and employers job slots at a set price that promises to move your jobs up to the top of the page. If you‚Äôre familiar and proficient with a CPC model and active in your management of those campaigns, those can certainly provide more value to you as an employer trying to attract more candidates. Chalk another round up to Indeed!
4. Candidate Traffic: Both LinkedIn and Indeed receive a high volume of traffic every day from job seekers looking for their next opportunity. But which platform converts those visitors into quality applicants and ultimately hires better than the other? Luckily the HR technology company SilkRoad has data on over 13 million applications and produced a source of hire report that you can find here. In their report, they found that roughly 58% of all job-related web traffic flows through Indeed. LinkedIn lags behind at a minuscule 5%. Indeed also stands as the external source of record for 43% of hires while LinkedIn only accounts for 3%. By the numbers alone, Indeed takes the final round in a blowout.

After going through the different features you as a recruiter or TA leader need to focus on, it’s clear that Indeed comes out the winner in this head-to-head matchup with LinkedIn. That doesn’t mean you should ignore LinkedIn as it’s still a very valuable tool to check out profiles, find more passive candidates, or source for a particularly tough search. At Kinetix, we’re power users of both platforms and certainly see the merits of our recruiting team utilizing both to find candidates. But if you’re just dipping your toe into the sponsored job market or looking for a solid resume database to produce quality candidates, we’d recommend starting with Indeed and working towards optimizing your results. As always if you have any questions or need a little help, drop us a note and we’ll be ready to connect in no time at all!