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From Dublin to Downunder: One Indeedian’s move across the world for bigger opportunities

October 22, 2020 by Simon Kelly Simon Kelly not only made the bold move from Ireland to Australia, but also saw new responsibilities and development opportunities when he travelled across the globe.

Simon Kelly not only made the bold move from Ireland to Australia, but also saw new responsibilities and development opportunities when he travelled across the globe.

I started working with Indeed as a Client Success Specialist in Dublin on the UK and Ireland team in November 2013. After a couple of years, I then moved on to manage our Job Boards and Staffing team before also taking on the role of managing our Direct Employer team.

In late 2017, while still based in Dublin, I had spotted a role advertised for a Client Success (CS) Manager at Indeed Singapore, and decided to apply for it.

After further conversations with Indeed’s management team, I was made aware of a role opening up for temporary maternity leave cover in Sydney and I jumped at the opportunity to apply.

Three years later, I am still in Australia! Moving here has allowed me to grow professionally, and given me more opportunities to work on my development.

Having started out at Indeed as a CS Specialist in 2013 and now as the Director of Client Success, my guiding principles throughout any of the roles I’ve had in my career have always been to provide the best service to whoever my client may be, whether it is someone external, internal or management that may be asking.

Our mission is to help people get jobs, and that for me also applies internally within the business.

I want to always provide an answer or resolution that I myself would want to receive, which would resolve my issue as quickly and as accurately as possible.

I’ve always loved data and using it to help inform decisions. I rely on it to help me guide how I view different situations and my advice would be to always double check the data to help backup your proposals or ideas.

In Sydney, we have people in the CS organisation who come from such varied backgrounds, and that is the best thing about CS – we all bring our own unique skill set to the role. For example, I have a degree in History and Psychology before studying for a Masters in Business and adding on additional courses like a Prince 2 Project Management certification… and yet here I am!

As a leader, I really want to ensure that I am reliable – if I say I’ll do something then I make sure I do it and follow up on it.

Being open minded to other ways of thinking and being honest is a key part of any role. It’s ok to be wrong or make a mistake but you need to be honest about it and learn from it. Being a manager, I’ve always tried to make sure I can improve things whether it has been with a product or a bug or a process. Always striving to be more efficient not only helps you in your day to day, but also our clients and the business.

Simon’s secret to success

I have found it personally valuable to seek out someone who will be honest with you and give you both types of feedback, positive and negative. For me, one of the most rewarding parts of my job is when I see someone on the team learning, and watching that person develop.

The skills that usually standout in our best Client Success people (CS reps) are that they are empathetic, have great listening skills, inquisitive, problem solvers and are consistently motivated to help others.

One really key area is that the CS rep masters our company products, they know them inside out, and are able to provide accurate information.

On the flip side, there are times that can be tough; like when someone on the team is struggling, maybe it can be because of a tricky client or sometimes it might be a personal issue outside the office.

I’ve found that the best way to help can be to just talk about these situations, and while sometimes we might not always have the perfect solution, it can help the person to know that we care and that we are listening. Being open and honest can relieve the stress the person might be feeling about an issue. Take the time to check-in to see how things are going with each other’s general daily life.

Another thing I’ve found to help is to maintain a work life balance. These days it can be tricky with our current work environments being entirely home based.

What I do to manage this is to try to stick to core working hours, say 8am to 5pm. I make sure to take breaks throughout the day from the laptop, even just for a quick walk around the apartment or a lunch-time stroll outside to clear my mind really helps me refocus for the afternoon.

What’s great about Indeed is that we usually form some great friendships with our colleagues, so it doesn’t always have to be work, work, work!

Best part of being in Australia

On top of all that, being in Sydney has had other out-of-office rewards, like the sunny warm weather and beaches, the food, and kangaroos! The weather is amazing especially when you compare the almost constant sunshine here versus the rain at home in Ireland. Sydney also has a huge selection of different cuisines to try out and being a bit of a foodie, I love having so many options to try great food.

I’m a HUGE rugby fan, I’ve loved it since I was a kid. What I’ve found is that it has really stood to me in my career as it was a great way to help me build up my communication skills, work within a team environment towards a common goal, and create a pathway that showed me I loved to help lead as I was the team captain in both school and at club level.

Once you are passionate about what you do and enjoy it, it just comes naturally to you. Any hobby can play a role in helping your working day if you sit down and think about how you could apply those skills to your work. And the great thing about living in Sydney was that I got to see Ireland win the series against Australia on the 2018 Tour!

Thinking of a move?

One piece of advice I’d give anyone looking to relocate is to organise your visa early. I did it with the help of Indeed, but it can be a bit tiresome as the Australian Government requires a lot of information, so starting to compile everything you need (our migration agency will guide you) and set up a folder in the cloud for you to easily access your information would be a good tip.

For anyone looking to relocate to Sydney, one of the hardest things was making the decision on where to live! Sydney is huge and depending on your budget for rent and whether you like the beach or not are some of the biggest factors to consider. I live in Erskineville, which is right beside the buzzy Enmore/Newtown area which is full of cafes, restaurants, bars and things to do.

If there was anyone that was looking to join the CS team in Sydney, my advice would be to keep an eye on open roles, speak to your manager about how you would like to move overseas at some point if this is of interest to you, and don’t be afraid to apply to a role if it is something that really interests you.

To learn more about the benefits offered in our Sydney office, click here.

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Mission

5 core values that guide us inside Indeed

October 19, 2020 by Inside Indeed Learn the 5 defining values that helped Indeed become an industry leader and will continue to guide us as we look to change the way people get jobs in the future.

5 values that helped Indeed become the world’s #1 job site*

A decision back in 2004 to build a site focused on job seekers above all else fundamentally changed the way people get jobs.

With Indeed, job seekers could now find every available job with a simple “What” and “Where” search, saving lots of time and effort in an already daunting and frustrating process. Our first slogan summed it up perfectly: “One search. All jobs.”

Since then, we haven’t forgotten the principles that got us here, which starts with putting those who need us most at the forefront of our thought process.

The early days of Indeed in Stamford, CT

“It’s a rare situation these days to have a company focused on the smallest or quietest voice,” Director of Job Seeker Search Quality Operations, Mike Morrison says of Indeed’s first defining value.

As we’ve grown into an industry leader, we’ve defined 5 core values that have helped us grow to where we are today and will continue to guide us as we look to change the way people get jobs in the future.

Job seeker first

The job seeker first value is the foundation of our simple, but powerful mission statement: We help people get jobs, worn proudly across the chests of Indeedians around the globe.

This value was ingrained in our CEO, Chris Hyams from the time he started at Indeed ten years ago.

“My first real experiences at Indeed of seeing this value in action started within the first week or two after I started in 2010. The Search Quality team (which had just been formed) made a decision to remove a specific job board from our search results. The job board in question was spending what, at that time, was quite a bit of money with Indeed. But it was very clear that they provided an extremely poor job seeker experience,” he recalls.

Indeed CEO, Chris Hyams

Our CTO, Andrew Hudson, explained to him at the time that we were less concerned about the revenue impact than the experience for job seekers.

“At most companies, revenue trumps everything else. But this was an incredibly powerful illustration of walking the walk of putting the job seeker experience above all else.”

Video: CTO, Andrew Hudson explains how adding salary transparency to Indeed helps put job seekers first

You can see this value in action in how our products have evolved. We started as a search engine, followed by the creation of our Search Quality organization to ensure that only the best jobs show up on Indeed. Many products that followed have strived to put the job seeker first, including Indeed Resume, Company Pages and Indeed Apply.

Fast-forward to the launch of new features aimed at helping job seekers impacted by COVID-19, including the #readytowork hashtag that allows job seekers to alert employers of their immediate availability for any job. This was just one of many decisions we’ve made recently to ensure that the basics of what we do work better than ever in our current world.

The orange chair, a symbol of the job seeker

The orange chair, a reminder to think of the job seeker first

“Putting Job Seekers First has given us a clear roadmap,” Indeed’s CEO says. “If there is a job out there, it needs to be on Indeed. If there is a job on Indeed, it needs to be from a real employer who is actively hiring right now. We need to know everything we can about every job and every job seeker to create the best match possible. These things are even more critical today than they have ever been.”

This value is represented symbolically in our offices across the world. As a reminder to always give the job seeker a seat at the table, we have an empty orange chair in every conference room.

UX Research Director, David Yeats discusses how our UX team helps build the job seeker first value into our products.

Listen: Chris Hyams details how our value of putting job seekers first helped Indeed differentiate itself in a challenging marketplace, the obstacles of protecting and policing those who use their site, and why taking risks and being resilient has provided dividends in this recent Mission Daily podcast.

Pay per performance

Some may ask “why is a business model a core value?”

Director of US Marketing, Carmen Bryant explains, “Our pay per performance value is very similar to our putting the job seeker first value. It’s the mirror image of that. It’s really how we demonstrate value to customers.”

“The most vivid example is when the employer actually makes a hire. That’s the best time for us to get paid because it aligns the value that we deliver to the customer with our first value of helping job seekers,” Chief Operating Officer, Dave O’Neill adds.

“When we create hires, both sides win, and that really should be the ultimate objective.”

Indeed has always prioritized aligning customer value with how we make money. When our co-founders Rony Kahan and Paul Forster decided to put job seekers first, they also built a pay-for-performance business model that ensured Indeed would only get paid when we delivered value to our clients.

Check out this article from Business Insider about the early days at Indeed.

“If you think about how decisions are made at any company and how people act, it’s driven by, more than anything else, the bottom line,” says Chris Hyams. “If the primary source of revenue is driven by something that’s delivering value to our customers, that’s unbelievably important.”

In fact, as we constantly re-imagine how to further align ourselves with customer outcomes, getting closer to the hire using a pay-per-hire model is a top priority.

The bottom line is we want there to be no ambiguity about how we reach our bottom line.

General Manager of Enterprise, Maggie Hulce says, “The message that it sends to employers is we want to get paid when we deliver value and we don’t want to get paid when we don’t.”

Hear more from Maggie in the video below.

Data Driven

“If we can measure it, then we can improve it.” This is something our leadership team says often. We test and measure as much as we can, which means conducting hundreds of A/B tests throughout the company every year, constantly evaluating what search terms job seekers are using and what they’re clicking on when looking for jobs, along with a whole lot more data-driven experiments.

For the past decade, Indeed also has been ramping up our ability to measure hires. In 2019, our Hired Signal Team was created to work with Employer and Job Seeker teams to count individual hires throughout Indeed.

Read the stories of millions of job seekers who found their jobs on Indeed.

“One thing that being data-driven means to me is being able to trust that our data is accurate and reliable and also be able to identify ownership for a particular data source,” Amy Westmoreland, Product Scientist on the Hired Signal Team, says. “One challenging thing about data is it doesn’t always tell you things that you want to hear, but it’s helpful to be open to sticking to the original hypothesis and letting that drive your decision making.”

“We all have ideas, some of which we think are great, some of which prove not to be great, and I think it teaches us to be humble in our approach to problem solving and let the results speak for themselves,” COO, Dave O’Neill, adds.

Watch: Dave O’Neill talks with Indeed’s Chief Economist, Jed Kolko, about the economic impact of COVID-19 on jobs and the global economy.

Innovation

Indeed is a future-focused company. With new competitors popping up all the time, it’s essential for our survival. To us, it’s about not being afraid to fail.

“Innovation is about trying lots of risky things with high probabilities of failure, but when they succeed, the payoff is one hundred or a thousand fold,” says Senior Product Director, Brendan Stern.

Watch Brendan discuss helping job seekers during the pandemic in our ‘Here to Help’ series.

One major way we have fostered and institutionalized innovation at Indeed is through the Indeed Incubator, an initiative to encourage anyone at Indeed to find a better way of doing things. The Incubator created a formalized pipeline where Indeedians could pitch their new product ideas and receive funding and staffing to run the project, in hopes that it could become a full-fledged product.

Lisa Besserman, Head of Indeed Incubator

Lisa Besserman, Head of Program, Indeed Incubator

“Although the Indeed Incubator is only a few years old, it has proved how ahead of the curve we are, in terms of vision, structure, team dynamics, and executive support,” says Lisa Besserman, Incubator Head of Program.

“Our team is not only committed to building next-generation products, but also fostering a culture of intrapreneurship and democratizing innovation across all Indeed offices around the world.”

Find out how an Associate Product Manager at Indeed went from being a new grad to pitching products through our Incubator program.

Possibly one of Incubator’s best success stories has been Indeed Hiring Events. Within two years of launching, the Hiring Events team facilitated more than 20,000 events, 15,000 of which were in 2019 alone. The Incubator team was also at the forefront of our Hire Now initiative that supported hiring surges for essential industries in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

Indeed University 2019

Indeed Incubator stands on the shoulders of Indeed University, which launched in 2015 with the mission to empower new hires out of college to prototype ideas.

Read about one of Indeed University’s early success stories: Job Spotter.

We also realized innovation can take many forms, one of which is shaping how we work cross-culturally. When we opened the Tokyo engineering office in 2013, one of the most challenging aspects for employees there was learning to accept failure, a tenet of innovation which runs counter to Japanese culture.

“The team was very sensitive to deploying new features or new code that was not perfect or not validated yet,” says Indeed Hire Group Manager Graham Davis. “We needed to help the team understand how to fail faster and be OK with failure — just do it as quickly as possible so you can learn what you need to learn and move on, and ultimately build the thing that works.” The Tokyo team went on to innovate Company Pages and successfully launch our Salaried product.

Find out how Indeed is innovating to make the interview process a seamless virtual experience in this ‘Here to Help’ interview with Director of Product Management, Ryan Arroyo.

Inclusion and belonging

The notion of inclusion emerged organically inside Indeed, first as employee-led Affinity Groups dating back several years before being formalized as Inclusion Resource Groups (IRGs) in 2016. IRGs started under the banner of a newly dedicated Inclusion team, which was recently changed to Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging (DI&B) when current VP of DI&B, LaFawn Davis, took charge of the program last year.

Watch members of our Inclusion Resource Groups discuss why DI&B is important to them.

Under LaFawn’s leadership, we have aggressively grown the DI&B team, released Indeed’s diversity data for the first time this year, made a commitment to the accessibility of Indeed’s products and services, and launched the Product Advisory Council to ensure our products are created and tested with a diverse set of perspectives.

Listen to LaFawn talk with Chris Hyams about what living the value of Inclusion & Belonging looks like to her.

LaFawn Davis, VP of DI&B at Indeed

Additionally, knowing there are biases and barriers in the hiring process means using our technology to help reduce bias and lower barriers to employment for underrepresented populations in our pursuit of helping all job seekers.

“The reason why I came to Indeed is to impact the world by helping people get jobs. I fundamentally believe that is life changing,” says LaFawn.

“We can accomplish this by removing bias and barriers, and that means making sure that our workforce reflects the diversity of communities where we operate, making sure we have an unbiased recruiting process, continuing our commitment to equal pay and promotion opportunities, removing barriers to entry by hiring people with nontraditional backgrounds and helping other companies do the same.”

Today we have 10 IRGs with representation all over the world. We have since created identity months to celebrate each IRG on our #insideindeed Instagram, added executive sponsors to help leverage IRGs as true business resources, and recently added our newest group for Parents and Caregivers.

Hear VP of Client Success, Glenda Kirby discuss being executive sponsor of our Women at Indeed IRG in the video below.

Together, these values drive us forward to ensure every job seeker has an equal opportunity to find the right job for them.

Want to learn more about Indeed and the people behind the world’s number one job site*? Check out our #insideindeed culture blog.

*Comscore, Total Visits, March 2020 .

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Inclusion

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with Latinx in Tech at Indeed

October 15, 2020 by Mark Rodriguez Mark Rodriguez explains why he got involved in our Latinx in Tech Inclusion Resource Group and how Indeed adapted to the new virtual landscape to make this the most memorable Hispanic Heritage Month to date.

Mark Rodriguez, Latinx in Tech – Austin

Mark Rodriguez is an Aggregation Quality Analyst at Indeed and holds the position of Communications and Events Lead for Latinx in Tech in Austin, TX. He enjoys photography, running, coffee and even writes his own food and lifestyle blog about life in Austin.

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Every day is Hispanic Heritage Month at my house. My parents are from Texas (Laredo and San Antonio) and my grandparents are from Mexico (Piedras Negras and Monterrey). I grew up learning both English and Spanish at the same time, watching shows in both languages, listening to music in both languages and reading books in both languages as well. But, I always went through an English-speaking curriculum in schools. This is where I learned that I was… diverse.

Finding a community

Coming to Indeed 3 years ago, I didn’t exactly know what to expect from the culture here. Inclusion Resource Groups were barely a thing, so when you applied back then, you didn’t really know what you were getting yourself into or if there would be a safe space for you.

After being at Indeed for a few months, I started to hear about Latinos in Tech (now Latinx in Tech to be more gender inclusive) and was instantly relieved. There was a group of people at Indeed who were like me. I didn’t necessarily know what the Inclusion Resource Group did, but knowing that there were people who looked and talked like me that worked here too, I knew I had to join!

Creating a safe space

As a member, I started learning more about the IRG, what they were about, their mission statement — “Unidos, we help the Latinx community and our allies develop and drive change.” After that I became interested in a leadership position, applied and got it!

As a leader, I wanted to focus on finding ways to bring more diverse talent to Indeed but also how to create a form of trust with all members, always in a safe space.

Over the years, Indeed has grown, so naturally the leadership team has grown as well. Latinx in Tech (LIT) has been able to grow to offices around the country full of passionate, hardworking and thoughtful leaders and members alike!

Hispanic Heritage Month goes virtual

When the pandemic hit back in March and we learned about the mandated work from home from our CEO Chris Hyams, we instantly knew that Hispanic Heritage Month was going to look really different this year.

We might not have known how long working from home was going to last, but we knew that Hispanic Heritage Month was going to have to be 100% virtual this year for all four weeks. To help prepare, the leadership team broke into HHM sub-teams, we created task forces, had more regional meetings with Indeed’s Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging team and Senior Leadership. In the end we made it work!

Highlights from virtual Hispanic Heritage Month at Indeed

From leadership speaker series to celebrity guest appearances, we went all out this year, using the virtual platform to our advantage.

A few highlights for me this year were the first-ever (unofficial) LIT Indeed cookbook created by Indeedians for Indeedians with Latinx-based recipes. The cookbook has a list of local Latinx restaurants in different offices (submitted and referred by locals) across the country to help support local economies.

LIT also hosted Richard Montañez — the Creator of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos — for an inspirational story about how he went from a janitor at Pepsi to creating the popular chip and a panel discussion about AfroLatinx & Colorism to educate about the meaning behind the term AfroLatinx and the history behind it with special guest, Nydia Simone form Blactina Media

In addition, we hosted Zumba lessons, displayed special Latinx-based Zoom backgrounds, collaborated on a Spotify playlist of our favorite Latinx, Latinx-inspired or Latinx-influenced songs, had a virtual guacamole-making contest and much more.

Not only was Latinx in Tech at Indeed able to put together amazing, fun, educational and unique events for everyone to enjoy, we also had internal blog posts from our members about their experiences as a Latinx Indeedian and were featured on the #insideindeed Instagram. And for the first time ever, Indeed also changed its external corporate logo in honor of HHM in both English and Spanish – which was an incredible way to show to the world Indeed’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.

More stories from LIT

José, Technical Sourcer – Austin

“Growing up, being part of the Tech Industry had never even crossed my mind. And so, I often find myself having to answer the same questions from onlookers. People want to know how I broke into the industry, and when did I realize this was the space for me. But to be completely honest, this experience has evolved into something beyond my wildest dreams. I found Latinx in Tech at Indeed and it gave me a family of individuals with similar experiences. We all knew this movement was so much bigger than ourselves. We knew that having found our own way here was not enough – we needed to help future generations, and educating our peers became as much a part of our mission as it was our purpose.” – José Roque #insideindeed Austin

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Jazmin, Client Success Team Lead – NYC

“As a Latina, most of us, from the time we are born we are given a social norm of who we must be, a lot of this is rooted in gender roles. My mother broke that norm and it motivated me to be and do better. A big reason we are “Latinx” in Tech instead of “Latinos” in Tech is the same reason my mother motivated me to break our norms and advance collectively. The Latinx community has a responsibility to uplift each other and enlighten one another with the fact we can and will be successful in any given space. Our roots give us the strength to be more than our ancestors but respect the work and dedication that came before us. LIT gave me an outlet to help my community but also allowed me to realize we have so much more potential than we are taught to believe.” – Jazmin #insideindeed NYC

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Sabino, Sr. Account Executive – NYC

“When I first started at Indeed in 2016 I looked around and did not see many Indeedians that looked like me or came from my background. I knew then I wanted to be the change I sought. I had joined the Black Inclusion Group and loved all the events and kinship they had. That’s when I learned about Latinx in Tech (LIT). There was a LIT chapter in Austin, but not one in NYC at the time, so we decided to start a chapter there. This was the best decision we ever made in our Indeed career. Now we are a staple in multiple offices and every member of our team feels more like family. Even though we still have work to do, when I look around now I can comfortably say I am seeing more of a reflection of me, my family, my culture and my people.” – Sabino #insideindeed NYC

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Bianca, Software Engineer – Seattle

“Since starting as a Software Engineering intern at Indeed through Ada Developers Academy in February 2018, I noticed the lack of co-workers that shared a similar language, culture, or background. As someone transitioning into tech and who identifies as a Latina woman, I knew I would be hard pressed to find many people with a shared background. In tech, I think it is tempting to try to reduce things to data and algorithms, but being part of Latinx in Tech (LIT), there is this ‘chispa’, or spark, that folks bring whether we talk about work or politics, religion, family, etc. Nothing feels off limits and we can present more of our complete authentic human selves. No amount of money can buy that growing sense of belonging.” – Bianca #insideindeed Seattle

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Hear Latinx in Tech Co-Chair Thomas Gomez discuss the importance of Hispanic Heritage month, the issues facing the Latinx community and how media narratives can stand in the way of empathy and understanding with Indeed CEO, Chris Hyams in this video from our ‘Here to Help’ series.

Staying LIT year round

LIT is more than just a one time thing where we come together for one month in the Fall! It is year-round with meetings, special events and volunteer opportunities in respective offices. One great example of this is when our Scottsdale chapter put together a reusable water bottle drive for the homeless community with 125 care bags filled with sandwiches, supplies and water bottles for their community. Way to go team!

We also host Job Squad events where we help bilingual communities learn how to use Indeed, how to upload their resume to the site and how to search for jobs.

For me, one of the most rewarding moments of my time in LIT has been when I volunteered with American YouthWorks, a non-profit organization whose mission is to “provide young people with opportunities to build careers, strengthen communities, and improve the environment through education, on-the-job training, and service to others.”

I represented LIT (and Indeed) at American YouthWorks and worked with a diverse set of students to help prepare them for real-world interviews by hosting a speed round of mock interviews with honest feedback and an open Q&A.

I’m so thankful to be a part of Latinx in Tech, where this year we changed our logo from “Para Todos” — which means “for all” — to “Para Todxs”, a letter change I championed to help create more gender inclusivity in our culture. Truly, the work we are doing with LIT is like no other.

Learn more about Latinx in Tech in the video below and read more Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging stories on our inclusion blog.

2963

Indeedian Stories

My journey as a Brand Ambassador inside Indeed

October 13, 2020 by Marquise Holbrook Marquise shares why he got involved in the Brand Ambassador program at Indeed and how it changed the trajectory of his career.

Marquise Holbrook We Help People Get Jobs

Marquise Holbrook pictured while visiting teammates in Austin, TX

Based in Stamford, Connecticut, Marquise Holbrook manages Indeed’s Brand Ambassador program globally. He shares his journey through the employee advocacy program and what it means to Indeedians around the world.

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My journey at Indeed began in August of 2015. It was my first time working for a big company with a beautiful office and I found myself immersed in a fun, innovative, diverse, and caring company culture.

I was learning more and more each week about my new role in Client Success while working with hundreds of employers to help them find their perfect hires. In the midst of this I was being showered with exclusive Indeed swag, attending in-office happy hours, was taken on an overnight employee development team retreat, and for the first time in my young professional career had a manager I felt truly cared about my professional advancement and career path.

Needless to say, I was beyond convinced that I had found the perfect place for me. I began sharing my journey and love for Indeed on all of my social networks, raving to my friends and proudly wearing our “I Help People Get Jobs” shirt any place that I could.

When I learned Indeed had a Brand Ambassador program, it was a no-brainer for me to sign up.

Marquise Holbrook on set of Inside Indeed interview, March 2018

As a Brand Ambassador, I was able to help behind the scenes with various company events, participate in exclusive contests and projects, and most notably be interviewed for one of our Inside Indeed office videos produced by our Employer Brand team.

In March 2018 I braved a snowstorm to get to our Stamford, Connecticut office to meet Bryan Chaney, Director of Employer Brand, who would eventually become my manager. The film crew finished setting up the lights and cameras, and Bryan interviewed me about my journey at Indeed as well as my involvement with the Brand Ambassador Program.

I was enamored by the whole experience and set a goal to be a member of the Employer Brand team. Little did I know in December of that year my goal would become a reality. I went from a Brand Ambassador in our Stamford office to managing the entire Brand Ambassador program globally.

What is the Brand Ambassador Program?

The mission of the Brand Ambassador Program is to engage passionate Indeedians to cultivate a fun work environment, build community partnerships, and share their story about life #insideindeed.

Ambassadors posing in Sydney

The Brand Ambassador program was created in March of 2014 under our Marketing team to assist with brand activations.

Over the next few years, the program evolved and was handled by several other teams at Indeed before finding its home with Employer Brand in 2018. It was relaunched with a new emphasis on social media and also given a reward system.

From January 2018 to January 2019 the program grew from 400+ Ambassadors to 600+ Ambassadors globally.

Today, we have over 800 Ambassadors located in 29 offices around the world.

Singapore Ambassadors during Ambassador event

Singapore Ambassadors during an Ambassador event

The Brand Ambassadors team with our Employer Brand, Employee Experience, GoodDeeds, and many other teams to help support company initiatives and events as well as community outreach activities and fundraising opportunities.

How Does the Brand Ambassador Program Work?

Every Brand Ambassador team has one or two Lead Brand Ambassadors. The Leads organize local team meetings and help Ambassadors create and execute their own initiatives based on their specific needs and interests.

There are also global initiatives that all teams take part in including Black History Month, Earth Week, Pride, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and Movember. The Ambassadors are instrumental in helping spread the word via in-office events and social media.

In December 2019, Brand Ambassadors in the US partnered with the company Daymaker for a fundraising event to provide holiday gifts to children in need. Ambassadors were able to use an online platform to read personal stories about these children and purchase gifts for them from their wishlists. By the end of the campaign, we were able to purchase 1630 gifts for 1038 children.

Each month the Ambassadors participate in a social media challenge with a specific theme. This past August the Ambassadors were asked to post on their social media illustrating which of Indeed’s five core values resonates with them the most.

Ambassador Kelly Percic showing off her Indeed swag.

Kelly Percic of Austin, Texas shared: “At Indeed we know how badly people want to get back to work, so we do everything we can to empower the job seeker. #JobseekerFirst is our first core value for a reason. We breathe it, we wear it, we live it.”

As a reward for their hard work, Ambassadors receive points for all of their activity. Each month those points are transferred to our Indeed Employee Store where the Ambassadors can shop for exclusive Indeed swag. Being a part of the program also allows the Ambassadors to meet and work with other Indeedians from different teams and get exposure to departments and roles they were not familiar with prior.

How Working from Home has Affected the program

In March of 2020, Indeed moved all employees to working from home. This presented a new challenge to the Ambassador Program as it is founded on a sense of community and being together.

Indeed has provided weekly virtual experiences that cater to our physical and mental health so Ambassadors are able to still connect virtually and learn tips and tricks to create their own virtual events. We have relied heavily on our own Ambassador’s skillsets to create fun and helpful events from at-home mask making, coffee breaks, guided painting workshops, and much more.

Indeed Brand Ambassador pride!

In September 2020 our Stamford, CT Ambassadors created a fundraiser to purchase back to school supplies for a local school. Through employee donations, they were able to provide the school with many essential classroom materials. With much of the world working remotely for the past months we all have our own unique experiences, trials, and tribulations. The Ambassadors have been able to use Instagram Stories as a tool for sharing their own stories and keeping the Brand Ambassador spirit alive.

The Importance of Brand Ambassadors

Employer Brand teams are constantly looking for new and exciting ways to share employee experiences.

Our Ambassadors are amazing sources of content because their enthusiasm for Indeed leads to creative ways of sharing their unique and personal stories.

It is very important to keep Ambassadors engaged with the program through virtual team meetings and monthly contests because it keeps our brand alive, and when shared externally, helps us hire more talented and passionate Indeedians. Being an Ambassador has allowed me to travel the world, make friendships that transcend past the office, and learn new skillsets I wouldn’t have imagined. Every story an Ambassador shares is an opportunity to connect with someone they may not have before and foster relationships that can benefit them on both a professional and personal level.

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Engineering

Problem Solving at Indeed: How this Software Engineer helps people get jobs

October 8, 2020 by Taikai Takeda Taikai Takeda is a Lead Software Engineer at Indeed Tokyo. He joined Indeed as a new graduate and originally planned on studying abroad but got a job offer at Indeed Tokyo... He has stayed on ever since!

Taikai Takeda is a Lead Software Engineer in the Explainer team at Indeed Tokyo. He joined Indeed as a new graduate and originally planned on studying abroad but got a job offer at Indeed Tokyo… He has stayed on ever since! Here, he shares his experience and what he loves about working at Indeed Tokyo.

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I currently lead a team called the Explainer team – previously known as a part of the Search Quality team. Our team analyzes data and information which comes through, and we break down the ‘whys’ and the ‘hows’ of matching a jobseeker to a job. This helps us better achieve our mission of helping people get jobs.

We make tons of jobseeker to job matches daily, and we find the most efficient ways of helping people understand the reasons for those matches.

“When Indeed gives a job recommendation to a jobseeker, the jobseeker may not be sure why they are getting the recommendation, even if they are a good match. By explaining the reasons for the recommendation, we help jobseekers understand why the job is a good fit for them.”

This is a very exciting problem to solve. At the end of the day, whether it is the jobseeker or employer – one applies for a job and another makes a decision to hire – they are people after all. It’s important to help decision makers understand the matches so that they can make better decisions.

Working on this problem can be both challenging and exciting, but being able to work with a diverse team brings a different edge to working on products and solving problems. There are so many incredibly talented people with a multitude of specialties at Indeed, and this helps make solving problems quicker and easier.

I feel comfortable asking questions and it’s refreshing to be able to have open discussions with people, especially on improving the way we do things.

“Having been with Indeed for more than three years, I have grown tremendously through an environment that is challenging and supportive. My manager (and ex-managers) has always encouraged me to take on new challenges.

“This culture of encouragement, trust and believing in people has played a big part of my career development.”

I’ve experienced this culture of encouragement and support especially when we work on new project ideas. When brainstorming for ideas, there may be some which are not great, but there are also a number which are really valuable! When introducing new ideas, I find it a challenge to convince others to invest in some of my ideas.

At Indeed, I am encouraged to use data to articulate and share my ideas to get my manager and team on board. This is often challenging, but they have always been supportive in giving me the opportunity to communicate my ideas. Though not all the ideas have worked out, it means a lot to me that I’ve been given the opportunity to try it out. In fact, some of the biggest impact that I have made at Indeed started with this opportunity to be able to try out those ideas. I believe this culture of trust and empowerment has led to a lot of Indeed’s innovation.

Another factor that has drawn me to the company and kept me here is our mission of helping people get jobs. Being able to contribute to solving important problems and helping people with a huge aspect in their lives has been one of the primary reasons why I feel what I do at work is purposeful.

The level of collaboration I’ve seen here at Indeed has been amazing, where so many talented people are ready to work on solving important problems together.

Once, when I was having a hard time figuring out an algorithm to solve a problem which might have had a significant impact on matching the job to the job seeker, I consulted a colleague who is an expert in graph algorithms and worked together with him.

Instead of spending way too much energy (and time) trying to solve the problem myself, together, we figured out a solution within a minute! Ever since then, this has been a reminder to myself that it is important to collaborate and consult with team members, especially those who are experts in their area.

“A lot of ideas of solving technical or product problems stem from discussions. Interestingly, in my experience, a lot of them originate from unexpected conversations… while having lunch, walking in a hallway, or even while making coffee.”

This may be because these instances have been opportunities to connect with people who I may not usually interact with on a daily basis, which allows me to see things from different perspectives.

Though times are slightly different now that we are working from home, we still jump in on Zoom meetings and have many other opportunities to stay connected at Indeed.

If you’re interested in some of our Engineering roles in Tokyo and would like to find out more, get in touch with one of our recruiters in the video below:

To find out more about Indeed Tokyo, click here.

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