Hi Insiders 👋
Thank you for the time, candor, and thought you put into sharing your perspectives with us in August!
Quick reminder to keep looking-out for exciting Beta programs that you can partake in here. This is an important perk of being a member of Insiders - you are first in line to get opportunities!
Below is a quick look at where your voice has landed across a few projects this month (so many cool things!):
Hiring Lab - you influenced the 2027 Trends Report we are currently writing
We heard that you aren't just thinking about how AI can make hiring faster, but also about AI trust, fairness, candidate authenticity, and keeping human judgment in the hiring process.
We shared this feedback directly with the Indeed and Glassdoor economists building the 2027 Trends Report (this was the 2026 report), and it's shaping their thinking on how to write about responsible AI, candidate quality, and practical AI guidance for TA teams.
You also told us you want more industry-specific insights and actionable benchmarks. Nothing is finalized yet, but your input is part of the planning for follow-on content - we'll share more as it's ready!
Smart Screening
Across two quarters of conversations in the Smart Screening Corner, you told us candidate signals need to feel more trustworthy, screening decisions need more clarity on when and how they're made, and recruiters need better ways to differentiate strong candidates with confidence.
Your examples of what felt missing during evaluation, and what mattered most to you when screening, helped confirm a clearer framework for how we think about gathering signal on candidate quality - separating the big-picture qualities that matter for a role from the specific, granular examples of what those qualities actually look like in practice. That distinction is shaping how we build better evaluation questions going forward.
Your ROI feedback confirmed that different organizations value Smart Screening differently, and it's on us to figure out - together with our Sales teams - which metrics matter most to each organization and measure accordingly. Your input also helped us shape a clearer narrative for how those metrics fit together, rather than presenting them as a list of disconnected numbers.
You also helped shape how we're rethinking the Candidate Summary Page - your feedback reinforced how central the "resume" is as a source of truth in your process, which is informing our recommendation to avoid excessive scrolling or repeating information that's already in the resume.
Smart Sourcing / Sourcing Assistant
You told us:
We're grounding hours-saved and ROI metrics in production data, and working to clearly distinguish measured results from estimates.
Trust in the ROI and time-saved numbers depends on knowing the baseline and methodology behind them - vague claims don't hold up when you need to defend results internally.
Funnel and outcome metrics need to be clearer: whether numbers reflect unique candidates or overlapping counts, and how Sourcing Assistant activity compares apples-to-apples with manual sourcing.
You want more control and clarity before the assistant acts - approval before it spends beyond budget, an auto-stop when it's uncertain, and plainer in-product language (terms like "calibrate" felt abstract, etc.).
You flagged real matching gaps - overqualified matches for entry-level roles, distance tuning that reached candidates too far away, and a need for recruiter attribution so teams can see who's sourcing and owning candidates, especially on multi-recruiter teams.
Some of you also told us you'd like more flexibility to divide shared contact pools across teams, brands, or regions.
In response:
We're working to clearly distinguish measured results from estimates.
We're adding clearer labels and tooltips so funnel metrics are unambiguous and easier to compare across manual and Sourcing Assistant activity.
A review-before-send capability is already in active rollout, giving you a checkpoint before outreach goes out.
We're simplifying in-product language and removing jargon that made the assistant's behavior feel unclear.
Improving matching accuracy for role nuance, experience level, and distance is an active workstream, so we actively working on improving this.
Recruiter attribution is rolling out at the project level, with more visibility for multi-recruiter teams to follow.
We're exploring ways to support more flexible pool management across teams while preserving what makes shared pools work well today.
Joanna Wu's (Sr. Product Manager) discussion on Aug 12th, thank you for coming:
W Chris Burcham Lucas Heart Pamela Gallegos Moriah Roberts Ravi Goel Debbie Apellanes and Lia Mancini
Joanna learned that Enterprise customers would not want to give hiring managers access to assistant instructions/ direct access to leave feedback on candidates, this changed our product prioritization and product direction for hiring managers.
Joanna learned that employers would be interested in making sure that we don't reach out to candidates in their ATS that applied through indeed specifically rather than through all channels - which is something we’ll look into supporting in future iterations of the Do-Not-Contact exclusion feature.
August Check-In Survey (new!): What you like about Indeed and what don't you like?
Likes:
Indeed's reach and applicant volume are still the biggest draw - several of you called out strong traffic, quality of candidates, and hiring insights.
Many of you pointed to ease of use, describing the platform as intuitive for both your team and applicants.
You value the flexibility to adjust budget and spend as hiring needs change, along with detailed usage and results reporting.
Several of you called out the Indeed team itself - professional, responsive reps and useful events like FutureWorks.
Frustrations:
Cost came up more than anything else - unpredictable and rising sponsorship pricing, budget pressure from hiring managers, and a sense that value isn't always keeping pace with price.
Several of you asked for more transparency and steadier pacing around product changes - frequent updates can feel disruptive, and it's not always clear what's changing or why.
You want the platform's core mechanics to feel more solid: dashboards that don't reset your filters, fewer bugs, and less friction navigating the backend.
Billing and ROI tracking feel harder than they should, especially for organizations managing multiple brands or locations without one consolidated view of spend and performance.
A few of you flagged specific gaps - Sourcing Assistant response rates lagging manual outreach, Smart Screening not working on jobs posted outside Indeed, and difficulty finding or messaging candidates in bulk.
We're reading every response to this new monthly survey and routing it to the respective product teams - thank you for keeping the GREAT feedback coming!
Thank you, as always, for the time and thought you put into this work. It genuinely changes what we build and what we prioritize!!
Anything else you'd add or would like to comment on? We are all ears!
Warmly,
Laura Nagy & Jeremy Anslinger
The Indeed Insiders Team