Anirban Roy Choudhury
Advertising

Spotted these new ads yet? Yes, Indeed...

A look at the brand's first high decibel print and outdoor-led campaign in this market.

In a country where 120 million people are available for work and seeking jobs, if a roadside billboard stands tall with "10000 jobs added in India everyday" written in bold, it's bound to garner traction. Paul Forster and Rony Kahan founded 'Indeed', a subsidiary of Recruit Holdings ventured into India recently.

"Search is the biggest shift that is happening in India right now when it comes to recruitment. Increasingly, many aspects of life begin with an online search. Whether its travel, shopping, or even dating, life begins with a search. When it comes to looking for a job, there are more than 200,000 sites on the internet with unique jobs. This is why job search is very important," says official spokesperson, Aidan McLaughlin, director of International Communications at Indeed.com.

Spotted these new ads yet? Yes, Indeed...

He feels job seekers do not want a narrow set of paid job ads. Instead they want all relevant postings which will help them find the right role, "Choosing a job is one of the biggest life decisions. When making such a big decision, job seekers want to know all of their options. This is why a job search which shows all available jobs is so important to job seekers. The alternative sites which just have a number of paid job ads, do not meet the most basic needs of people looking for jobs," he asserts.

Spotted these new ads yet? Yes, Indeed...
Spotted these new ads yet? Yes, Indeed...
Naukri.com leads the online recruiting space by a substantial margin as per an expert's assessment, "Shine.com, Monster.com, Timesjobs and all have a lot of catching up to do. Naukri is way ahead of the rest and is rapidly growing. The online recruiting space is seeing good growth in India and the proof of it is the shrinking career pages in daily broadsheets. If Times Ascent had 10 pages previously, now you will find a page, or at best two and that's it, which shows the shift," says the expert.
Spotted these new ads yet? Yes, Indeed...
"For us, the biggest competition is often sites that people are more familiar with in specific markets or that may have served them well when they found their last job in the past. Over time, we've seen our awareness grow significantly in India. In addition, we're now investing to get the word out with the belief that the more people that know Indeed, the more people we'll be able to help find jobs. We will continue to do what's best for the job seeker," adds the Indeed spokesperson.

Indeed is currently running an outdoor campaign across all metros in India. The online recruiting company has also rolled out a TVC which is running across all genres. The creatives are executed by an agency based in the US. The company also promoted its creative through print and the TVC is promoted on digital platforms too.

Indeed follows a pay as per performance revenue model in the market where the leader follows a licensing revenue system. "Indeed's system is similar to that of Google, you post an ad and you only pay if it gets clicked," explains the expert. He adds, "In India, IT is the dominating category when it comes to online recruiting, followed by retail and banking. There are listings and applications in other categories too but it's too innocuous at this stage. At least 45 - 50 percent of the people searching for jobs today would be between the 20 - 35 age group."

Over the last century, marketing has been used to define and create desire for many types of products. "Today, great marketing starts with a great product," says the spokesperson, "Gone are the days when marketing was used to define and create desire for many types of products. Part of the reason for this is that consumers have such a strong voice through social media, blogs and reviews; they can quickly propel a product to stardom or obsolescence. It means that the role of marketing revolves more around engaging consumers with a great product. If your product isn't great, you should invest in that before spending money on marketing," he asserts.

Globally, LinkedIn is emerging as the number one destination for job searches and listings, and the trend now is spreading across other social media platforms. The Indeed spokesperson does not see social media eating up Indeed's share, "At Indeed, we use social media to engage and connect job seekers and employers with our data and our stories. Over the past 13 years, we have found that job seekers don't feel comfortable using social media to share their job seeking activities with the world."

"We plan to expand our two key audiences in India - people looking for jobs, and employers seeking to attract talent. This includes continuing to expand globally to reach more people, finding better ways to match candidates with employers and making it easier for people to apply for jobs. Our mission is to help people get jobs and to have all of the online jobs on Indeed. We are making great strides already in India with strong interest coming from industries as diverse as retail, technology and banking with many thousands of great opportunities listed on the site," concludes the spokesperson.

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