How do you reach quality candidates faster on Indeed after posting a job?

Hiring often begins with a clear and effective job listing. Alongside a well-written job description, tools such as Sponsored Jobs can help ensure that your job is seen by candidates actively searching for roles that match your opening.

How do Sponsored Jobs help employers hire faster?

Sponsored Jobs are paid job postings on Indeed that support your roles with higher visibility in search results on Indeed. In fact, Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed receive 4.9X more impressions^[1] than non-sponsored jobs.

When you sponsor a job, it appears more frequently and remains accessible longer than non-sponsored listings without needing to be reposted. You can sponsor individual hosted jobs or manage indexed campaigns for multiple roles, depending on how your organization posts and manages jobs.

Premium Sponsored Jobs build on this visibility with additional targeting and candidate matching capabilities. Premium Sponsored Jobs unlocks Matched Candidates (also found in Smart Sourcing), which instantly matches you with quality candidates who fit your job criteria based on information collected from the job seeker and invites them to apply. This can help you connect with candidates whose experience more closely aligns with the role, which can help you move from posting to quality applications faster.

Exploring the features of each may help you determine which Sponsored Jobs tier best suits your hiring needs.

To expand your reach beyond inbound applications, you can also proactively engage relevant candidates using tools like Smart Sourcing to speed up the time it takes to build a qualified candidate pool.

What is Smart Sourcing and when should employers use it?

While job postings help attract inbound applications, some roles benefit from additional outreach. Contacting candidates who may not have seen your listing in search can help expand your applicant pool and identify people whose experience may align with your role more quickly than waiting for applicants alone.

How does Smart Sourcing help employers build a quality candidate pool faster?

Smart Sourcing* helps you find, connect with and manage candidates in one place. Smart Sourcing combines the power of Indeed Resume and Matched Candidates into one experience. Together, these tools help you identify candidates whose experience may fit your job requirements so you can move faster from search to outreach. You can then invite those candidates to apply directly.

This approach can be especially useful for hard-to-fill roles, positions requiring specialized skills or situations where speed and control over outreach are important — particularly when time-to-fill is a priority.

Smart Sourcing also gives you access to more than 370 million Sourceable Profiles on Indeed^[2]. You can review matched candidates suggested for your role or search for candidates directly, helping you identify potential candidates more quickly.

Smart Sourcing Professional has advanced filters, collaboration tools, ATS synchronization (compatible with Workday, iCIMS, isolved and Workable) and reporting to help teams coordinate outreach, measure performance and reduce time spent manually sourcing candidates.

Smart Sourcing also unlocks Sourcing Assistant, an AI-powered feature inside Indeed’s Smart Sourcing subscriptions that uses Indeed Profiles data to automatically find and invite matched candidates based on recruiter instructions. According to Indeed data, Applicants sourced by the Sourcing Assistant were hired 31% faster^[3] on average than applicants hired from other sources. Note that Sourcing Assistant is only available through the Professional and Enterprise Smart Sourcing subscription tiers.

By expanding your reach beyond inbound applicants, Smart Sourcing helps you build a broader candidate pool potentially faster than traditional inbound-only hiring. Once candidates apply or respond to outreach, the next step is reviewing and evaluating those applications, which can be supported by tools such as Smart Screening.

*Some features may require a Professional Smart Sourcing subscription. Terms and conditions apply.

How does Smart Screening help employers review applications faster?

When applications come in, hiring teams often need a way to quickly prioritize applications that meet their requirements. You also need to determine which applications are the strongest fit for the role as efficiently as possible to keep hiring momentum moving.

How does Smart Screening score candidates and send results to your ATS?

Smart Screening is an application review tool designed to support early-stage application evaluation. It reviews applications using criteria you define before candidates move into your applicant tracking system (ATS). Built on Indeed’s responsible AI principles, it helps support this process while keeping recruiters at the center of hiring decisions.

When a candidate applies, Smart Screening begins reviewing the application immediately. As part of this process, AI Recruiter works within Smart Screening as an AI-powered extension of your team. It asks candidates open-ended questions that relate directly to your job requirements.

Using analysis of resume information and candidate responses, it asks dynamic follow-up questions to help surface additional experience and details from candidates that may not appear in a resume alone.

This information is summarized directly in your ATS to support faster review. One key element is the Smart Fit Score™, which rates how closely an application aligns with the criteria you defined for the role on a scale from 0 to 100. Each score is unique to your job criteria and reflects how well the application matches your requirements, helping you make faster, more confident decisions.

Alongside the Smart Fit Score, Smart Screening also provides a concise candidate summary that highlights relevant strengths and identifies potential gaps, helping you review applications more efficiently.

By automating early-stage screening, Smart Screening helps reduce your time spent reviewing large numbers of applications and potentially shortens the time from application to interview-ready candidates. This allows your hiring team to focus more attention on interviewing finalists, discussing role expectations and building stronger connections with candidates.

While screening helps you identify quality candidates, how your organization is presented can influence whether candidates choose to engage.

*Product and feature availability may vary by location

How does Employer Branding Suite support faster hiring across the funnel?

Employer Branding Suite helps employers attract and convert quality talent with always-on branding across the hiring funnel. It supports the candidate journey by building awareness early, building trust as candidates research employers, helping convert job seekers when they are ready to apply and supporting measurement through brand and engagement insights.

Display ads can help expand awareness by putting your brand in front of relevant candidates across Indeed, Glassdoor and other placements. Company Pages on Indeed, Spotlight Pages  and Glassdoor can help build trust by showing candidates what it is like to work at your company as they evaluate employers.

Brand Score and related analytics can help employers measure brand health, engagement and reputation to optimize performance and connect branding efforts to hiring results. On average, employers who purchased both Employer Branding Ads and Employer Branding Hub together saw a 28% increase in started applications across Indeed and Glassdoor worldwide^[4].

How do Indeed’s hiring tools work together to reduce time-to-hire?

Indeed’s tools can support your hiring process from start to finish. While each hiring plan will vary depending on your organization and the open role, these tools can work together to reduce time-to-hire at every stage of the process.

Should employers start with a free job post or Sponsored Jobs on Indeed?

Start by publishing a clear job description on Indeed. Indeed’s Job Description Generator can help you draft and refine your descriptions to best fit your open role. Sponsoring your job can help increase visibility in relevant search results and bring more candidates to your role more quickly than organic reach alone.

When should employers add Smart Sourcing to their hiring workflow?

Alongside inbound applications, Smart Sourcing can help you reach candidates proactively. You can invite matched candidates to apply, which may be especially helpful for specialized roles or when you’re not getting enough quality applications for your role and want to speed up pipeline building.

When should employers use Smart Screening instead of manual resume review?

Smart Screening reviews applications using criteria you define before candidates move into your applicant tracking system (ATS). Because it integrates with Indeed Apply, it fits into existing workflows without adding extra steps for your team. Screening and scoring applications early in the process can help you prioritize applicants and review candidates more efficiently, potentially reducing delays between application and interview.

Frequently asked questions about Indeed’s hiring tools

Why should I use multiple hiring tools instead of just posting jobs?

Relying on a single approach may limit your candidate pool. Combining job postings with sourcing, screening and employer branding can help you reach more candidates, identify qualifications faster and create a more consistent candidate experience.

Do I need to use all of Indeed’s hiring tools to get results?

You can use these tools in different ways depending on your hiring needs, but combining Sponsored Jobs, Smart Sourcing, Smart Screening and Employer Branding Suite can help support a more connected hiring strategy across candidate reach, evaluation and employer brand.

How do I get started with a connected hiring strategy on Indeed?

To get started, begin by posting a job with clear responsibilities and qualifications. Then build or update your employer profile to showcase your company and help attract candidates. You can expand your reach by sourcing candidates and adding screening questions to identify applicants who meet your basic requirements.

Over time, you can refine your job posts, branding and screening questions to better support each stage of your hiring process. Using Sponsored Jobs, Smart Sourcing, Smart Screening and Employer Branding Suite together can help create a more connected hiring strategy and support faster hiring over time.

Can Indeed help reduce time-to-hire?

Yes. Indeed’s tools are designed to help employers reduce time-to-hire by improving candidate reach, accelerating screening and supporting faster decision-making.

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