Recruit Smarter, Not Harder, with the AI Efficiency of Indeed Smart Sourcing

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in April 2024 and has since been updated with product enhancement information and new insights.

Key Takeaways 

• Indeed-commissioned survey data shows hiring managers struggle with manually sourcing unresponsive candidates, while candidates wish companies would more thoroughly review their qualifications before contacting them about new opportunities.
• Indeed’s Smart Sourcing tool combines the power of matched candidates with AI features to make talent sourcing more efficient.
• The AI Highlighter feature accelerates screening by instantly calling attention to the most relevant skills and experiences in a candidate's profile.

A staggering 99% of 300 U.S. hiring managers say sourcing qualified talent is a challenge, according to an Indeed-commissioned Harris Poll survey.¹ And it’s no wonder why — over half of those surveyed have seen reductions in their recruiting personnel, while they say only 36% of passive candidates are responsive, wasting the time and effort of an already limited team. 

Now, imagine using a sourcing tool that automatically delivers a list of quality candidates who match the requirements of a job description you already wrote. That’s the experience with Indeed’s AI-powered Smart Sourcing.

Leveraging over 345M sourceable Job Seeker Profiles Indeed has from around the globe,² Smart Sourcingadds the efficiency of AI to your talent sourcing. Rather than manually filtering through talent, Smart Sourcing’s algorithms match active candidates to your open roles. Custom-generated messaging and collaboration tools can further streamline your workflow while maintaining an individualized approach to candidate communication. In fact, 90% of users agree that Smart Sourcing is the preferred product for sourcing quality talent.¹

Here’s how the tool can address your talent-sourcing pain points.

Get Quality Matched Candidates, Fast

The Indeed-commissioned Harris Poll survey found that 74% of hiring managers would prefer to match with qualified talent based on skills and relevant experiences instead of manually searching for them. Smart Sourcing does exactly that — its unified search integrates AI-matched candidates directly into your search results, dramatically speeding up your review process and helping ensure you never overlook a great hire.

Matches are based on the keyword relevancy of your job post and job seeker resumes, as well as job seekers’ search activity on Indeed and how recently they’ve been on the site. This helps Indeed’s matching algorithms present you with the most relevant candidates who are demonstrating interest in new opportunities. On the Smart Sourcing homepage, users can quickly locate candidates through previously saved searches, recently posted jobs or keywords. 

Universal Health Services (UHS), a leading hospital and healthcare provider with 400 facilities across the U.S., Puerto Rico and the U.K., has reported its candidate-response rate improving 30% since using Smart Sourcing. 

“Smart Sourcing serves up appropriate candidates that tend to be more eager to respond and are active on Indeed. So we get both quality candidates that are a fit and a higher response rate than with another similar tool,” says one director of recruiting at UHS.

In the survey, 70% of 1,107 U.S. workers agree that companies that have contacted them in the past could have done a better job of reviewing their skills and experience beforehand. This lack of preparation, personalization and attention to detail in recruiting can reflect poorly on your company. 

For Professional subscription holders, Smart Sourcing’s AI Highlighter instantly offers a visual spotlight on the most relevant skills and experiences in a candidate's profile based on your search. This accelerates your screening and enables you to make faster, more informed hiring decisions to preserve both your employer brand and the candidate experience.

Matched candidates you invite to apply are 15.1x more likely to apply to your job than job seekers who see it only when searching on Indeed,³ and, on average, employers who used Smart Sourcing made a hire 40% faster when they invited matched candidates to apply.⁴

Connect to Talent Right Away with AI-Powered Messaging

According to the survey, 95% of hiring managers believe that their productivity would be even better if AI could help with administrative tasks like candidate outreach. Enter Indeed’s customizable AI-powered messages, which reduce the time and effort required to manually write, personalize and proofread candidate communications.

This allows you to generate a customized message based on the content of the candidate’s resume and your job posting. You can generate message variations by desired tone and refine the information before sending it.

“The AI-powered messages are very effective because they’re personalized for each individual candidate. It’s amazing how the AI pulls in the right pieces of a job description to describe the highlights of the job and uses information from a candidate’s resume to say why it's a great fit,” says the UHS recruiting director.

With a Professional subscription, you also gain the ability to automate postoutreach follow-up with custom reminder messages. Smart Sourcing Analytics (newly enhanced as of August 2025) allow you to track recruiter performance and boost candidate engagement tactics. Its data empowers users to understand which sourcing methods and messages yield the best results — helping you maximize ROI.

Optimize Recruiting Workflows and Team Productivity

Recruiting and hiring can be complex, with work distributed across multiple people and platforms. To simplify the process, Smart Sourcing Professional Subscriptions allow you to invite your team to sourcing projects and accelerate the candidate-feedback process with collaborative task-management tools. 

For example, say you’ve used Smart Sourcing to curate a list of suitable, responsive candidates. You can easily share contacted candidates with members of your team who also have a Professional subscription, add notes to stay up to date on the candidate throughout the hiring funnel and invite the hiring manager to provide feedback.

Need to continue the hiring process on your company’s applicant tracking system (ATS)? Indeed offers integrations with Workday, iCIMS and Greenhouse that automatically transfer candidate information for you. You can also take your sourcing with you on the go with the Indeed Connect for Employers app. Once you’ve reached out to potential candidates, notifications alert you when they respond to an application invite or a message, allowing you to reply in real time and keep the hiring process moving forward.

Smart Sourcing in Action

Through Indeed’s Customer No. 1 program — which aims to help Indeed employees better understand the client experience by directly using Indeed's products and providing their feedback — the Indeed talent attraction team put Smart Sourcing to the test. They use the product to hire internally across the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Ireland, India, Australia and France. 

To connect with candidates, the team has found success using the combination of AI efficiency and the human touch. “We find the best response rates with messages generated by AI and then further customized by our experienced recruiters,” says Christina Rippo, Indeed Senior Program Manager of Talent Attraction.

Getting Started with Smart Sourcing

Smart Sourcing subscriptions are available in Standard, Professional and Enterprise options based on your organization’s needs. All subscriptions include access to candidate search and filters, matched candidates, AI functionality and collaboration tools, though features may vary by country.

Ultimately, no one gets into talent attraction for the legwork — it's for the people. “AI can and will make hiring way simpler and faster,” says Maggie Hulce, Indeed Chief Revenue Officer. “But together, we can ensure the ‘human’ is always at the heart of hiring.”

Learn more about Smart Sourcing and try it for free.

Survey methodology: This survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Indeed from February 12–20, 2024, among 1,107 employed adults, ages 18 and older, and 300 hiring managers (those with sole or primary decision making in the recruiting and hiring process) with 2,000+ employees. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the employee sample data is accurate to within +/– 2.6 percentage points and the hiring manager sample data is accurate to within +/— 5.6% using a 95% confidence level.

---

Sources

¹Harris Poll survey of U.S. hiring managers with 2,000+ employees (n=300) and employed adults, ages 18 and older (n=1,107), conducted on behalf of Indeed, February 2024

²Indeed data (worldwide), job seeker accounts set to public that have a unique, verified email address

³Indeed data (U.S.)

⁴Indeed data (U.S.)