Six months ago, Hisayuki “Deko” Idekoba returned to Indeed as CEO with a clear purpose: to refocus, accelerate, and lead the company through one of the most transformative moments in the labor market’s history. Since then, he’s already made significant progress, reigniting Indeed’s core mission of helping people get jobs bringing renewed speed, innovation, and clarity across the organization.

Simplifying Hiring Through AI

Deko’s vision for the next chapter of Indeed centers on one challenge: the hiring process is still too slow and too manual. The average time to hire remains above 40 days41 days is the mean time to hire (starts from a job creation and ends with the first hire) for measured hires on Indeed in December 2023. The calculation excludes a small portion of hires (approximately 1% of the all measured data) with durations greater than 720 days, which are a result of data collection anomalies, rather than true Time to Hire durations. Additional filters were added to limit the hired signals to logged in job seekers, and hired signals with specified hire dates coming from the Indeed candidate management page or ATS., a number that has been climbing amid shifting macroeconomic conditions.

“Resumes are outdated. They don’t reflect skills, preferences, or potential,” Deko says. “AI can help change that.”

Rather than replacing humans, Deko sees AI as a tool to remove friction—automating the time-consuming parts of hiring like sourcing, screening, or scheduling—so that hiring teams can spend more time connecting with candidates. While Indeed has used AI since the beginning to power job recommendations, Deko is focused on accelerating innovation to make hiring faster, simpler, and more efficient at scale.

Personalization is key to that vision. “People don’t just want a job. They want the right job,” Deko explains. “And employers don’t just want more candidates, they want the right candidates.”

A Leadership Approach Built for Momentum

Deko’s management philosophy is simple: move fast, fail fast, fix fast. It is a shift away from consensus-driven decision making and toward more rapid experimentation. He has cut unnecessary meetings and empowered teams to make decisions quicker.

This approach has already fueled a culture of agility, where ideas move faster from concept to reality, and where the company is embracing AI not just as a product feature, but as a tool for operational excellence and productivity. Across Indeed, AI is being tested and applied to streamline workflows, enhance product development, and drive better results for both job seekers and employers. Already, AI coding assistants are saving Indeed engineers on average 4 hours a week.Indeed’s DX survey data, N = 1,637 R&D employees Importantly, though, it’s not just about internal efficiency; it’s about delivering value to the customer.

Building for Employers to Empower Job Seekers

While the company’s mission to help people get jobs remains unchanged, at the heart of Deko’s strategy is a renewed focus on employers. “If we can make the job of the hiring manager easier,” he said, “we can help job seekers as well.” 

Indeed’s unique position as a leading global two-sided talent marketplace serving both job seekers and employers means we can reduce friction at scale. Our AI is trained on over two decades of proprietary hiring outcomes, giving us insight into what a successful match actually looks like across all kinds of jobs across more than 60 countries. By leveraging our vast marketplace data and deep understanding of how hiring works, Indeed is able to deliver faster, more personalized experiences that bring talent and opportunity closer together. 

Deko points to a simple example: “Two hospitals might be hiring for the same nursing role, but have very different needs. One may need night-shift flexibility; another may prioritize specific certifications. Our AI solutions can help surface these hidden details and make matches that better reflect real-world needs.”

In just six months, Deko has overseen the launch and accelerated the development of several new solutions designed to improve speed, quality, and personalization across the hiring journey:

  • Career Scout: A personalized AI career coach helping job seekers discover opportunities that align with their goals and skills
  • Talent Scout: An intelligent AI agent that helps employers quickly find, connect with, and hire top candidates from Indeed’s vast pool of millions of searchable profiles
  • Indeed Connect: A suite of new enterprise solutions that combines distinctive branding benefits and access to AI-powered innovations such as Advanced Screening and Advanced Sourcing to help employers source and screen quality candidates so they can hire faster and more efficiently.
  • Premium Sponsored Jobs: A new version of Sponsored Jobs that blends branding, advertising and sourcing, and offers the best of Indeed’s matching and targeting — all in one.

These tools were built taking into account direct feedback from job seekers and employers. Now, Indeed’s platform supports every step of the hiring journey, ensuring that AI provides intelligent assistance while allowing people to make the final hiring decisions. 

Leading Through Change

Deko’s return comes at a pivotal time. The global labor market continues to navigate uncertainty—marked by economic shifts, evolving worker expectations, and rapid advances in AI. For both businesses and job seekers, this is a time of challenge and opportunity.

With his return, Deko has made clear that Indeed’s next chapter will be defined by speed, experimentation, and product-led growth. By combining AI innovation, deep client insights, and a human-centered approach, he’s positioning Indeed to address some of the most persistent challenges in hiring—helping employers find the right candidates and helping job seekers find the right roles.

As Deko notes, “Our mission to help people get jobs has not changed. The way we deliver on it must constantly evolve.”

Six months in, that evolution is well underway, and Indeed continues to deliver as the global platform where hiring happens.