News Spotlight

AI recruitment boosts fairness, transparency, and inclusion. AI-powered hiring tools—when designed with structured assessments, clear feedback, and strong governance—can surface overlooked talent, reduce bias, and make hiring more transparent and inclusive (World Economic Forum).

Return-to-office push falters; compliance weakens. Despite increasingly aggressive mandates from major companies like Microsoft, Paramount, and Amazon demanding employees return to the office, actual attendance has barely budged nationwide—and enforcement remains lax, with top performers often exempted to avoid turnover (Wall Street Journal).

Job seekers face silence, scams, and frustration. In a weak U.S. labor market, highly qualified candidates report submitting hundreds of applications yet receiving no responses, facing algorithmic screening that filters out resumes, and encountering deceptive job postings—forcing many to question whether unemployment statistics reflect their lived reality (The Guardian).

Stat of the Week

A new study finds that 45% of workers report feelings of loneliness in the workplace, the majority would trade 20% in salary in exchange for working with close friends, and 99% of workers are interested in an AI chatbot that could become a close friend or trusted companion at work.

HR leaders should view these findings as a wake-up call to prioritize connection, belonging, and emotional support in the workplace. Nearly half of employees feel lonely—and many are willing to trade a significant portion of their salary for closer friendships—signals that social connection is now a core driver of engagement and retention, not a “nice to have.” At the same time, the overwhelming interest in AI chatbots as companions highlights both the scale of unmet needs and the risk that technology becomes a substitute for authentic human connection. HR leaders should respond by creating more opportunities for team bonding, mentorship, and community-building, while carefully exploring AI as a complement—not replacement—for genuine workplace relationships. By balancing tech-enabled support with intentional human interaction, organizations can reduce loneliness, strengthen culture, and protect long-term performance.

Deep Dive Article
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Precision Hiring: Using AI to Match Talent and Culture

Recruiting has always been a balancing act between speed, accuracy, and the ability to stand out in a crowded talent market. But in today’s competitive environment, traditional methods are no longer enough. Candidates expect personalized experiences, leaders want faster hiring cycles, and the stakes for getting the right fit have never been higher. This is where new technologies and strategies come into play. Artificial intelligence is helping recruiters streamline workflows and target the best candidates with precision, while employer branding has become essential for attracting top talent in a world where reputation travels fast. Together, these shifts are redefining how organizations compete for talent.

At the same time, the rise of labor market intelligence is giving recruiters unprecedented insight into workforce trends, skill availability, and compensation benchmarks. By combining these data-driven insights with AI-powered tools, recruiters can make smarter decisions about where to source talent, how to position their opportunities, and which candidates are most likely to thrive. And when these capabilities are layered with a strong employer brand, organizations can not only hire faster but also create lasting impressions that boost retention and engagement. The convergence of AI, labor market intelligence, and employer branding is setting a new standard for modern recruitment—and the companies that embrace it will gain a decisive edge. These topics, and more, were discussed at length during this year's Indeed FutureWorks Conference​, where ​it​ launched several new AI​-powered products that help ease the pain points job seekers and employers feel during the hiring process.

In today’s article, I share insights from three Indeed executives who have been focused on improving both the job seeker and employer experience:

• Heidi Laki, Senior Product Director at Indeed, discusses how recruiters can leverage Talent Scout to hire using labor market intelligence and AI.
• John Fox, VP, Product & Global Partnerships at Indeed, explains how recruiters can use Indeed Connect to build their employer brand and hire faster with AI-powered precision.
• David Lane, VP, Product Management at Indeed, discusses how job seekers can use Indeed Career Scout to help discover new opportunities and connect with employers more effectively.

Labor Market Intelligence and AI

How does Indeed ensure that human plus AI synergy isn't just a buzzword, but a measurable increase in recruiter productivity and decision-making?

Heidi Laki: I think the philosophy that we have had in building Talent Scout is that we want to think about hiring for anyone who does it today. Anyone who has spent time trying to fill a role in the last year knows that it's filled with lots of tedium, lots of inefficiency. When people think of AI, they frequently think that AI is going to take all the human judgment out of hiring. And that's not what we're seeking to do, but we are trying to think through where hiring is slow, and where we could make a meaningful difference in taking lots of tedious tasks off people's plates while applying some reasoning. Also, to enable recruiters to do the thing they want to do, which is spend time in rooms with candidates in human-to-human discussions.

That's been at the core of our philosophy on how we built this product. The way that we want to measure success is largely in the acceleration of hiring. Hiring today is super slow. It still takes 41 days to hire someone. We want to accelerate time to hire.

How do you prevent recruiters from over-relying on speed and skipping the crucial human element of candidate evaluation?

Heidi Laki: Exactly right. We firmly believe that human judgment is required. This is not an autopilot hiring people for you. You are still going to interview these people. You are still going to have discussions, and even at the outset, pre-screen, look at their resumes, and determine fit. And because we're not doing that full-scale automation, there will always be human judgment required and in the loop for these things. Part of that is because we want to make sure that you've got the right people in front of you and you're making the right assessment. Not just from bad hires being expensive, but also from having you calibrate in discussions with people on the right kind of person for this role. People are more than their resume, so we want to make sure that we're leaving room for those discussions and those assessments as well.

Watch the full interview on YouTube.

Employer Branding and AI

Indeed Connect promises to help employers stand out, source faster, and hire smarter. Which of these benefits do your current customers find most valuable and why?

John Fox: It comes down to the specific employer and what they're looking for. We've seen some employers really care about all of it, while some focus on specific areas. To share a few specific examples here for Indeed Apply Sync Jobs, which is the technology behind a lot of what we're doing with Indeed Connect. We see overall that those jobs, on average, take 13% fewer days to fill, so they do fill faster. And then from a branding perspective, if we think about what we've done with our friends over at Glassdoor, plus Indeed, from a branding side of things, we're seeing cost per apply starts on those jobs is about 49% lower. So that just speaks to the importance of an employer brand and the importance of being able to stand out.

Why did Indeed decide to add features like a full search engine results page takeover and competitor ad suppression?

John Fox: We've had employers ask us for these types of features for a long time. As we've been working closely with Glassdoor over the past couple of years, we've partnered on a bunch of new brand developments. One of the latest was Spotlight Pages, where you can highlight specific divisions within a company. We view these as our next iteration of specific brand capabilities. In addition to that, we know brand searches are just incredibly popular, but job seekers don't always know what the brands are that are hiring near them. This experience allows us to help those job seekers discover what are really more relevant options, perhaps when they may not know exactly who's hiring right next to them, as well.

Watch the full interview on YouTube.

Job Discovery and AI

How do you ensure that AI provides truly personalized and empathetic guidance for job seekers navigating career uncertainty?

David Lane: This is at the heart of what we're trying to do. AI enables a deeper understanding of the job seekers, and in some ways, it is the most empathetic thing that we can do on behalf of our job seekers. As an example, in a previous world of search and browse, we couldn’t understand the job seeker's trade-offs in terms of salary and location. If I were willing to take a higher pay but travel farther, we couldn't capture that. At the same time, if the most important thing to me was being close to home, regardless of pay, we couldn't capture that. So now you can have a conversation with our AI and explain your goal, saying, "The most important thing to me is I want to be close to home, and I just need a job that is going to work with my schedule." And then you can explain your schedule, and capturing that nuance of the job seeker intent is at the heart of what we're trying to do with Career Scout AI.

The Career Transition plan feature generates a plan with supporting resources like books. How are these resources selected, and what is Indeed's long-term vision for providing continuous learning and development through the platform?

David Lane: We are really excited about the Career Transition plan. Effectively, we take Indeed data and combine it with data from AI engines to inform this transition plan. This means we combine everything we know about a single job seeker, but also everything we know about all careers, all job seekers, all employers, in a general way, to identify a path. The AI helps us scale to every single career out there. And we're just getting started. We see this as a way for us to help our job seekers see us more than just a search engine, and help them with a deeper career coach over time. As for the resources that we're using out there, we have a variety of techniques where we pull in things like books, and other information from the web to inform that syllabus for how you change your career over time.

Watch the full interview on YouTube.

Thanks for reading — be sure to join the conversation on LinkedIn and let me know your thoughts on this topic!

Quote of the Week

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light."
​Aristotle