Indeed CEO says employers are the bottleneck in a flooded job market

Indeed chief executive Hisayuki Idekoba is putting the hiring bottleneck on employers, not candidate supply. Just 4% of American job changers with at least a high school diploma moved into their new role last year because a recruiter contacted them, he said, citing the company's data. The other 96% applied on their own, often dozens of times, often without an answer.

Idekoba gave the figure in an interview with Business Insider as part of a broader complaint about the market his company serves. He called the current state of hiring a vicious cycle: job seekers send resumes into silence, employers complain about unresponsive candidates and surging volumes, and AI sits on both ends of the transaction.

That is an unusual place to assign blame for the head of a jobs platform whose customers are employers. "You got 1,000 applications, and you think all 1,000 people are not qualified?" he said. "Something's wrong."

The arithmetic underneath that complaint is not in dispute. Greenhouse, which makes applicant-tracking software, analyzed roughly 640 million applications submitted to more than 6,000 companies between 2022 and 2025 and found applications per job more than doubled while the average number of recruiters per organization fell 56%. Greenhouse chief executive Daniel Chait has put the application increase at 111% over that period. Volume roughly doubled and the humans assigned to read it were cut by more than half.

What filled the gap was software, and then software on the other side answering it. "We've called that the AI doom loop," Chait told Fortune. "Everyone's using their own AI to solve their own problem, but it's making the whole system worse."

Indeed has been on both sides of that loop within the same quarter. In July it began a limited U.S. test of Apply For Me, a tool that could automatically submit applications on a job seeker's behalf. About a month later it paused the feature after receiving feedback, saying it would instead focus on having users review drafted applications before hitting submit, according to Business Insider. The company that makes applying frictionless built the most frictionless version yet, then stepped back from it.

Idekoba's stated fix is matching rather than volume: steering job seekers toward roles where they have a realistic shot, and pointing employers at applicants who are serious and relevant. He offered the example of a restaurant worker applying for a $200,000 engineering job instead of a restaurant-management position.

The verification work is more concrete. Indeed said it verifies employers before new postings appear, a process that can include checking a work email tied to the employer and running a third-party identity check, and that it limits how long employers can post roles free, which can require an additional step to keep a listing live. Job seekers are verified by phone among other measures, and the company is testing a feature with select employers that lets candidates display independently verified professional licenses. Fortune noted that scams involving fake candidates, including North Korean IT workers, have made it harder for companies to tell legitimate applicants from fraudulent ones.

Verification establishes who is applying. It does not fix what happens next. Jalonni Weaver, an in-house recruiter at a life insurance firm near Dallas, told Business Insider that in prior roles, applicant spikes meant there was not always time to read each resume, and that such buildups push employers toward automated screening that looks for a narrow set of keywords and misses transferable experience. "We're not hiring for perfection," she said. "We're hiring for that real human, and we're hiring for your experience."

Indeed's own talent strategy staff have made a version of the same argument publicly. At the company's FutureWorks conference in Phoenix, senior talent strategy advisor Kyle M.K. told Allwork.Space that the qualified people are usually already in the pile. "Most candidates can be found in the applications that employers are receiving, but because they're so overwhelmed, it's difficult to find that needle in a haystack," he said. He pointed to generic job requirements, the kind that ask for great written and verbal communication skills, as a driver of application flood, since nearly every applicant can read themselves into them, and said employers reaching for AI-detection tools may be looking for somewhere to place blame when the real question is whether a candidate has the skills at all.

The screening problem is landing in a market with little movement in it. Overall postings on Indeed were 1.8% above their pre-pandemic level in mid-August, though software development postings remain below it. Entry-level postings were down 7.5% and hiring had fallen to levels last seen around 2014, according to Indeed data cited by Allwork.Space from the conference, a low-hire, low-fire pattern in which incumbents stay put and newcomers find fewer doors.

That draws a sharper line than Apply For Me did. Kyle M.K. said AI can reasonably take scheduling, initial matching and some initial screening, but the offer decision should stay human, and added that he has not seen evidence that AI interviews identify stronger candidates than human ones, particularly where personality and team fit are at issue.