We Fixed It, You're Welcome - Indeed's Dilemma: Adapt or Fade

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

In this episode of "We Fixed It, You're Welcome," the hosts tackle the challenges facing Indeed and the broader job board industry. Joined by Katie Walter, CEO of the Fractional Conference, they explore the rise of fractional work and its impact on traditional hiring practices. The discussion covers the shortcomings of current job board algorithms, the growing distrust in online job postings, and the shift towards more curated, relationship-based hiring methods. The team proposes solutions for Indeed to regain relevance, including better curation of job listings, embracing the fractional workforce trend, and potentially rebranding to rebuild trust. The episode highlights the changing dynamics of the job market and the need for more personalized, meaningful connections between employers and job seekers. https://fractionalconference.com/ A quick disclaimer. We are going into this somewhat cold and nothing we say should be construed as legal advice, financial advice or anything that would get us in trouble. These are our views and opinions. We're here to ask the kinds of questions everyone's thinking. Have an engaging conversation and maybe come to some conclusions that we feel are worth exploring. By the end, if we fixed it, you're welcome. All trademarks, IP and brand elements discussed are property of their respective owners. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's something else here now. Something new. From. Exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls scary as hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi Vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules.

Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. All right, here's how this works. In each episode, we pick a company we all know that has something going on right now. Then we put ourselves in charge and see if we can fix it. You'll be hearing from Melissa and Operations, Chino on people in culture, and me on marketing. My name's Aaron. As always, a quick disclaimer, we are going into this somewhat cold and nothing we say should be construed as legal advice, financial advice, or anything that would get us in trouble. These are

our views and opinions. We're here to ask the kinds of questions everyone's thinking, have an engaging conversation and maybe come to some conclusions that we feel are worth exploring. By the end, if we fixed it, you're welcome. All trademarks, IP, and brand elements discussed are property of their respective owners. Welcome back to We Fix It You're Welcome, where your fearless fixers keep fixing the unfixable. It's hard to become a fearless fixer. You can be born into it if you're a Nepo baby, or if you work hard enough like us, you get that call you've only dreamed of, but you can't just look on a job board for it. However, if you're looking for one of over 25 million other jobs worldwide, you can. Today, we're going to turn our attention to one of those to see whether

it's out of step with the times. And we're not going to do it alone. We put up a help wanted sign of our own. And today we're joined by Katie Walter, CEO of the fractional conference, otherwise known as frack. Tell our listeners a little about yourself, Katie. Hi, thanks, Erin. Katie Walter, I'm a fractional chief marketing officer. And as Aaron said, the CEO of the fractional conference, we provide, we produce an annual conference for fractional leaders. Those are the people who work, in full permanent leadership seat in a small business, but do it at a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost. All functional areas. And as you guys all know, I'm sure your audience is familiar. But we bring this community together every year to remember what it feels like to have

a room full of people who want your success as bad as you do. Oh, thanks so much, Katie. Very relevant to today's conversation. And we're so glad to have you here with us. We hope you're up for the challenge. I think you are. Melissa, which company are we here to talk about today? Well, we're here to speak about indeed the digital help wanted sign on the internet. Once the holy grail of job hunting, now just another black hole where resumes go to die. Or it feels like that. Companies post, applicants apply. And then it's the crickets, the ghosting, or just don't know where anything goes.

So meanwhile, a quiet revolution is happening, which is why we're really excited to have Katie here to talk about the fractional movement. Why commit to one full-time employee when you can hire elite talent and very high level of expertise exactly when you need them and for what you need? This week we're exposing why job boards like Indeed are becoming somewhat irrelevant, how companies are ditching traditional hiring and why fractional isn't just a buzzword. It's the future. So buckle up. We're fixing the broken job market.

You're welcome. A brief history about Indeed before we jump in. And Katie, just for your information, we always like to try to focus on. one company and so really when we're talking about Indeed, we're also talking about the entire marketplace. But Indeed's rise and then fall launched in 2004, Indeed was the disruptor, aggregating every job listing into one search bar, which made it very easy for applicants. Fast forward 20 years, AI filters out about 75% of applicants before a human even glances at them. Companies are drowning in unqualified spam and top talent avoid.

the algorithms altogether. The result, a system where everyone loses, really. And then the fractional movement was born from the gig economy plus remote work boom. Fractional hires are like the Netflix for talent. Pay for what you need, no long-term commitment, need a CMO for 10 hours a week, a Python developer for a project. It's done. Companies save costs.

Workers ditch the 9 to 5 prime. and suddenly job boards look very 2010. And why this matters now is job boards seem to be broken. I think all of us know, and I know Chino, you'll talk to this as well, but it really feels like in this marketplace today, there's a lot of dissatisfaction among people that are applying, as well as companies that are trying to hire qualified top talent. So the algorithms favor keywords over competence,

and you're seeing a lot of biases that are, even actually coming through. Companies want agility and they also want to keep expenses down. So why hire a full-time salary when you can get specialized help, especially for what you need at that moment? And then today's workers want freedom. Fractional equals multiple income streams, no office politics. You don't have to deal with possibly all of the work travel, etc., etc. So is networking the better way to get a job versus indeed and what they've done? how are they going to shift that power? And then let's talk about the fractional movement and the competition and is fractional better than a full-time FTE. So maybe just maybe we're going to be

able to solve that resume and a job market black hole. So what do you think? Who wants to start? I'll just say indeed, if you look at the numbers, it's got 225 to 300 million resumes on there. So aggregate over time, it's, you know, when you say a black hole, that's, you know, that's a lot of people, you know, hoping to get connected to the right place, well, well outnumbering the number of jobs that are on there, which is pretty impressive. But yeah, it seems like it's a, you know, there's something broken systematically, especially when you look at Indeed and then you look at Monster, which is a different company, different holding company behind it or parent company. They look the same. So there's there, if there's some kind of struggle happening and

and I really want to get into it and see what, see what it is. Yeah. Well, and I think, oh, Yeah, I feel like I'm in a very unique position to talk about this because as, you know, with my company like Cappuccino, we do recruitment as well as fractional support for multiple agencies. So it's sitting right in between this. And I've been in the recruitment space for almost over 15 years at this point. And what I will say is we've actually made the decision as a company to stop posting our roles. The reason being is because indeed we'll scrape a job post or a LinkedIn post and put it onto their boards. And the problem with that is I get inundated. Our team gets inundated with people who are unqualified. And so, you know, at a time when, you know, you're already

getting 200 plus applicants, 500 more that are not, you know, qualified is not great. And actually our team is spending more time saying no and sifting through these because I'm a big believer in human first recruit man of like we need to see eyes on this because you know AI specifically there have been many instances where some great candidates get kind of taken out of the mix so we literally have to go back and look at them and it's almost impossible with the volume once a site like indeed picks it up so we've made this decision we're only doing our reach out via sourcing, we don't post anywhere anymore, and we've been testing this out for the last unit's being most successful for us when it comes to our team's time, candidates time,

and expectations. So it's really, really interesting. Yeah, what I was going to comment on there, and I think this is really key, especially in today's marketplace, when you have, Aaron, you mentioned Monster, Indeed, LinkedIn, these arenas where these job postings just, there's just massive amount of postings. It really doesn't feel like they're real. And there has, the Wall Street Journal reported that 40% of listings may be fraudulent. They didn't, you know, they didn't totally back that up. But designed because Indeed and others want to harvest the data and, you know, really kind of go through all of these applications. I find that interesting, too, because I feel like, especially in whatever space you have expertise in, and I love to hear your

perspective on this as well, Katie. But I feel like people are going to more boutiquey type of job boards, right? So like if, you know, for example, I like to do fractional work now. And so I'm going to fractional boards versus going to an indeed. And I'm reaching out and networking with people like Katie and others that are in my specific space. So whether that be, whether it's fintech, it's, you know, insurance, it's, you know, entertainment industry. You know, there's very specific types of places where you can network and try to understand what openings are really there. And then I am finding this, that this is very interesting. I just had a conversation with a past employee. Very, you know, she was one of our, you know, star employees. And either you're overqualified so that you don't even, which, you know, if I'm applying for that job,

you should let me decide whether I'm overqualified or not in terms of like, you know, it's lower pay range, whatever, whatever, whatever it might be. Or the requirements seem totally out of whack, right? Like for a CSR role, they're saying like you need to have like eight years of experience and a college degree. And it's like, okay, wait, when did that happen? And so I feel like it really disqualifies a lot of really great people. And I know that people are super frustrated by the marketplace today. And it's an interesting thing that I feel like there's so much more fractional talent, Katie,

because people like myself who have years, decades of experience are finding that they can't even get a role that's at maybe a director's level when they've been at senior VP. C-suite levels and they're like being told, well, you're overqualified and I'm like, well, I'm more than willing to do the work. So what are your thoughts on? Yeah. I mean, once you start saying decades of experience, you're into the ageism category, which is what prompts a lot of Gen Xers into the fractional work. And I'm seeing a lot of colleagues and peers, like, I just, I can't get a call back and and I can't get these roles. And their experience of it tells them it's because of their age and the obviousness of their age.

And companies will have to answer for that at some point. But at another level, like, I'm just going to take control of my career. Like, I, in addition to being too old to be chosen for these roles for whatever reason, I am done with the bullshit of all of this. Like, this is just the entry point of being treated poorly. in a corporate setting. And if I can't even get seen, do I want to be there? And so there's a lot of of that sort of personal awakening around how they want to spend their time and how they want to spend their energy. And the first experience you have it as an employee is the hiring process.

Right. And so the kind of consensus I'll hear from people who do have that 20 to 30 years of experience is this is not worth it to me to build a career in a place that treats people like that. And big companies especially, like, they're set up to sometimes not be a great experience. Yeah. Well, even in the process of getting those jobs, I mean, let's rewind, you know, back to when when companies would have a help wanted sign in the window. And then it became an ad in the daily paper, you know, and then it became these job boards and the recruiting process and all those things. And you get, and you might find a company you like and see a posting and then find out it's an indeed posting. You know, and then, you know, like you're saying,

you get lumped in with all the other candidates and get maybe get weeded out by AI or by decades of experience. And you get further and further removed from the company itself. And I found as a, you know, I've been a fractional CMO chief creative officer, you kind of walk in the back door and say, you know, something else is going on in your company. Let's all for it. now you can put up that traditional post, but I think, you know, you have that flexibility and nimbleness of being a fractional and saying, use me now, you know. Well, and here's the thing, Aaron, when companies are saying, I've got this problem, and so I think my solution is a chief marketing officer or a marketing VP or let's hire

a head of HR. They don't know necessarily if that's their first hire into that seat. They don't know what they need in that seat. They really don't. From the client perspective, the great advantage bringing in a fractional in that scenario is you can meet a few and find one that you like and trust because everyone wants to work with people they know like and trust. And because that person is aiming to work themselves out of a job, their job is to help you figure out what kind of full-time hire you might need. Yep. Right.

Well, and even some of those mid-level director position. that are actual posts that go out into the world, they're impossible. You know, the amount of different wildly incompatible skill sets you need for what's being posted as a legitimate job, no one has them. And if they do, it's thankless. That's the work of six people. So to your point, Katie, getting a fractional in there that can tell you before you hire, here's what you need and let's line you up for it.

And here's what I can take on. That does companies a favor. And depending on the size of a company, they might. They only need 10 hours of a high-level executive strategist. The rest of that work should be done in a different rate by a different person. Yeah, I actually want to jump in here, too, because I want to decouple a few things, right? I am uniquely qualified to talk about this because I train on bias in the workplace. I've been embedded into recruitment.

I also work fractional, so I think it's really interesting. And so I want to start by talking about ageism a little bit in bias and hiring, right? And what's interesting is, is, you know, I think we're talking about people who have decades of experience. It's happening a lot more frequently for people who have even 10 years of experience, 15 years of experience, or quite junior. Ageism is kind of hitting it at both ends. And I think part of that is because right now we are in an employee focus market, right? Five years ago, you know, 2020, you know, 2022, it was a candidate's market. companies were begging people sending, you know, signing bonuses to just have someone on paying

30K more than what the salary was, right? Over hiring. And then, you know, you saw an overcorrection of that. And that's what's been going on in the market right now. And so it's no longer just, oh, yeah, I have 20 years of experience and I can't apply for this director role. It's also, hey, I'm trying to go into this direct role and they won't look at it. You know, there's always the hunt for what so many companies call you.

And as a recruiter and as someone who specializes in the space, the reality is there's no such thing as fucking unicorn. I'm going to say that because you're looking for somebody that might not exist. And you know what the best type of person is? The one that is there now. And so what you've seen in the last three years is this influx in the fractional movement, right? Not just for people who have decades of experience.

again myself, I have worked fractionally for other people. I have seen others where they say, okay, I'm going to actually do the freelance thing instead. To your point, Katie, everyone's sick of it. I'm sick of being in, you know, stuck somewhere where, you know, I'm either pigeonholed or I'm doing the work of six people and not getting paid for it. And so what people have come to realize is fractional is actually a really great opportunity for those who might be disillusion, but also because, the fact that there's such great talent on the street. What are you going to do? Are you going to wait for,

you know, indeed to pick up your resume out of a thousand people to take this job that you probably don't really want to do? Or do you go out there and lean on your network and find work that is meaningful to you? And I think there's a piece of that that is there as well, where it's not just about ageism, which is a piece of that. I'm not saying there's not. But it's just, the current state of the talent market. People are tired and they want to find work that actually is impactful, makes money, and makes sense for them. Yeah. And I'd love to ask you to kind of focus on Indeed for to get back to Indeed and the job words, Chino, because you brought this up a couple times. And so I really think that what is the fix for like Indeed with this deluge of

mismatched applicants, you know, from an operations and CX point of view? I would say This is just must be a huge time burn for HR and recruiting teams, the talent acquisition teams, wasting hours and hours manually if they are sifting through some. And then also missing some if they're using an AI agent to do that for them. And then the cost that this is their reputation, they're not actually filling these roles. So now people are really not looking at indeed as they once did as, you know, an aggregator for them, for them to be able to kind of, you know, kind of view the landscape and they're going to more of these niche boards or they're going into networking. So what do you think Indeed needs to do in order to kind of get back on track if they want to stay in this space?

Great question, Alyssa. And it kind of touches Aaron's end your point to, Katie, around kind of this aggregate, you know, where some jobs are real. Some of them are not. The problem right now is Indeed's algorithm. is 10 years behind, right? 10 years ago, when a company posted a role, it was likely real or, you know, you took it down and it was there.

Right now what Indeed is doing is aggregating. So if I posted something from two months ago, and again, I'm a recruiter, I had somebody reached out to me for a role I posted like nine months ago. And I was like, what? Right? And I had a conversation with them. They were not qualified for the role.

But I was like, you know, I asked them, where did you see this? How did you come across this? And it was indeed. So they're scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to actual job post. So what does that do for the company? Horrible brand recognition, employer brand recognition for the candidate. Horrible experience because you're putting time into applying into a role that isn't even real.

And so on both ends, it just builds this mistrust. where then for me as the recruiter who's actually going through it and finding someone to, you know, trying to find candidates, it's almost impossible because now I have a thousand people in this one role that may or may not actually exist and they're usually not qualified. And if they are, I still need to see who they've rejected because their AI is letting people go that could be great. And so again, I really refer back to the human first recruiting. We need to get back to where we were. were 15, 20 years ago when you had the job board, it was real. There is an epidemic where it comes to people trying to, like, mine data or, you know, they're not actively ready to hire, but they put the job post up. And it is a recruitment strategy for some companies.

The challenges is when indeed pulls those job boards for a candidate, you're like, what the hell? Why can't I get it? Well, you know, they were not actively actually really hiring for this right now. you're putting something out there. So what I think indeed needs to do is go back into their, you know, systems, developers, work with on figuring out how to look at real live jobs. So whether that means turning to, you know, fractional boards or whatever boards where there's a little bit more curation there.

I think that would be a huge difference versus just pulling anything. Like I, one time I posted, hey, I need someone to help a friend with sale. And they, it was on indeed. And I was like, what? This is not, it was a two minute. Like, you know, this was not it. And so that is the problem. And it just is horrible for everybody involved.

And I think part of the problem also, Chena, and I agree with everything you're saying, is that the shift to the fractional mindset in the workplace and the just the sheer number of highly qualified people that are available for fractional work and want to work fractionally, they indeed, they're, like you said, there's a lot of ghost jobs on there that maybe aged out or never really existed. But I'd argue also, in a different way, a lot of fractional jobs don't exist. There's plenty of boards out there and plenty of, you know, email list serves and all that stuff. But a lot of being a fractional is right place, right time and patience. So how does something like an Indeed, Katie, I want to know, like,

how could they serve the fractional community in a better way? I think Gino's line, word of curation was really important. And for any sort of posting service, and for fractional in particular, this is a, like, fractional is a relationship business. And I said it before, companies are no different than other people. They want to work with people they know, like, and trust. And if you're a business owner who wants to explore fractional, you go to your EOS implementer, or you go to your Vistage group and you say, does anyone know someone who does this? And I think that that happens in regular job searches, but it doesn't happen as much.

Like, right? Like, that's not the primary source of candidates, but in fractional, it's 90% of it. And I've tried doing the fractional job boards myself. Like, I'll go fishing out there and even things that I'm uniquely suited for. Like, I spent 16 years in legal tech. I applied for a fractional job. And there aren't that many of us who have, who are specialists in legal tech. And I applied for one on a job board and heard nothing.

Like, that's like unicorn as you can get for that role. And so like that was a dissident. Like I'm never going back to that job board again. Yeah. But. A reputational thing. Like, Katie, you've talked a lot about trusting and having that ability to have kind of that connection with who you might bring in, especially because usually fractional

executives aren't cheap either, right? there's a reason for that. But I do think that's one of the things that indeed is lacking. And so when we're talking about the curation of the process and how they can evolve, you know, and create like niche types of boards or whatever they want to do, I think they're going to have to go out there and really like scrape out all these ghost listings, right? Because I think one of the other things that they could do is to try to gain some, trust and respect from others is actually have true testimonials of people who actually got a job

through indeed because like I don't think that's happening right you know when you're seeing this like kind of 40% of listings are fraudulent this is like a fake job economy like what the heck is that all about right and then to your point you know like I've looked at like for me like chief customer officer roles or different kinds of things on different job boards too and it's interesting that every single job description looks exactly the same, right? Like has the exact same words. And then, you know, within, like I applied to one just, it was just, you know, based doing a little research on this, this episode.

I, you know, and within less than 10 minutes, I got the AI response that, oh, you don't qualify. And I, like, purposely went in and recurated my resume to match their job description exactly with examples. So to me, I was like. really? You're, you know, that's, you know, you know, and I got the rejection, auto reject, you know, right away. So I really feel like Indeed has an opportunity to do a lot. And part of it is repair their damage reputation because at this point, it's a joke. And it's not, you know, and we've got this marketplace of people that really want to work. Yes, they want to work, you know, in the way they want to work, they want to do something that feels meaningful, that they feel valued at, that they get paid for that, you know, they have some work-life balance. But I do feel like that's available. It's just that right now, you know, where do you go? It's, you know, who you know. And it's making

connections. And somehow if Indeed could actually kind of get into that like relationship connection, networking kind of business and make it feel more like that, you know, and even maybe hosting Indeed pop-ups, right with you know like you know the career fairs that used to happen all the time like i remember career fairs and having like a sandwich board outside of our our office right and saying we're having a career fair tomorrow with free drinks and and and hors d and like bring your resume and having you know asking our leadership team to be ready to interview and we would do it for three hours right you know you know that indeed needs to do that under a different brand because you just said Their brand is a joke.

Yeah. And so if they have the technology and the infrastructure and the back end to, you know, to build from to deliver what you just described, I think they need to pick a different name and, and sort of like reinvent under something else because I don't know that it's, they can come back from where they're at. Yeah. Well, Katie, what, Katie, what's the pulse of the fractional community?

Because, you know, when you get together with the fractional conference, you know, some people are fractionals because they want to. They like the flexibility. They like the, you know, the, the challenge of it. And some have become fractionals or are new to fractional as a response to the job market and to experiences like yours and experiences like applying, like Melissa's saying, applying to things on Indeed to see what it's like, getting the auto rejection. You know, of course you're going to look for a different approach to what your workday looks like.

What happens at the conference? What are people, you know, what's the mood in the room? The mean in the room is joyful. and liberated, I would say. And I say that, so I worked corporate, I developed and produced corporate events and conferences in my full-time job and like giant sales meetings. And I always left those feeling like the best thing I can feel here is relieved

that nothing went wrong. And most of our attendees were sort of like mixed on whether they even wanted to be there. And you go to the conference and everyone's just happy to be there. They chose to pay for it themselves. They're so happy to be with other people who are doing what they're doing and climbing the same mountain. They're climbing. And they're hungry to learn about how, they're hungry to learn about how to grow their business or stabilize or operationalize it. And they're really excited to help other people do the same thing.

And so, and the number one question we get from attendees is, how do I get business? How do I price business? How do I keep it? How do I convert it? How do I network if I'm not just asking for a job? Like all of these things that, you know, indeed probably wanted to solve for the full-time worker of like, step right up. Here's a job.

When you start your solepreneur career, you have to figure out a whole new model for feeding your family. And one of the things I really loved when I started working for myself was that I was in a position to eat what I kill. And I never, you know, as a corporate and not in sales, I never had variable income before. And I really thrived on the idea that like, if I'm in a meeting, someone wants to pay me to be in this meeting. There's no one is wasting my time because they have to pay for it. And so I think some of those sort of liberated look at what I'm capable of doing. I do this work. I get this paycheck is a driver for people of motivation and focus and streamlining that that you just don't get when you're going to get a full-time job.

There are plenty of people who don't want to go fractional. And I like, I live in a bubble of the people who come talk to me are the ones who are curious about going fractional. But I was at a breakfast for a women's group last week. And there were two, there were three women at my table who were all in transition and none of them wanted anything to do with going fractional. They were looking for senior level roles. They're like, I'll wait. I'll wait it out. I've been looking for a year.

I want a full-time job. And they've got their reasons for that too. So I just want to like speak that out into the room too that we are. if you're listening to this thinking, oh, that's not me. Like, there's plenty of people who are not looking for this. But the ones who are, have identified this need to have more ownership over their day or ownership over their revenue and where their money is coming from. And they come to the conference because they get a room full of people who want that same thing.

I think you brought up a really important component of the market in just in total. And this is something that I share within my network and the people I'm trying to support as they're all, you know, on the search or, you know, unhappy in their current roles is the why. Like, why are you working and what brings you joy? And like, you know, how do you end up in a room like you, Katie, you know, when you're filled with joy? And I think, Chino, you brought this up, you know, where you feel connected to the value you're bringing and that you're being compensated in an act, you know, in a way that is really, really aligned with your values and what you're doing. what you're bringing to the table. And so I love what you're sharing because I do think that ultimately that's something that is not there when you are kind of like going through all of these massive job boards and things like that. And I think that's when you look at fractional versus other,

it's more of that curated path, right? Because you've already made those decisions. And like you've said, it's not for everybody. But neither is every single job out there. Not, you know, like, you know, like, you know, I don't think I would be, well, I always think I would be great Aaron at advertising and marketing and branding because I'm a customer. Yeah. I feel like we're aligned in the sense that like when you talk about customer experience and you talk about marketing, everybody's a customer or a consumer. So they all think they can do our jobs really easily.

I don't pretend like I could do that. But I do feel like that is deep down, that really kind of touch. me, Katie, in the sense that, like, that is really what's missing is that connection to the why and really what's driving you. And then, you know, how do you kind of bring that to, you know, job descriptions and to job requisitions, right? And then, you know, you're talking about, like, you know, we don't even do that anymore because we know that what we want is we want this type of candidate so we go out in search of, right? Or we go and we look at, you know, what makes the best employee within a company, how do we replicate, you know, Chino over and over if that's what

they want, right? You know, that kind of thing. And I think it's, I think that's one of the things that people want today is they want to be more than just a number. They don't want to be applicant 1,000, right? They want to be a contributor. So I want to like tile. of this into kind of your earlier question, Katie, about like, you know, how can indeed make this better? Why people lean on fractional versus not and what you've just shared, Melissa. So I have a few things to say. So for Indeed to be successful is exactly what you've just shared, Melissa is capitalizing on that experience. Right now, it's random. It's not valid. You have about 60% I will be honest, 60% and more less so than having been on Indeed for 15 plus years,

those jobs are not real. And so in terms of their brand, people don't trust them anymore. And I think the way to kind of turn that around is having a connector, having, I don't know, whether it's a recruiter or somebody who actually seeks out jobs and is speaking to those companies and saying, okay, what are the, like, is this real or not, essentially? You know, what are, what do you need? What are the locations you're working on? What are, what do you need?

And I think if they can bring a team to do that so that it can overcorrect on all of the misses that they have as jobs will be huge. Because then immediately, if the jobs are real and you're applying to them, great. That's an immediate impact, right? So there's that from an indeed perspective. But for those who are looking to fraction, I think again, Katie, like with. this kind of boom and fractional and kind of the organization and what you lead, there is a want for that. And I do think indeed could capitalize on that as well. But again, they would need to find the cadies of the world to say, hey, what opportunities do you know of? Because the reality is with

fractional, you know, you could be the perfect unicorn. The difference between a full time and fractional role is relationship. Fractional, you need to have some type of referral. I've never not seen any type of fractional work done where it was completely cold, you know, it's a complete job post or, you know, candidate application. It's almost always someone that somebody knows who has worked with. And so it's a totally different game from that. I can, I understand exactly why, you know, those type of events in the fractional world are really important because it's who you know. It's who's recommending Melissa or Aaron or Katie for this one or Or Chino. you know, for your HR needs, which people have done.

Almost all of my fractional business, not almost all of it, has come through a referral. And so if Indeed can tap in on that and work with someone to that, that can be huge for fractional support. But I think for the number one question I get asked almost every day by candidates is, how do I get seen? How do I apply? You know, there's a thousand roles. And I think if you're moving the fractional route, if you're going into the fractional. root, lean on your networks. If you're applying for a job, make sure it's real. Go onto the company's website. Indeed is not the place anymore. I'm so sorry. It's aggregates. Go on the company website,

talk to someone and see Fitzweil, and that's a better way to do it versus, you know, applying blankly because you're always, almost always going to get a blank AI rejection. And it's deflating to be fake. We're getting our wrap up. So what I'm hearing is if you're a candidate, looking for a traditional FTE with stability, avoid the vacuum suck of the machine, the way it stands right now. Indeed is not the place for you. Katie, I like what you said about the boutiquey kind of curation. Maybe they do need to rebrand under another name.

The same way Kellogg's, if they come up with a keto-friendly cereal, they come up with a new consumer brand and a sub-brand. It's for the market. Maybe Indeed can do that and put us a quiet little buy indeed underneath until they earn back their name and reputation, but you've got a fractional community of 5,000 or so. That would be a good starting point to say, can we do something that appeals to this specialized workforce that, that again has the years, decades of experience and they can plug in anywhere. They just want to be put to work.

How do we keep from letting that kind of community down? So Katie, do you think we, we'll start with you, do that we fixed it and gave indeed enough of a roadmap to stick around and modernize and become relevant? Yes, they can totally uproot and upset their entire business model and go boutique and small and use their infrastructure on the back end. Chino, does that align with you? Would you consider them more relevant if they did that? Yeah, I think with Indeed, if you can cut out all the BS and actually have real jobs that real people can apply to with real qualifications and all of that, You're going to be fine. You were great before and that's why we turned to you. Right now you're doing a horrible job for both employees and candidates who are looking to find talent in this vacuum. It's never going to work if you don't curate the roles that you're posting so that both sides can actually find great talent. And so if they're not able to curate that, I'm sorry indeed. Again, my own business like Cappuccino, we've stopped posting. because I don't want you to scrape my jobs and post and for someone somewhere else and to have

this bad reputation about me, my company are the clients that I represent. So until they can fix that, it's done. But I love Katie's idea of let's maybe rebrand and find ways to curate, find ways to connect with the fractional community to move forward and to rebuild that trust under a different name. I like that a lot. Melissa, you brought us the company. What do they do? I don't know that we fixed it.

I think we pull back the covers for them. And so I do think we have a lot of great ideas in order for them to get back on track. And I'm with Chino and also with Katie, that they're irrelevant now. And if they don't do this, they're just going to go away. I think the aggregator role that they played at the beginning many, many years ago, decades, was important then. But what they really need to be doing is what Chino mentioned is connect. It's really the connection. So connecting real job openings, real companies with real candidates. And I think if they can do that, they can rebuild that reputation. They can actually kind of transform like a butterfly into something that's really going to be much more impactful and bring value to this community. There's so many people out there in all different levels and all different ways looking forward to that. And I just want to thank Katie for joining.

us today. It's been really exciting to have somebody with her expertise and the joy she brings to the fractional world. And I think that's another conversation that like, I don't know if I want Indeed on the fractional side. I don't know if that's the niche part that I want them starting with. I think they really should start, you know, maybe in tech, like I know there's already competition in tech, but like maybe in some of these service roles and, you know, all of those kinds of things where I think that they've kind of had their bread and butter for a long time. Okay. Well, indeed, we walked you up to the line, but we can only take it so far.

It's up to you to actually implement our fixes, if you would like. Katie, it has been a pleasure. Thanks again for joining us and tell everyone where they can find you. You can find out more about the conference at fractionalconference.com. And I am Katie Walter on LinkedIn. Very good. Thanks so much. That just about wraps up another episode of We Fixed.

that you're welcome, whether you're employed, fractional, self-employed, a gig worker, retired, or between adventures. We hope you enjoyed this episode and our guest, Katie Walter. Keep reaching for that next run on the ladder, and we will see you next time. This podcast is produced by Straightforward Media Group, All Rights Reserved. If you'd like to learn more about how a podcast can help your company establish authority and generate leads, please email us at Eric at straightforwardmg.com, or go to straightforwardmg.com for more information.