Indeed Announces Layoff of about 8% Workforce for Restructuring

Indeed Inc. is planning to layoff about 1,000 employees on Monday, or roughly 8% of its workforce. This is Indeed, the job-search website’s second layoff in two years as it seeks to simplify its business in a cooling labor market. The cuts come after Indeed slashed 2,200 positions last year in March a bid to trim costs amid slowing revenue. Hyams also took a reduction in base pay at that time.

(Image Credit: indeed)

Indeed CEO Chris Hyams announced the job cuts on May 13 in a letter to employees, a move driven in part by “a global slow-down in hiring,” the message said. The vast majority of the layoffs were in the U.S., Hyams said, largely within R&D and the go-to-market teams.

Indeed job cuts

The unit of Japan’s Recruit Holdings Co. is “significantly restructuring” the R&D team, reducing layers of management and eliminating most of the sales and customer support roles at its site in Foster City, Calif., Hyams said.

By contrast, the new reductions aim to reduce organizational bloat and speed decision making. The company will also pay out more in severance for “most employees” this time around, Hyams said.

Hyams said he would share more details about the cuts and Indeed’s organizational structure in a global town hall Tuesday. The reductions will not have any “measurably disproportionate impact on women and under-represented genders or the under-represented minority population in the US,” he said in the message. An undisclosed number of workers in the UK, Ireland and Australia will also be affected, Indeed said.

Why Indeed layoffs employees?

“While the global economy has improved in several areas over the past year, we are not yet set up for sustainable growth,” Hyams said. “Despite our efforts so far, our organization is still too complex,” he continued, indicating that the company is aiming to “simplify” areas of the business to make decision-making faster.

The last layoffs at Indeed worked as per Hyams, and Indeed is operating with stable profitability but now needs to “reignite growth.”

“We are not yet set up for sustainable growth,” Hyams said in the memo. “Our organization is still too complex, we still have significant duplication of effort and too many organizational layers that slow down decision-making.”

Pay per application failure

Notably, the company flubbed the roll-out of one of its more experimental payment schemes since the start of the pandemic. Pay per application, which would have allowed employers only to pay for accepted applications from approved candidates, ran into a number of roadblocks with clients when it was first rolled out in 2022.

After a year of re-explaining and re-clarifying the model, Indeed discontinued pay-per-application entirely in December 2023. Indeed indicated at the time it would focus on the potential of AI tools for recruiters and job seekers moving forward.

Indeed layoff impact

Samantha LaBonne, a senior client success specialist at Indeed, said in a LinkedIn post that she just returned from parental leave “to be welcomed with a round of layoffs. ”While she wasn’t impacted, “it’s a sad day to come back to work,” she said.

“It appears that my tenure at Indeed has come to an end with today’s round of layoffs,” said Andrew Stalick, a senior user-experience designer at Indeed, in a LinkedIn post. “I’ll spend a moment to take a breath, then I’m right back on the job hunt.”

Global layoffs

U.S. employers last month dialed back hiring while the unemployment rate unexpectedly rose, signs that the labor market may be cooling. Indeed’s move also echoes drives by Meta Platforms Inc. and other companies to become less top heavy.

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