The problem with many online services is that they are so eager to provide every bell and whistle with their service, they forget to manage some of the simple basics. Perfect example is the online job and recruiting website Indeed.com. According to Wikipedia, Indeed.com was launched in 2004 and is owned by a Japanese company with billions of dollars in revenue. So, you would think that by now the software engineers and coders would have figure out some of the basics. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
A client of mine is looking to hire an accounting person. The CEO of that client ran an add on Indeed and put in my email address so that I can review and vet the applications. Sending these applications to me makes sense because I will be interviewing and hiring the successful candidate. Today when I opened my email account my inbox had about fifteen responses to the ad. Great! Everything seems to be working as it should….until.
I clicked on the first email. The screen showed me the person’s name, several fields to which I could respond, and the person’s resume. I was able to download the resume and print it out for further review. I then tried clicking on one of the options on the Indeed screen under the heading “Interested.” I clicked on the option identified by a question mark. That took me to the Indeed sign in screen. So, I signed in. Although it signed me into Indeed, it gave me an error message “Server error, please try again later.” It also did not take me the candidate’s resume, or to more resumes for the ad that I am looking at, it took me to an old ad I had placed for another client years ago.
I then clicked on the Help button and up came a screen “What do you need help with?” I typed in several search strings but none of them helped me figure out how to get to the job ad that I was working on, or to find the candidates who had applied for that job. But not a problem because at the bottom of the Help screen is a button that says, “Contact Us.” So, I clicked on that. I got three options: 1) Chat with us, 2) Send message and 3) Visit Help Center. I clicked on “Chat with us.” I submitted my chat request – great – 19 people ahead of me. As if I have nothing better to do, than wait for 19 other people to have their problems solved before they get to me. Noted also that no phone number was provided for support. Reminds me never to use online services that don’t have phone support.
Finally, after fifteen minutes I was able to get on with the chat person. I explained the problem. He didn’t have a clue why I was having a problem and suggested it was probably the browser I was using. However, to test if that was the case, I had to log out of Indeed, close the browser then change my default browser. And that is exactly what I did. The result? The same problem. I was never able to find the candidates who had sent resumes on Indeed, so all the fancy features that Indeed provides, I could not use.
My suggestions to Indeed is stop spending so much money on advertising and on developing bells and whistles and spend more money on providing customer support to the people using your service, including providing a phone number.