Indeed wants $125 a day. Here's what that actually buys you.

Chris Lawson

2d • 📣General discussion📣

A shop owner just got a $125/day sponsorship recommendation from Indeed. That's $3,750 a month.

Here's what that money is actually doing — and why the conversation Indeed wants you having is the wrong one.

Three things to take away:

The number isn't a fee. It's a bid in an auction against your panicked neighbors.
You're paying premium prices to fish in a puddle while the ocean is ten feet away.
Indeed is the world's best applicant tracking system. It's not a recruiter. Most owners are paying for the wrong job.

The right question isn't "how much should I bid?" It's "where do my techs actually live?"

Read time 4 minutes. Short on time? Listen to or watch the video explainer below.

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A shop owner forwarded me an email from Indeed.

Subject line: Increase your sponsorship to stay competitive.

The recommendation? $125 a day. That's $3,750 a month.

To do what, exactly?

If you read that and your stomach tightened, you're not alone. More of these quotes are landing in shop owners' inboxes every week. The numbers are climbing. The applications aren't.

THAT $125 ISN'T A FEE. IT'S A BID.

You're not paying Indeed to find you a tech. You're paying to outbid every other shop in your zip code.

All of you fighting over the same small group of techs who are on the platform actively looking for work.

It's an auction. The price goes up because more shops are bidding, not because more techs are arriving. When Indeed quotes you $125, that number is a thermometer for how panicked the other shops in your market are.

That number going up isn't good news about the platform. It's bad news about your market.

YOU'RE FISHING IN A PUDDLE

A small slice of working technicians are on Indeed. Some are out of work. Some are job-hopping. Some are actively looking. That slice is who Indeed shows your ad to.

Everyone else — the employed techs, the satisfied techs, the ones who haven't updated a resume in six years — they're never going to see your ad. They're not on Indeed. They're on their phones scrolling Facebook between brake jobs.

That's the ocean. Indeed is selling you premium-priced access to the puddle, in a fight with every other shop trying to fish the same water.

Ten feet away, the ocean is full of the techs you actually want. And they have no idea you exist.

INDEED IS A MAILBOX...NOT A RECRUITER

Most shop owners get this wrong, and it's because Indeed has spent a fortune making the confusion easy to fall into.

Indeed is the best applicant tracking system on the planet. The biggest resume database. The easiest mobile apply experience. If a tech wants to send you a resume from his phone in 90 seconds, Indeed makes that effortless. That part is real. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

But receiving applications and finding the right candidate are two completely different jobs.

Indeed is great at the first one. Mediocre at the second. And most shop owners are paying recruiter prices for mailbox service.

A while back, our clients were getting a wave of unqualified applications and I wanted to know why.

So I went in and applied to one of their tech jobs myself, just to see what Indeed's AI matching was doing under the hood.

I finished the application, hit submit, and the platform popped up its "you might also be interested in" suggestions.

One was for a general manager at a dispensary. One was for a call center supervisor.

I'd just applied to an automotive technician job.

The platform's own intelligence couldn't tell an automotive technician from a cannabis dispensary manager.

That's the AI deciding which resumes your shop sees.

THE WRONG QUESTION

When the bid goes up, most shop owners ask: "How much should I spend on Indeed?"

That's the wrong question.

The right question is: where do the techs I actually want spend their time, and how do I show up there?

A shop owner asking the first question stays stuck in the auction. The one asking the second builds a system that doesn't depend on outbidding his neighbors to find his next hire.

If this is where you are right now, you don't need another platform pitch. You need someone to look at your actual market and tell you what to change.

I take 4 Hiring Strategy Calls per week. We'll review your market, your ads, and where your techs actually are — and I'll tell you what I'd change.

Apply here: [Talk to Chris]

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