Recently job site indeed made a move to give gigs on its site a dedicated space. Users can now visit gigs.indeed.com to find side jobs with Uber, Doordash etc.
Julie Calli over at Recruitics explained the changes in a recent post. In it she said the reason for the change was driven by users;
“In response to user complaints about postings for gig jobs that don’t align with their interests appearing in their search results, Indeed is relocating gig job postings from select companies to a separate platform. They are also balancing this with the fact that there is a great desire and interest from job seekers to work gig jobs, as well as a demand for gig workers.”
Over the past few years gig companies have been filling job sites with thousands of the same job with a location for nearly every city. Indeed and users seem to have had enough.
I clicked over to the new site to check it out. As I browsed through the listings I came across something I thought was out of place. Nursing and healthcare jobs. I browsed the site just by zip code to see what types of gig they had on the site. I saw the usual suspects but the nursing jobs especially seemed out of place.
At this point I think job seekers have been trained to think of gig work as only jobs with with gig economy companies like Doordash, Shipt and Uber. Its hard to equate a temp nursing shift opportunity in the same vein as a low paying gig.
Leah Daniels from Appcast disagreed with me saying in a Facebook thread:
“FWIW, the nursing jobs that are on the gig site are actually gig jobs. At least by my definition. They have flexible schedules, and driven by an app. It might be fruitful to have a conversation around what the definition of gig is.”
Leah Daniels
To which I replied;
“I just think nursing jobs don’t belong on a gig site alongside those other roles, it’s just an entirely different audience of seekers. The average nurse is not going to think of Indeed Gigs for their next role … There’s a whole crop of companies now hiring temp/entry level gig workers and I think they are setting the definition for what a gig is. I agree that nurses can have gigs but healthcare is its own entity.”
Chris Russell
Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but to me the job market now consists of three types of roles that we should think about when it comes to classifying them to seekers;
- Permanent jobs, whether full or part time. Aka ‘FTE’s”
- Freelance work, mainly professional type roles that used to be permanent. Aka ‘freelancers’.
- Gig work as defined by the new gig economy employers. Aka ‘gig workers’.
Indeed directs a user to the new site after they perform a keyword search. (try searching for the term ‘shopper’) But don’t look for the link on their home page because it isn’t there.
Seems to me they should be promoting the new link as much as possible and doing more promotion for it. Especially since they are reducing traffic to those jobs from paying customers.
If I were Indeed I’d think seriously about creating a gig only job search engine with its own identity. “Indeed Gigs” as a stand alone site might be the better way to go about this. If they wanted to, Indeed could own the gig search category simply by throwing money at it.
Food for thought.
