INDEED has KILLED privacy!

Please don't flame me if I've been in a coma because I was unaware of this.

I'm a headhunter in Detroit and 20 minutes ago I received an e-mail from Indeed.com enticing me to search resumes in their database. There's a big, BOLD announcement that they're getting 2 Million resumes per month. (Wow!)

I clicked on the conveniently provided link to "Search Resumes Now" and punched in some key words and was HORRIFIED to find lists of names and abbreviated resumes. Upon closer view, I opened a side window and there was the candidates full name and employment history, much like you'd find on LinkedIn. EXCEPT, these people apparently voluntarily uploaded their resume.

Call me old fashioned. I'm a little shocked at this.

So I searched "Seat Engineers". What if I was the Engineering Manager at one of the many companies listed there and "curiosity was killing the cat"? Let's say I punch up to see candidates and see one, two, or three of my employees. My mood would be very different for the rest of the day for sure.

To me, there is a HUGE GAP between uploading into a job hunting website where the resume will be in a private database only to be accessed by paid customers VERSUS the LinkedIn open internet posting of 99% of your background without and e-mail or phone number and a BIG HUGE SIGN READING "I'M LOOKING NOW!!!!"

Is anyone with me on this???

- Steve

Comment by Alan Fluhrer on August 26, 2013 at 12:35pm: Steve,

Here';s a question I can't figure out yet. What are all of Indeed's sources for these?

I ask because I have had more than 1 conversation with a person whose resume I found here. They let me know they never uploaded their resume to indeed. Now I'm not saying Indeed does/doesn't get resumes from other sources, we've all heard things like this before.

Comment by Stephen Nehez, Jr. on August 26, 2013 at 1:00pm: Here's what they say....

Comment by Amber on August 26, 2013 at 2:48pm: I would guess that if someone applies for a job through the actual Indeed button, it somewhere "tells" the candidate that they are letting Indeed have their resume. I wonder if LI, Monster, CB, etc. are providing any to Indeed?

Comment by Daren J. Mongello on August 26, 2013 at 3:05pm: Indeed is charging $1 per resume after the first 50 free.
This is an pricey model for sourcers as most of these candidates are not available and/or the contact info is dated or limited. ZipRecruiter is doing the same thing but is much more cost effective.

Typically candidate resumes are imported from "Apply through Indeed", uploaded to Indeed or are scraped from the open web.

What privacy issues do you think are being violated if you post your resume on a blog or website or on your LinkedIn profile with contact information?

Dice has an interesting Open Web option in their resume database. They cobble meta data from various social media sources to build a "resume".

Comment by Stephen Nehez, Jr. on August 26, 2013 at 3:21pm: Responding to Daren Mongello:

"Typically candidate resumes are imported from "Apply through Indeed", uploaded to Indeed or are scraped from the open web."

What is your source for knowing how LinkedIn "scrapes" the internet for openly published resumes by candidates?

Also, I've privately had other recruiters CLAIM that Indeed is getting these from well-known job boards. For those of you who think Monster or Careerbuilder would "sell" these resumes to Indeed, you might need to take the next eight hours to sober up. Monster and Careerbuilder COVET their databases.

And, please, let's stop making believe in unicorns and that Indeed boasting about getting TWO MILLION resumes per month is some small detail. At that rate, Indeed COULD (operative word) obtain the entire population of the USA plus 20 million illegals in half a year. Yea, yea, I know this "whopper" of a number would include candidates from other parts of the world. Maybe like the Congo, Zimbabwe, or Tahiti just to throw out a few.

Please don't flame me with speculation.

- Steve

Comment by Brian Fippinger on August 27, 2013 at 10:52am: This is not the only unethical tactic that Indeed is involved with. Since I posted this blog (http://www.q4-consulting.com/2013/08/2209) about my experience, I have heard from companies around the globe who are seeing the same actions.

Comment by Amber on August 27, 2013 at 12:46pm: Brian, I read your post last week. It didn't surprise me, but it seems like a lot of these companies have viable products without resorting to underhanded tactics. Guess it doesn't make them as much money as fast, though.

Daren, there may be legal things that companies do but not all are ethical. Also, even though a person should be aware that the information is not necessarily "theirs" once they put it somewhere, there perhaps should be more clarity and options of how/when the information might be used. And if there is not, does the next person getting ready to use the information have any ethical obligation not to?

Comment by Daren J. Mongello on August 28, 2013 at 1:54am: Stephen Nehez, Jr.:

You wrote: What is your source for knowing how LinkedIn "scrapes" the internet for openly published resumes by candidates?

Correction:
I did not write that "LinkedIn scrapes". I did write " Typically candidate resumes are imported from "Apply through Indeed", uploaded to Indeed or are scraped from the open web."

Indeed offers candidates the option of uploading their resumes. And given that Indeed is the #1 job board, they're probably getting LOTS of resumes.
https://secure.indeed.com/account/register?service=myind&hl=en_...

Scraping:
There's currently nothing stopping companies, including Indeed, from scraping LinkedIn profiles through xrayed Google pages. It happens every day by dozen of companies. (see below)

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/indeed
Indeed is the #1 job site worldwide, available in more than 50 countries and 26 languages, and covering 94% of global GDP. With more than 100 million monthly unique visitors, Indeed has double the traffic of the next leading job site. According to a recent study, Indeed is the #1 source of external hire for employers (SilkRoad, 2013).

Corrections:
You wrote: "And, please, let's stop making believe in unicorns and that Indeed boasting about getting TWO MILLION resumes per month is some small detail. At that rate, Indeed COULD (operative word) obtain the entire population of the USA plus 20 million illegals in half a year."

So you know that the US population is approximately 313.9 million. At an exaggerated 2 million resumes per month, it would take 314/2 = 157 months ....OR 13 years. How do you get to from 13 years down to half a year?
Please don't flame me with speculation.

Although there may be some exaggeration here, it is not unreasonable for Indeed to collect millions of resume when they're getting 100 million views a month. It would take a low 2% of all viewers to upload their resume. Not crazy numbers.

Lastly:
There are PLENTY of companies that are scraping social profiles from LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, Quora ...and on and on and on. The meta data is compiled for a profile / resume and access is SOLD.
I know this is not news to you guys.
http://www.dice.com/common/content/employer/openWeb/openWeb.jsp
http://www.talentbin.com/
http://www.entelo.com/features/sonar

Why is this even an issue for outrage? (Amber)
Indeed is following the steps of Monster, LinkedIn, CB, Dice by selling uploaded resumes or scraped profiles.
Typically these companies are going to cover themselves in their TOS, which most people do not bother to read.
Sorry Amber...if you post unprotected content to a site that can be scraped or indexed....you've given up your right to that content. I don't like it much either....but them the rules.

Comment by Stephen Nehez, Jr. on August 28, 2013 at 7:21am: To Daren Mongello,

(1) Touché. I screwed up the math. Sorry. Oh well. Anyway. It's my opinion and only my opinion that I think whoever wrote the "two million" resume banner in the e-mail is wrong and massively exaggerating. Ultimately, who cares about my opinion anyway? (Answer: No one.)

(2) Gosh. I hope you didn't go into a lot of effort researching and outlining the word "scrape". You're the one who first introduced the word. By the way, I actually have software in my office that does this. It wasn't cheap. (I would, in my opinion, define 'cheap' as being around 100 bucks for a piece of software. But then again, it's my opinion, so who cares?)

(3) It's my opinion that Indeed doesn't really grab public profiles from the internet from such sources as Indeed. It's my opinion so once again, who cares?

(4) It's my opinion you have not cleared up where and how Indeed is getting their two million resumes. You wrote a lot. For that, I'm humbled and corrected. But I don't think you know where Indeed gets the two million resumes as a matter of fact. Maybe you've met with representatives of Indeed and they disclosed to you where they get all of their resumes. I have an Indeed representative that's been asking to meet. I've not agreed because I've heard the opinions of other recruiters and office managers.

(5) Finally, back to my point of the original blog posting. I'll correlate it with a more popular topic out there right now. It seems noone's all that surprised that the Cyrus girl decided to do a borderline X-rated performance at the MTV awards show the other night. Looks like the big question floating around is "when is enough enough?" This was sort of my dismay when I saw (and I have a screenshot pictured above) how Indeed displays pseudo-resumes of people that are actually applying for jobs IN CONTRAST TO LinkedIn posting a person's work history and background in a much similar way. The visual content is basically equal but, to me, in my OPINION, question the prudence, or ethics, or morality, or (fill in the blank) of Indeed publicly posting this information the way they do.

(I'm going to now guess that Daren REALLY, REALLY wants to take me to the cleaners now.)

Doesn't matter. No one cares about my opinion.

- Steve

Comment by Amber on August 28, 2013 at 11:22am: Daren, I'm not sure I said I was "outraged". What I am saying is that maybe there should be a way to more clearly let people know what is going to happen to information they provide to one site if another is going to "scrape" it, have it shared, or buy it. And simple steps to select how they agree for it to be used.

It can be easily argued that they agreed to some Terms of Services or Privacy notice, but it's known that people don't read through the entire convoluted language used (usually with small print and lots of subparagraphs, etc.). I think it should be the consumers responsibility to understand terms before they agree to anything, but I also know companies of all kinds rarely make that as understandable as they could. Why? Because then maybe a lot of people wouldn't agree, or buy their product/services, etc.

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