Job openings were down in 2025, yet employers still struggled to find the right skills match for their open positions, according to Indeed’s 2026 US Jobs and Hiring Trends Report.
That paradox is a focus for James Whitemore, who joined Indeed as chief marketing officer in June 2025, the same month former CEO Hisayuki “Deko” Idekoba returned to lead the company once again.
Whitemore told Business Insider that both companies and candidates have to reorient how they share information, add more details and nuance to postings and profiles, and move towards natural language to optimize for AI.
These shifts are central to two new AI tools the company rolled out for job seekers and employers in September, called Career Scout and Talent Scout, and an API integration for employers, called Indeed Connect, which is launching in January 2026.
Whitemore also shared how Indeed’s marketing team is using AI to maximize its first-party data, and uncanny experiences with synthetic audience testing.
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The following interview is edited for length and clarity.
Business Insider: What do employers need to know about hiring using AI tools?
James Whitemore: We’re trying to shift the whole conversation from job search to one that is more proactive, where a potential employer is sourcing and screening for the right candidates, rather than the candidates having to go find the job.
So first, when you are looking for candidates, how do companies build their profiles? A lot of large-scale employers have really complex search strings that they use to source candidates.
With our new tools, you’re not using search strings anymore. You are using real-language descriptions of skills, personality traits, and educational backgrounds. Teaching employers how to use the tools and how to form searches, describe candidates, and the type of people that they want, is key.
Then to make the AI tools work effectively, there is much more ongoing communication about the candidate, so much more disposition sharing about who moved through the interview process and why some people were screened out versus other people who moved forward. That way you can constantly teach the platforms what worked for them.
So bringing all this together can be automated?
Yes, we call it Indeed Connect, which is basically an API-to-API integration between the Indeed platforms and the company’s HR tech stack. The benefit that brings employers is that they can use those screening and sourcing tools across multiple sources of candidates.
Most large-scale employers will have their own databases of candidates, and they’re looking at other third parties, but you can use a consistent set of sourcing tools across all of those candidates, not just the ones that are coming in from Indeed.
Job seekers are frustrated with the hiring process. What do they need to know in order to stand out in AI-enabled search?
You want yourself to be as searchable as possible when employers are using advanced sourcing and screening tools.
The key thing is to make sure that you have a full and complete profile, and that the profile goes beyond your resume. A resume is a historical look back at what you have done in the past. What most employers are really interested in is what you are capable of doing in the future.
When I think about our own team, we’re looking for somebody who understands marketing, but also general-purpose people who understand a business process, who can be used effectively across multiple tasks.
Resumes typically don’t bring out soft skills. Completing your profiles and talking about what makes you tick and what excites you in “about me” sections is important, so that as those profiles get screened, you are much more likely to show up as somebody who is an adaptable, curious type of person.
What are other best practices for job seekers today?
To be successful, you need to be very focused on the type of jobs you want. Mass-applying to jobs that aren’t a good fit for you is not going to get you anywhere other than frustrated.
Also, it’s OK to be constantly looking. The concept of “come look for a job when you need a job” is not the right way to be thinking about it. You should be passively open to understanding what jobs are open to you on an ongoing basis, rather than just coming to look for a job when you need a change for some reason.
That’s the concept Indeed is moving to, from a place where you come to look for a job to a place where you expose your skills, your capabilities, your ambitions to potential employers, and those employers can find you when they need someone with your skills.
How is Indeed’s marketing team using artificial intelligence?
Marketing is one of the disciplines that has the opportunity to be most transformed by the use of AI tools. A big element is understanding and segmenting audiences in ways that we’ve never been able to do before.
At Indeed, we have rich first-party audience data. We know who people are, what their job histories are, education, salaries, and much more data than a lot of CMOs have to work with.
Being able to take that data and compare it to third-party databases — that technology is rapidly evolving. Then it’s being able to take those audience segments and run them against mass-scale media databases, so that you understand exactly where those people are consuming content across digital, print, radio, and TV.
The ability to test messages against a synthetic audience is also fascinating. We’re running synthetic marketing tests versus traditional tests, and the synthetic tests are just as accurate. Then you can take that data and feed it into the content engines, so that you are producing personalized content for audiences at scale.
It’s amazing to see how it’s constantly evolving, so quickly. Part of the message to the team is that marketing has got to be at the leading edge of AI. We do a lot of work with our vendors, bringing them to demo their platforms and talk about their roadmaps.
How do you manage the variety of marketing AI systems and vendors?
I’m interviewing right now for a senior director of marketing transformation who will lead that group. It is so important to have somebody who is really on point to lead the discussions.
We purposely didn’t call it “head of AI” because it’s really looking at the processes, the workflows, the way that we work with others around the organization, as well as all the tools and technology, which is so important to get right.
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