Many moons ago, there once was a job search engine crawling job boards, career sites, newspapers, and communities for job content. This job search engine decided that Craigslist would be an invaluable resource for users in their pursuit to offer users “one search, all jobs.”  

However, Craigslist quickly realized that if this job search engine included very unique content, its users would circumvent and visit this job search engine directly (for even more job content)…. then one day this job search engine could start offering them sponsored traffic.  Whoa, Indeed!

Alright, so I saved my punchline. True story; Craigslist said “No” to Indeed just like Indeed is saying “No” to Google. Today it’s rumored that Craigslist is generating almost $700 million in revenue (from jobs) because they built a unique and loyal following of users. Unique content brings loyalty. You can’t find Craig’s stuff anywhere else. They built a moat. For the last few years, Indeed has been investing heavily in its brand and building their own moat. It worked for Craigslist, it can certainly work for Indeed.

Just 40 employees and $700 million in revenue, really? That’s some big dough, yo. But, it shows that growth is not a tally of employee headcount, but sustainable revenue and margin growth.  The fact that Indeed has 5,000 team members around the world helping people find work is fantastic. However, the right talent and right execution can make all the difference. I am sure Google has a Craigslist size team executing on their job search strategy. It worked for Craigslist and this could work even better for Google. Some 300 million queries every month are employment or career related…instant users.

This is bigger than just “jobs.”  This is about outcomes and bringing back Google+ with a business twist. In most cases, careers ($) influence where you go on vacation, what clothes you buy, what car you drive, what insurance you have, and where you live.

OK, Google, find a job near me…