At the 2025 Future Works event, Indeed’s Chief Marketing Officer James Whitemore highlighted how AI is transforming both job searching and hiring. Despite a decline in job openings in 2025, employers continue to struggle to find candidates with the right skills, according to Indeed’s 2026 US Jobs and Hiring Trends Report. To address this, Indeed launched three new AI-powered tools in September: Career Scout for job seekers, Talent Scout for employers, and an upcoming API integration called Indeed Connect, set to launch in January 2026. These tools shift the focus from complex search strings to natural language descriptions of skills, personality traits, and educational backgrounds, making candidate matching more intuitive and effective. Whitemore emphasized that for these AI systems to work well, employers must provide detailed feedback on candidates—such as why someone was rejected or advanced—so the platform can learn and improve over time. Indeed Connect automates this process by integrating directly with employers’ HR tech stacks, enabling consistent sourcing and screening across internal databases and third-party platforms. For job seekers, standing out in an AI-driven landscape means going beyond a traditional resume. A complete, up-to-date profile that includes personal insights, passions, and future potential is key. Employers are increasingly looking for adaptable, curious individuals who can thrive in dynamic roles. Highlighting soft skills and personal motivation in “about me” sections increases visibility in AI screening. Whitemore advised job seekers to be proactive, not just when they need a job, but continuously. The new model is about exposing your skills and ambitions to employers so they can find you when the right opportunity arises—shifting from a reactive to a proactive job search. Indeed’s marketing team is also leveraging AI to unlock deeper insights from its rich first-party data, including job histories, education, and salary information. By combining this with third-party data and synthetic audience testing, the team can run highly accurate, scalable marketing experiments. These synthetic tests are proving just as reliable as traditional ones, allowing for faster, data-driven content creation. To manage the growing number of AI tools and vendors, Indeed is hiring a senior director of marketing transformation—avoiding the title “head of AI” to focus on workflow, process, and cross-functional collaboration. The goal is to ensure AI adoption enhances, rather than disrupts, how marketing teams operate.