I’m stepping down as CEO of Indeed

After nearly 15 years of helping people get jobs, I’ve made the decision to leave Indeed.

Here is the note I shared with the team.

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Hi everyone,

After nearly 15 years of helping people get jobs, I’ve made the decision to leave Indeed. Indeed has been the most meaningful work of my life—and choosing to leave has been one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. I’ve had the incredible privilege of working side by side with people who care deeply about each other, and about our mission to help people get jobs. Together, we have helped millions of people make better lives for themselves, for their families, and for their communities.

Effective today, Deko returns as CEO of Indeed. From 2013 to 2019, Deko led the company through a period of extraordinary innovation and growth. I know his visionary leadership will guide the next era to even greater heights. I’ll remain on as a Board advisor through the end of 2025 to support the transition.

I joined Indeed in October 2010 as VP of Product. At the time we had 130 people, 20 million monthly unique visitors, and a simple and clear mission to help people get jobs. Indeed was the biggest company I had ever joined, and I worried I had missed all the fun of building something great. I could not have been more wrong.

Today, over 300 million job seekers use Indeed each month. Our revenue has grown 200x. Most importantly, 27 people get hired on Indeed every minute—one every 2.2 seconds. Since we started measuring hires, more than 75 million people have gotten jobs thanks to Indeed—and we know that number is a dramatic undercount.

Our mission to help people get jobs is the driving force of Indeed. It’s our connection to the people whose lives we touch every day. We know that a job is more than just a paycheck. It’s a source of dignity and pride. A job is where we find meaning and purpose in our lives. The average person will spend 90,000 hours of their lives at work—more than most of us will spend with our loved ones. That time is precious, and the work we do to help people get jobs is a kind of sacred responsibility.

When my brother and I were kids, our dad told us a story about a close friend facing challenges in his life. The lesson of the story was that we make tough decisions not because life is short, but because life is long. Time *is* precious, and we need to spend it where we can be most useful.

At this moment in history, that means devoting myself to a few urgent issues ensuring that all technology—not just Indeed—is built with humanity at its core. This includes advancing Responsible AI, countering disinformation, empowering workers, defending human rights, and bridging the gap between technology and the humanities. Many of you know my path began far from tech—a liberal arts degree, work in adolescent addiction recovery, teaching high school special education. My career in tech has been driven by the values instilled from these experiences. As technology reshapes our world, these values feel more urgent—and at risk—than ever. That’s what I want to help change.

There’s never a perfect time to leave a job that means so much. This fall, we’ll launch what I believe is the most profound innovation in Indeed’s history. Our new agentic AI platform will realize the vision of a personal talent agent for every worker in the world, and a personal talent scout for every employer. I’ve been inspired to work every day with the teams bringing this vision to life. But now is the time for the teams who will carry this work forward to lead the way.

I’m deeply grateful to our founders Rony Kahan and Paul Forster for their vision, and for inviting me on this journey. To Deko for bringing Indeed into the Recruit family and giving me the opportunity of a lifetime to lead Indeed. To the early team whose commitment to putting job seekers first resonates in every decision we make today. To our exec team for leading with vision, clarity, and humanity. To our Inclusion Business Resource Groups for everything you have taught me. And to the teams who rarely get the spotlight but are essential to everything we do—Client Success, Workplace Operations, Trust & Safety, IT, AV, Communications, HR, Finance, Legal, Aggregation Operations, Security, Business Technology, and our many partners like RK Catering and Allied Security, to name just a few.

Most importantly, I am grateful to all of you, along with the hundreds of millions of job seekers and employers who have come together on Indeed to create a better world of work.

At last month’s quarterly update meeting, I said there has never been a more exciting time to be at Indeed. I believe that to my core. Thanks to AI, the world of work is changing faster than ever, and the world needs Indeed to innovate faster than ever. I will be cheering you on from the sidelines as you build a better future of work for all.

Chris