Indeed to expand with 3,000 jobs
Growth includes office space in downtown high-rise and at Domain.
Internet job search company Indeed said Thursday it is launching a new wave of growth that could add as many as 3,000 new jobs in Austin over the next several years.
Indeed, which currently has 1,600 employees in Austin, has been one of Central Texas’ fastest-growing internet companies and has been one of the more active recruiters of engineering talent.
The company describes Austin as a “global technical hub” for its operations, with a “high concen- tration of engineering and product teams.” It also has employees here in the finance, legal, sales, marketing, corporate development, client success and human resources fields.
The company will be hiring in
all areas, said Chris Hyams, Indeed’s president.
The company declined to give more specifics about its time frame for the planned workforce expansion. The expansion would eventually bring Indeed’s Central Texas workforce to roughly 4,500 employees, making it one of the largest tech employers in the Austin metro area.
”While we have expanded all over the world, Austin has really been the bedrock of that growth,” Hyams said.
Indeed is keeping Austin on the fast track for job creation “for the same reasons we think it was a great home for us when we first started,” Hyams said. “It has an incredibly strong and diverse talent pool, and it continues to be a really attractive place for people from all over to come to and move to.”
To accommodate the hiring surge, Indeed has signed two leases — one downtown and one at the Domain — totaling more than 615,000 square feet.
Indeed has signed a lease for about 307,000 square feet in a 36-story tower under construction on a prime downtown block.
The site, at West Sixth and Colorado streets, is called Block 71 and is owned by the University of Texas System. It is being redeveloped by Trammell Crow Company in a joint venture with Principal Real Estate Investors. A name has not yet been selected for the new tower.
The high-rise will include office, restaurant and retail space. The first phase of the 709,000-square-foot building — which will be downtown Austin’s largest and tallest office tower — is expected to be ready in 2021.
Indeed will occupy the top 10 floors, and the building will bear Indeed’s name.
In addition, Indeed late last year leased all the space in a new 11-story office building at the Domain in North Austin. Domain Tower is being built at the entrance to the Domain, the mixeduse development off MoPac Boulevard.
Domain Tower is due to be completed this summer, and Indeed is expected to occupy the 310,000-squarefoot building in late 2018.
”These two offices together will give us space to have another 3,000 employees in Austin,” Hyams said. “We’re doing that because we believe that the business as a whole will continue to grow, but also that Austin will continue to be a great home to support that growth.”
Indeed is the latest in a wave of large, fast-growing companies to sign significant office leases downtown and in the Domain, including for buildings still under construction. Others include Facebook, Google Inc., HomeAway and Parsley Energy.
Mike Rollins, president of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, said Indeed is an example of “yet another well-known technology brand recognizing that our region is a place where current and future employees want to be.”
“Indeed continues to further embed itself in Austin at a very rapid pace, and the continued expansion reinforces that we have a great combination of talent and quality of life necessary to meet the need,” Rollins said.
Mike Kennedy, principal in the Austin office of Avison Young, a commercial real estate services firm, said Indeed’s planned expansion “is a milestone in its size and commitment to Austin — right up there with Apple and Oracle.”
Indeed aggregates job listings from thousands of websites, including job boards, newspapers, trade associations and company career pages. Job seekers can search millions of jobs in 60 countries and 28 languages. More than 200 million people each month search for jobs, post résumés or research compa- nies on Indeed.
Indeed was founded in Austin and Stamford, Conn., in 2004. It was acquired by Japan’s largest recruitment firm, Recruit Co., in 2012 for an undisclosed price.
Under the deal, Indeed retained its name and operates as an independent unit of Recruit. It employs 6,100 people globally.
Indeed’s main campus is at the Champion Office Park on Loop 360 (North Capital of Texas Highway), which it built in 2015. The company outgrew the 220,000-squarefoot space and now has additional space nearby at the Reserve at Bull Creek on Loop 360.
The company also has a 57,000-square-foot office downtown at West Fifth Street. When the Block 71 tower is complete, Indeed will move employees at its current downtown space to the new office.
Hyams said the decision on where in Austin to expand was made with mobility issues in mind. Indeed employees will be able to choose a work location based on what works best for them, he said.
The new offices also will have access to public transportation, which isn’t the case at the Champion Office Park campus, he said.
”We believe that spreading things out over multiple locations is partially a way to help ease some of the traffic and commute time, both for our employees and also for the city as a whole,” Hyams said.
Kennedy said Indeed follows HomeAway, Facebook and Apple in having a multi-office strategy to accommodate employees’ varied commuting, housing and other preferences.
“Indeed’s downtown and Domain location choices reflect the tech community’s clarity of purpose in having to be able to attract employee talent to compete in their business model,” Kennedy said. “With a 3 percent unemployment rate (in the Austin region) and significant in-migration of population, talent has a choice.”