The find-jobs-anywhere site has now reached 100 million unique monthly visitors, including half of all U.S. job search traffic, and delivers more hires, it says, than CareerBuilder, Monster, and career-networking darling LinkedIn combined.

Take that, Facebook and Twitter.

“There’s a lot of focus on social … you can’t read a story about job seeking without reading about it,” said Indeed VP of product Chris Hyams when I chatted with him this afternoon. “We don’t discount that, but you have to start with the simplest thing: You have to have more jobs.”

Source: Indeed

Last month on Indeed

Indeed has stayed laser-focused throughout its eight years, Hyams said, on three things: More jobs on the site, keeping the site as fast as possible, and focusing pretty much exclusively on providing the best possible job-seeking experience for job hunters.

That’s translated to about 16 million jobs being present on the site at any given time, three billion job searches just in the last month, and according to a recent study by SilkRoad of more than 150,000 hires, more people finding jobs through Indeed than any other career site or service. Not to mention the number one mobile app for Android, iPhone, and iPad for job seekers, and that one new account is created on Indeed every single second.

“We’ve been working incredibly hard to get jobs the minute they are posted in every country,” Hyams said. “Our key metric is people getting jobs.”

I see a ton on new startups who are focusing on hiring and recruiting. KarmaHire, Zao, Path.io, GetHired, Quixey, Wowzer, enRecruit, VisualCV, Spark Hire, and InnovateCV are just a few of them. And each of them wants to reap the rich rewards of helping companies and people connect in careers.

But it seems like they’ve got a long, long way to go to beat the big kahuna of hiring in the U.S. and beyond.

The result, according to Hyams?

“If you’re an employer and you want to reach job seekers, Indeed.com is where to go.”

photo credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video via photopin cc

No, it’s no Google, and not even a Yahoo, but Ask.com still gets three percent of U.S.-based query volume, and had almost 150 million unique visitors in October 2012, according to Compete.com.

Which makes it about 100-150 Quoras.

Quixey indexes Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry apps not just by their title and description, but by everything that is said about them online. That makes Quixey’s results much more relevant, according to Quixey CEO Tomer Kagan.

“With apps we’ve taken a step forward in terms of functionality,” Kagan told me yesterday, “but a step back in terms of discoverability.”

Starting at 5PM today on Ask.com, app-related searches will automatically include apps in the primary search results. Alternatively, users who wish to restrict the search results to apps only, can simply click the Apps tab:

This is Quixey’s biggest integration to date, having previously integrated with companies such as Skyfire and Appthority.

The company is a B to B to C play, meaning that it does not provide services directly to consumers, but simply works through other consumer-facing companies. In fact, while Quixey has a website that demonstrates app search, there is not a single employee in the company whose responsibility it is to maintain that page, Kagan said.

The integration means that searching for apps will be a whole lot easier — and better, Kagan says.

“Often an app is a better result than a web page,” Kagan told me. “For example, if I want to find the best hikes in my area.”

From Ask.com’s perspective, adding app search rounds out its results, and opens new doors. For example, queries such as “watch Toy Story” will now include links to Netflix and Hulu, where users can actually watch the entire movie.

“Apps are gateways to some of the most top-notch digital content out there, so this integration fits perfectly with where our product is headed, especially when it comes to mobile devices,” Ask COO  Shane McGilloway said in a statement.

photo credit: schnaars via photopin cc

Like many startups, Quixey’s key issue is finding talent — great talent. The Palo Alto-based company, founded in 2009, has to compete with the likes of Facebook, Apple, and Zynga for top engineering employees in an extremely hot job market filled with engineers.

So how does the company make sure it hires the best people for the job without wasting time on the wrong applicants? By playing games.

Top engineers, goes the theory, are smart. And they enjoy solving puzzles. So Quixey separates the sheep from the goats with a series of puzzles. Hopeful job-seekers sign up for a Quixey Challenge username and then attempt to solve a series of problems.

Here’s an example of a Quixey question:

Longest Common Subsequence

Calculates the longest subsequence common to the two input strings. (A subsequence is any sequence of letters in the same order they appear in the string, possibly skipping letters in between.)

Input:
a: The first string to consider.
b: The second string to consider.

Output:
The longest string which is a subsequence of both strings. (If multiple subsequences of equal length exist, either is OK.)

Example:
>>> longest_common_subsequence(‘headache’, ‘pentadactyl’)
‘eadac’

The tests are not for the faint of heart — or the slow of brain. Applicants are timed as they solve the questions, and both their time and answers are recorded.

After the prospective employees complete a minimum of three practice questions, they are finally able to apply for an open position at Quixey. They’re told to provide their Quixey Challenge username along with the application, for the company’s human resources professionals to review.

Practice questions were just the start. Quixey has expanded its project and created an entire game based on being the best engineer which can help other companies find their good hires (and engineers make a little cash).

The company crowdsources challenges — users are invited to submit sample questions — and then opens up a competition like this one:

Names of winners and runners-up are posted online, and anyone can view the leaderboard.

It’s an ingenious method of unearthing the top talent in the engineering world and allowing a company to pick from the winners. This could be a perfect solution for other companies looking to hire great people fast.

Quixey has raised $24.2 million in capital to date, with the vast majority of it coming in a second round raised in mid 2011 from Atlantic Bridge, SK Planet, and TransLink Capital. Google chairman Eric Schmidt is also an investor in the company.

Image credit via Shutterstock

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