The Indeed Skills Trap: Why "Required" Actually Means Required

You're scrolling through Indeed, and you find a promising job. You click to apply. Before you even upload your resume, Indeed shows you a "Profile insights" section with a list of skills. Some are marked as (Required). There's a prompt asking "Do you have experience in X?" with Yes, No, and Skip buttons.

You're in a hurry. You don't have that exact skill—or you have something close but not the exact terminology. So you click Skip. Or No. And you move on to submit your application.

You may have just eliminated yourself from consideration.

What's Actually Happening Behind That "Required" Label

When employers post jobs on Indeed, they can add "screener questions"—qualification checks that applicants must answer during the application process. Indeed lets employers mark certain questions as "deal breakers" (now called "requirements").

Here's what Indeed's own employer documentation says:

Translation: If you click "No" or skip a required qualification question, your application doesn't just get noted as "missing this skill." It gets automatically sorted into a rejection pile.

The employer can still view these rejected applications if they want to. But here's the thing: most don't. When you're getting hundreds of applicants, why would you dig through the pile of people who already told you they don't meet your requirements?

The Three Types of Indeed Screener Questions

Not all Indeed questions work the same way. Understanding the hierarchy helps you know when you're in danger:

The key distinction: Required questions trigger automatic rejection. Preferred and custom questions don't. But when you're in the flow of applying, it's easy to skip through everything quickly without noticing which is which.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Here's a stat from Indeed's employer resources: Jobs with screener questions are 40% more likely to result in a hire.

Why? Because employers who use screener questions are serious about filtering. They're not just collecting resumes—they're actively using Indeed's tools to sort applicants. These employers are paying attention to the filtering system.

This also explains something job seekers often experience: applying to dozens of Indeed jobs and getting immediate or 72-hour rejections on many of them. It's not that a human quickly decided you weren't qualified. The system did it automatically.

The Broader Pattern: Job Boards Add Filtering Layers

Indeed's screener questions are just one example of a broader pattern. When you apply through a job board, you're often going through additional filtering that wouldn't exist if you applied directly to the company.

We talked about this in our previous post on applying direct instead of through job boards. The Indeed screener questions are a concrete example of why that strategy works: you're literally bypassing an automated rejection system that exists only on the job board.

What You Can Do About This

Option 1: Take Required Questions Seriously

If you're going to apply through Indeed, don't skip past the screener questions. Pay attention to which skills are marked as "(Required)" and answer them honestly.

Option 2: Find the Same Job on the Company's Website

This is the better option in most cases. When you find an interesting job on Indeed:

Bonus: If the job doesn't exist on the company's website, that's valuable information too. It might be a stale listing, a ghost job, or something that's already been filled. You've just saved yourself from applying to something that was never going to work.

Option 3: Apply to Fewer Jobs, More Strategically

If you're mass-applying through Indeed's Easy Apply without looking at screener questions, you're probably wasting time on applications that get auto-rejected.

A better approach: Apply to fewer jobs where you actually meet the requirements, using direct channels when possible, with materials customized for each role.

Why Indeed Works This Way (It's Not Malicious)

To be clear: Indeed isn't trying to sabotage job seekers. The screener system exists because employers asked for it.

When a job gets 500+ applicants—which is common for Indeed listings—employers need some way to filter. Without screener questions, they'd have to manually review every application to find out who has basic qualifications. The screener system saves them time by letting applicants self-sort.

The system makes sense for employers. It just means job seekers need to be aware of how it works—and decide whether Indeed is the best channel for each specific application.

How ReApply Fits Into This Picture

Understanding Indeed's filtering system is one piece of the puzzle. The other piece is having materials that are strong enough to compete once you do get reviewed.

The Bottom Line

The job search is hard enough without inadvertently eliminating yourself from consideration. Now that you know how Indeed's screening system works, you can make smarter choices about where and how to apply.