How to screen Indeed applicants automatically in Truffle

Two prospects asked Truffle the same question in one week. One runs a pest control company hiring service technicians. The other was on a demo call for a role in a completely different industry. Both wanted the same thing: applicants from their Indeed postings showing up in Truffle on their own, ready to be screened.

That is exactly what Indeed auto-import does. You paste one address into the Indeed job, tick one box, and every application Indeed receives arrives in Truffle. Your interview invite goes back to each candidate in their Indeed inbox. Candidates apply on Indeed the way they always have. Nobody on your side has to export, forward, or retype anything.

The import was never the hard part

Here’s the pattern we keep running into: recruiters who already have Indeed wired into an ATS still describe Indeed applicants the same way, as a flood of volume where most of it isn’t close to qualified. Getting the records across didn’t change that. It just meant the flood arrived in a different inbox.

Moving a record from one place to another is plumbing. It doesn’t read the resume, check whether someone meets your must-haves, or tell you which five of the ninety are worth a callback. Both prospects, once we asked a second question, cared about that part. Their Indeed applicants were sitting there unread, and they wanted it to stop being their problem at 9pm.

So the setup below does two jobs at once. Auto-import gets every Indeed applicant into Truffle without anyone lifting a finger, and Truffle’s screening turns them into a ranked list the moment they land.

Set up Indeed auto-import

Every position in Truffle has its own import address. When Indeed emails an application to that address, Truffle reads the candidate’s name and contact address out of the message and adds them to the position with everyone else.

1. Copy your import address in Truffle. Open the position, go to Get candidates, and turn on Auto-import applicants. Copy the import address it shows you.
2. Open the job in Indeed. Choose Edit job post, then Application method. If you’re creating a new job instead, this is the last screen of the Settings section.
3. Add the address. Under Application updates and access to candidates on Indeed, click + Add email and paste your Truffle import address.
4. Tick the individual-email box. Select Send an individual email each time someone applies. This is the step that makes it work. Without it, Indeed sends summaries instead of individual applications, and nothing imports.
5. Save, then Confirm. Save the job, then select Confirm.

Indeed will then email your import address an invitation to create an Indeed account. That’s expected, and you can ignore it. It only exists so a person could view candidates inside Indeed, and it has no effect on whether applications reach Truffle. Truffle shows you that email on the Auto-import card so you know the connection is in place.

You do this once per job. From then on, every Indeed application imports on its own.

Add the address in Indeed, and don’t forward Indeed’s emails to it instead. A forwarded application, by hand or with an inbox rule, still imports. But Indeed won’t deliver Truffle’s invite to that candidate, so Truffle holds the invite back and tells you why. Forwarding is fine for other boards. For Indeed, the address has to be on the job.

Invites reach the candidate’s Indeed inbox

Most Indeed candidates arrive with an Indeed conversation address, not a personal email. Truffle sends their invite, reminders and other emails from the position’s import address, and Indeed delivers them to the candidate’s Indeed inbox, from your company. When a candidate replies, the reply stays in Indeed. Read and answer it there. Truffle also logs it under Import activity as “Replied in Indeed — read it there”.

Get the resume from Truffle, not Indeed

Indeed usually sends no resume with its application emails. So turn on Resume scoring for the position, and candidates add their resume on the last step of their interview. Turn on Require a resume to submit if you want it to be required. Candidates on a phone get a reminder to add it later. Once it’s in, Truffle saves it to the candidate’s profile, scores it against your criteria, and picks up any personal email on it.

Check the Import activity list

Under Get candidates, the Import activity list shows every message that reached your import address and what happened to it. If a job goes quiet, that’s where to look first. In almost every case the fix is the same: the address was added in Indeed, but Send an individual email each time someone applies was left unticked.

What happens once an applicant imports

What Truffle does next follows how you built the position. If the position asks candidates to do everything in one sitting, or has no resume step, imported applicants are invited to their interview automatically. If it collects the resume first, they wait in your candidate list and nothing is sent until you invite them, which is the point of setting it up that way. Either way, the invite reaches the candidate in their Indeed inbox.

Picture the pest control company again. A service technician posting on Indeed used to mean a spreadsheet, a name, a phone number, and a resume the owner had to open one at a time in Indeed between service calls, the same bottleneck we see across field-service and home-visit hiring generally. With auto-import on, each Indeed application lands in Truffle and the invite goes back to the candidate in Indeed. The candidate adds their resume at the end of their interview, and AI Match scores it against the criteria the owner set when the position was built. If the role includes qualification questions or a one-way interview (a valid license, the required shift, the certification the role needs), those answers join the same candidate profile.

By the time the owner opens the dashboard that evening, the ninety Indeed applicants aren’t ninety unopened resumes anymore. They’re a ranked list, with the eight or ten worth a callback sitting at the top and the reasoning for each score visible next to their name. That’s the outcome both prospects were asking for.

Alternative: send Indeed’s Apply button to your Position Link

If you’d rather candidates apply in Truffle directly, point Indeed’s Apply button at your Truffle application link instead.

Every Truffle position gets a Position Link, one URL that opens the resume upload, qualification questions, and (if you’re using it) the one-way interview for that role. Indeed’s own employer resources describe candidates applying “directly on your website or through an application URL you’ve provided,” which is the slot your Position Link fits into.

1. Ask Indeed to enable Apply on company site. Open Indeed’s chat support from your employer account and ask them to turn on Apply on company site for your account. You don’t give support your Truffle link, you only ask them to enable the option.
2. Edit the job posting. Once it’s enabled, open the posting in Indeed and edit it.
3. Choose Apply on company site. In the posting’s application settings, select it.
4. Paste your Position Link and save. Then click through as a candidate to confirm you land on your Truffle screening flow.

The Apply button now sends every candidate straight into Truffle, so screening happens as part of applying. Because candidates move from Indeed to a new page, this route suits roles pulling more applicants than you can read in an evening. For a role where you want to keep Indeed’s own apply flow, auto-import does that. It’s the same judgment behind deciding how much of your screening process a role actually needs.

If Indeed only offers an application email on your posting flow, use your Truffle import address there and follow the auto-import steps above.

For applicants already in your Indeed dashboard

Auto-import and the Apply button both handle applications from the moment you set them up. For candidates who applied before that, invite them by email with a pasted list. This works best for personal emails. Indeed’s conversation addresses only get the invite when the candidate came in through the import address, so add that address before your next job goes live.

1. Export your applicant list from Indeed. Your employer dashboard lets you view and download the names and emails of everyone who’s applied to a posting.
2. Clean it up into two columns. Name and email address is all the invite needs.
3. Paste it into Truffle. Open the position, choose Get candidates, open Invite by email, and choose Paste from spreadsheet. Paste the list, choose Add candidates, check who’s on it, and send. One send takes up to 50 candidates, so send a longer list in batches of 50.
4. Check who was held back. Personal emails and older-style Indeed addresses get the invitation. An Indeed conversation address (conversation-…@indeedemail.com) only receives Truffle’s invite when that candidate came in through the position’s import address. For anyone else, Truffle holds the invite back and tells you. Message them in Indeed, or add their personal email to their profile.
5. Let AI Match sort the responses. Completing the invitation is the step that captures each candidate’s resume and starts screening, so completions land in your dashboard over the next day or two.

If you’re clearing out a few hundred names at once, the same rapid-review approach that works for any high-volume role applies once the responses start landing.

Three mechanisms, each with its own job. Auto-import handles new Indeed applications without changing how candidates apply. The Position Link moves the whole application into Truffle when you want that. Invites from a pasted list catch up on earlier candidates whose personal email you have.

If Indeed isn’t your only source and you’re weighing whether to lean on it for a role like this, the tradeoffs across job boards are worth a look before you commit a whole posting budget to one channel.

Frequently asked questions about screening Indeed applicants in Truffle

How do I get Indeed applicants into Truffle automatically?

Use Indeed auto-import. In Truffle, open the position, go to Get candidates, turn on Auto-import applicants and copy the import address. In Indeed, choose Edit job post, then Application method, click + Add email under “Application updates and access to candidates on Indeed”, paste the address, and tick “Send an individual email each time someone applies”. Each application then imports into Truffle automatically.

Do Indeed resumes come through to Truffle?

Usually not from Indeed itself. Indeed’s application emails usually arrive without a resume, so the resume comes from Truffle instead. Turn on Resume scoring for the position, and candidates add their resume on the last step of their interview. Turn on “Require a resume to submit” to make it required. Truffle then scores it against your criteria and picks up any personal email on it.

Nothing from Indeed is importing. What should I check?

Open the job in Indeed and confirm “Send an individual email each time someone applies” is ticked. Adding the address alone tells Indeed who to notify, but that setting is what sends each application. The Import activity list under Get candidates in Truffle shows every message that reached your import address and what happened to it.

What about applicants who applied on Indeed before I set this up?

Export their names and emails from your Indeed dashboard and paste them into Truffle’s email invite with Paste from spreadsheet, up to 50 per send. Personal emails and older-style Indeed addresses get the invitation. Indeed conversation addresses only receive Truffle’s invite when that candidate came in through the position’s import address, so for earlier candidates Truffle holds the invite back and tells you. Message those candidates in Indeed, or add their personal email to their profile.

Ready to stop opening Indeed resumes one at a time? See how Truffle’s resume screening works, or turn on auto-import for your next Indeed job and watch the first scored candidates land.