Earnings Call Transcript - ZIP Q1 2024

Operator, Operator

Thank you for your patience. My name is Pam, and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the ZipRecruiter, Inc. Q1 2024 Earnings Call. I will now turn the conference over to Drew Haroldson with Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Andrew Haroldson, Investor Relations

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon. Thank you for joining us in our earnings conference call during which we will discuss ZipRecruiter's performance for the quarter ended March 31, 2024, and guidance for the second quarter 2024. Joining me on the call today are Ian Siegel, Co-Founder and CEO; David Travers, President; and Tim Yarbrough, CFO. Before we begin, please be reminded that forward-looking statements made today are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to future events and/or the future financial performance of ZipRecruiter. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. A discussion of some of these risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements can be found in ZipRecruiter's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2024, which is available on our investor website and the SEC's website. The forward-looking statements in this conference call are based on the current expectations as of today, and ZipRecruiter assumes no obligation to update or revise them, whether as a result of new developments or otherwise. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for, or in isolation from GAAP results. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP metrics to the nearest GAAP metrics are included in ZipRecruiter's shareholder letter and in our Form 10-Q. And now I will turn the call over to Ian.

Ian Siegel, CEO

Thank you, and good afternoon to everyone joining us today. Q1 '24 revenue of $122 million was down 33% year-over-year, though it exceeded the midpoint of our guidance range. We generated $2 million in operating cash flow and $21 million in adjusted EBITDA, equating to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17%. Though results were above expectations discussed in our last earnings call, the labor market industry backdrop has remained challenging through the first few months of 2024. Hiring levels continue to be subdued, and the number of people quitting their jobs also remains low as the Big Stay persisted into Q1. However, there are also positive signs emerging as we begin the year. Q1 '24 is the first quarter with a sequential increase in quarterly paid employers since 2022 and is a potential indicator of stabilization in the hiring market. While not yet a return to normal seasonality, where revenue ramps from Q1 to Q2, we see this as an early sign that the labor market downturn is potentially reaching a trough. Our balance sheet remains robust. With over $510 million on hand, we are well-positioned to weather this industry-wide downturn and enter an eventual recovery from a position of strength. Therefore, we continue to lean into investments in product, technology, and marketing that we expect to drive a significant long-term ROI. While we remain prepared for a wide range of scenarios as 2024 plays out, we are poised to increase investment as opportunities arise and alternatively are always prepared to show further cost discipline if conditions deteriorate. We have strong conviction that technology will fundamentally change how employers and job seekers connect to one another, and ZipRecruiter will be at the forefront of that change. Why are we so confident in our long-term outlook? There are several strategic advantages that leave us well-positioned for long-term growth. We have built an enduring brand as demonstrated by the 65% year-over-year organic jobseeker traffic growth in Q1 of '24. Our matching technology is persistently getting better by utilizing the high volume of proprietary data points we gather from interactions between job seekers and employers in our marketplace. Phil, our AI-driven career advisor who introduced many job seekers to what it's like to have an ally in the job search process, continues to expand his presence throughout the ZipRecruiter experience. And finally, our 150-plus integrations with applicant tracking systems are nearly a decade in the making, making it easier for large enterprises to activate our solution. While there are many reasons we believe ZipRecruiter will win, what will drive market share gains over time are advancements in product and technology, which are the center of our investments today. There is no doubt that the post-COVID labor market backdrop has made the past few quarters challenging on the top line for us and throughout the recruitment industry, but we remain dedicated to and incredibly energized by our mission of actively connecting people to their next great opportunity. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dave to review progress on our growth strategies.

David Travers, President

Thank you, Ian, and good afternoon. As Ian mentioned, we are leaning into product and technology investments to capture the massive opportunity to transform how employers and job seekers come together. I will detail the continued progress we are making against our three strategic pillars to improve outcomes for employers and job seekers. Our first strategic pillar is increasing the number of employers and the revenue per paid employer in our marketplace. Growing revenue from enterprise employers is a massive opportunity for ZipRecruiter. Our ongoing effort to introduce new ATS integrations and improve upon existing ones is an investment years in the making and a key strategy to growing enterprise revenue over time. These ATS integrations create value across our marketplace, with job seekers and our ATS partners benefiting from a smoother application experience and employers receiving a higher volume of applications. In Q1, we completed one of our newest ATS integrations with iCIMS. With this integration, employers will be able to seamlessly tap into ZipRecruiter's marketplace and unleash our matching technology to drive talented applicants to their job openings. Job seekers can use ZipApply, our frictionless application process, to apply to jobs in the iCIMS ATS without ever leaving the ZipRecruiter marketplace. Click-to-apply conversion increases by more than 4x when customers move from external apply to ZipApply. Our automated campaign optimization solution launched in 2023 continues to get better at improving employers' efficacy in hitting their desired campaign targets. In Q1, it was 17% more effective at achieving campaign targets than the prior quarter, and nearly 40% more effective compared to the prior year period. We believe that increasing the efficiency by which we achieve customer targets will lead to growth in enterprise revenue over time. I'll now move to our second pillar, increasing the number of job seekers in our marketplace. We continue to see strong organic jobseeker activity, driven by multiyear brand investments. In Q1, organic visitors from job seekers grew 30% sequentially and over 65% year-over-year. Strong organic jobseeker activity is a primary reason why we have been able to significantly reduce marketing expenses as we balance our two-sided marketplace during this period of subdued hiring activity. Additionally, downloads for our industry-leading mobile app for iOS and Android grew 23% year-over-year, and engagement has remained strong as job clicks from our mobile apps increased 19% year-over-year. Additionally, in Q1, we streamlined the user experience for job seekers who prefer to hear about jobs via text messaging, which resulted in nearly 7x more opt-ins than the prior process flow. As our matching technology continues to improve, we send job seekers a text faster about a fresh, relevant job when our technology is confident in the potential match, rather than waiting to only send a text when job seekers are invited to apply to a job by an employer. As a result, applications driven by text messaging grew over 3x in Q1 compared to the prior quarter. I'll conclude with our third pillar, making our matching technology smarter over time. In Q1, we rolled out an algorithm improvement for some job postings to drive more job seekers toward jobs with fewer applicants. These are great jobs for job seekers because there's less competition from other applicants to get the job. This also benefits employers by optimizing application volume for their jobs. These algorithmic improvements are the result of long-term technology investments, and these investments are bearing fruit. For example, these jobs saw a year-over-year increase of 19% in applications per job in Q1. Now I'll turn it over to Tim to talk through the financial results and our guidance.

Timothy Yarbrough, CFO

Thank you, Dave, and good afternoon, everyone. Our first quarter revenue of $122 million represents a 33% decline year-over-year, primarily due to continued softness in hiring demand. Quarterly paid employers were 72,000, representing a 32% decrease versus Q1 '23, but a 1% increase sequentially. Notably, Q1 '24 is the first quarter with a sequential increase in quarterly paid employers since 2022, which is a potential sign of stabilization in the hiring market. Net loss was $7 million in Q1 '24 compared to net income of $5 million in Q1 '23 and $6 million in Q4 '23. Q1 '24 adjusted EBITDA was $21 million, equating to a margin of 17% compared to $35 million, a margin of 19% in the prior year period, and $42 million with a margin of 31% in Q4 '23. Net income and adjusted EBITDA decreases both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter are primarily related to revenue declines. Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities was $513 million as of March 31, 2024, compared to $520 million as of December 31, 2023. Moving on to guidance. Our Q2 '24 revenue guidance of $117 million at the midpoint represents a 31% decline year-over-year and a 4% decline quarter-over-quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA guidance for Q2 '24 is $15 million at the midpoint or a 13% adjusted EBITDA margin. While this is not a return to normal seasonality where revenue would ramp from Q1 to Q2, the midpoint of our revenue guidance would represent the lowest sequential decline we have seen since 2022. Our adjusted EBITDA guidance reflects a modest increase in operating expenses as we continue to hire top talent to invest in product and technology. Assuming continued signs of stabilization of the hiring market referenced above, we believe it remains prudent to continue long-term product, technology, and marketing investments in our marketplace, yielding low- to mid-teens adjusted EBITDA margin in 2024. We are constantly assessing the state of the labor market, letting data lead our decision-making. We are poised to increase investment as opportunities arise and alternatively are prepared to show further cost discipline if conditions deteriorate. ZipRecruiter is well positioned to take advantage of an eventual labor market recovery and emerge from this challenging period for the industry from a position of strength. With that, we can now open the line for questions.

Operator, Operator

And your first question comes from Trevor Young with Barclays.

Trevor Young, Analyst

First one, can you just talk about the cadence of growth throughout the quarter? I think you'd normally be expecting momentum to kind of build each month throughout the quarter and into Q2. I don't think we saw that last year given some of the softness at that point. But I'm just wondering kind of in light of that implied sequential decline in revenue, is that same softness playing out this year as well?

Timothy Yarbrough, CFO

Yes, Trevor, this is Tim. Thanks for the question. So yes, last quarter, we talked about signs of labor market stabilization and what we saw throughout the course of Q1 largely reflected that. So our guidance right now sequentially is roughly flat, down just a tiny bit, but it's reflective of that kind of ongoing signs of stabilization that we saw in Q1 continuing through this quarter as well. So we're encouraged by those signs.

Trevor Young, Analyst

Okay. And kind of relatedly, QPE is firming up for the first time quarter-on-quarter in more than a year, and that's obviously pretty encouraging. Is that kind of a good level to model off of for the rest of the year? Or is it still just a fairly uncertain outlook from here on the QPE front?

Timothy Yarbrough, CFO

Yes, it could play out in a couple of different ways. So the lift that we saw modestly from Q4 to Q1 was again pretty encouraging, and that's largely driven by SMBs coming back. And you see kind of the opposite effect on revenue per paid employer with that ticking down a little bit, and that's more of a seasonal trend. So for the rest of the year, it really does depend on the extent that this flattening that we've been seeing continues out to the extent that it does, and I would expect that number to remain fairly flat throughout the course of the year.

David Travers, President

Trevor, this is Dave. I want to emphasize that the quarterly paid employer number is indeed a positive indicator. As we have mentioned previously, small businesses tend to react more quickly to shifts in the macro environment compared to larger enterprises, and this number is predominantly influenced by small businesses. We are prepared for various scenarios, but if this trend of flattening persists, the SMB-driven quarterly paid employer number will serve as a good measure for it.

Trevor Young, Analyst

Okay. Great. Hopefully, that positive momentum continues.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ralph Schackart with William Blair.

Ralph Schackart, Analyst

Maybe just a bolt on to the prior question. Just curious what the trend line has been, I guess, post Q1, if you observed any sort of change in pattern or if it's sort of consistent with what you observed in Q1? That's the first question. I have a follow-up.

Timothy Yarbrough, CFO

Yes. I think the pattern is largely consistent with what we saw in Q1. So definitely not a return to the seasonality that we would normally expect where Q2 would be sequentially higher than Q1. So we haven't seen that. So our guidance being down very modestly is basically showing the same signs of stabilization.

Ralph Schackart, Analyst

Great. Maybe just a follow-up. I know it's really early and tough to know whether you're dropping right now or if you see any further downturn. But just curious, is this a little bit more broad-based? Is it vertical-specific? But just any color you could provide on some of the stabilization trends that you're seeing in the paid employer number.

David Travers, President

Sure. Ralph, this is Dave. So yes, what we see is that there's definitely strength in government and education, which we see largely as a catch-up from being industries that struggled to keep pace with wage increases during the post-COVID boom period. But with the year-over-year trends, we see broadly based are encouraging as we see signs of flattening. Clearly not looking across the broad scope of it, calling a bottom, but also seeing very encouraging signs.

Ralph Schackart, Analyst

Great. Maybe if I can just ask one more, Dave. Just curious, just in terms of the technology vertical, what you have observed within technology.

David Travers, President

Yes. Technology continues to be one of the hardest-hit areas of job posting and hiring activity when we look on a year-over-year basis continues to be extremely impacted and is sort of an outlier on the negative end to the same extent that in a similar way that government and education are on the positive end of the spectrum.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan.

Douglas Anmuth, Analyst

If we consider the scenario where we have reached the bottom and things might begin to improve, could you elaborate on how this affects your investment strategy? What immediate actions will you take as you re-engage more actively? Additionally, could you provide an update on the progress and enhancements of your AI matching technology, as well as any positive impacts observed from different versions of the products?

Ian Siegel, CEO

This is Ian, and I’ll address this question. One of the advantages we have at ZipRecruiter is our extensive experience in sales and marketing, which equips us with accurate tools to gauge the demand for recruiting services. You can expect us to invest aggressively as we anticipate a return to normalcy or an upturn. However, while we are enthusiastic about the current metrics, it remains uncertain, and it's too early to draw definitive conclusions. The situation could develop in various ways, but we are well-prepared for any outcome. If things improve, we will invest swiftly and keep you informed about those investments. If conditions remain stable, our strategy will continue as is. Should circumstances worsen, we will implement suitable cost-cutting measures. Regarding our AI advancements, we're thrilled about the ongoing developments across various aspects of our business. Phil, our AI personal recruiter, has significantly transformed the jobseeker experience, evidenced by notable improvements in engagement metrics across the website. This includes everything from onboarding suggested jobs to Phil promoting candidates to employers. A key metric highlights that over half of new job seekers on our site receive direct outreach from employers within 24 hours of signing up, largely thanks to Phil's role as an AI matchmaker. This illustrates the power of our technology. Additionally, we see continuous improvements in the algorithms we employ, and we will keep you updated on these advancements, each contributing small enhancements that collectively lead to better service for both small and large customers. This was particularly evident last quarter, with a 19% increase in the average number of applicants for SMB jobs, an impressive gain considering there was no price change for these businesses, resulting in greater value for them. This also benefits job seekers who are guided to roles with a higher chance of being hired, creating a win-win situation in our marketplace.

David Travers, President

And this is Dave. Just to add on to that. To link the two parts to your question, we've talked many times about the flexibility of our cost structure and our business model, and we flex up and down as market sort of backdrop has changed. AI has really been the consistent area of ongoing investment throughout the cycle. And you can see how R&D has been the most resilient and stable part of our cost structure over the past many quarters. And that's because of the investments we've been making and continue to make like Ian just discussed. So that's an area where we're going to continue to press our advantage, and we feel very good about the results we've generated so far, and we think we're just getting started.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Josh Beck with Raymond James.

Josh Beck, Analyst

I wanted to begin by discussing the margins. You exceeded the guidance of low- to mid-teens, coming in at high teens, but you've maintained the low- to mid-teens guidance considering the current situation. What investments do you see as most promising? What factors in the macro environment would influence any adjustments to that framework?

Timothy Yarbrough, CFO

Yes. Thanks for the question, Josh. This is Tim. Yes, so the margin structure came in at the 17%. So like you said, a bit better than the low- to mid-teens. We still feel very good about that for the rest of the year. There might be some puts and takes as we go through Q3 and Q4 towards the back end of the year. But overall, that all assumes, again, a relatively consistent flattening across the board. But to the extent that we see the market softening or deteriorating a little bit more, then we will take action to address that in terms of cost reductions. But on the other hand, if things improve substantially, then we can ramp up that investment too. And the form of that investment in the near term would most likely be sales and marketing spend. Just as we see demand on the employer side opening up, we have a highly metric view of how we pursue those employers. And so we'd be happy to deploy capital with a long-term mindset.

David Travers, President

Yes, Josh, this is Dave. Our go-to-market teams excel at what they do. As we quickly analyze the results of our go-to-market investments, we make adjustments accordingly. In Q1, we maintained an investment level aligned with market conditions. If circumstances change, we are willing to modify our investment levels based on the returns we observe. We evaluate returns in three ways: cash-on-cash returns, long-term ROI, and the brand value we've developed over time. Our investment has exceeded $1 billion over the last decade, resulting in 80% brand awareness on both sides of the marketplace. Despite recent reductions in our investment, the strength of our brand continues to endure. We are continuously measuring these factors to calibrate our investment level accordingly.

Ian Siegel, CEO

I'll just add to that, this is Ian, that where we will persistently invest is in R&D because much like we think of our brand as one of our assets, the quality of the experience we're delivering is a huge part of the reason for the incredible surge in traffic that we're experiencing year-over-year this year. Our traffic is up 60%, yes, because we do a lot of advertising, but also because the experience is fundamentally improving. And I can't say enough about Phil, who has become a conversational UI that's guiding job seekers through their entire search experience. He's really an ally for these individuals as they try to find work. And I think we're feeling really excited about the future. So R&D is going to continue to be an area of focused investment. And then, on top of that, if we see a market turn, we will, of course, invest into it with our sales and marketing know-how.

Josh Beck, Analyst

Okay. That's all super helpful. Maybe a follow-up just around enterprise. This iCIMS partnership seems pretty substantial. I was looking up. It seems like they facilitated over 5 million hires last year, and they're a leader in the ATS space. So could that move the needle? And then just maybe more broadly, like how should we be thinking about just the pacing in terms of enterprise mixing up?

David Travers, President

Thank you, Josh. This is Dave. That’s a great question. iCIMS plays a significant role in the applicant tracking system market, ranking well within the top 10 of a highly fragmented industry. They service many large Fortune 500 clients as well as numerous mid-market enterprises, making them an important partner for us. This aligns with our overall strategy, where we have 150 ATS integrations and counting. These systems serve as a dashboard and a starting point for recruiters at large enterprises, allowing them to manage their workflows. For hiring managers, having our candidates seamlessly integrated into their workflow through the ZipRecruiter marketplace, known as ZipApply, is a crucial aspect of our integration efforts. Additionally, having their job listings appear in our organic search results means we can deliver candidates to new enterprise prospects even before our first meeting, demonstrating immediate value, which is a powerful approach. We're making a significant investment in these 150 integrations, with iCIMS being a major component. This partnership enables us to provide a seamless experience that surpasses other marketplaces and offers us a wealth of data. We can track candidate performance over time through these integrations, allowing our AI to adjust algorithms and improve candidate quality continuously. The more enterprises engage with ZipRecruiter, the more effectively we deliver results, and we are seeing that trend. We recognize that the enterprise segment represents around half of the overall market in the U.S. in terms of dollar value, and we believe we have room to grow in this area. With our rapidly expanding scale on the jobseeker side, we are becoming increasingly attractive, particularly as we’ve experienced 65% organic traffic growth. This excites us more with each new insight we gain. However, we also understand that enterprise clients tend to be slower to respond to macroeconomic changes compared to small and medium-sized businesses. Therefore, while we are confident that enterprise demand will shift alongside the macro environment, history suggests it might take longer than the shifts we observe in the SMB sector.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Fitzgerald with Wells Fargo.

Stanislav Velikov, Analyst

This is Stan Velikov for Brian. I guess on focusing the question on one of the growth pillars in our marketplace, the jobseeker. So can you share more about the level of jobseeker activity that we're seeing on the platform? Any trends like incremental profiles created, resumes added or updated visits engagement? And has the jobseeker activity increased in the past few months given the incremental changes in the most recent job market reports?

Ian Siegel, CEO

This is Ian. And what I would say is, first, broadly top of funnel jobseeker traffic coming in, which is the 65% growth year-over-year that we talked to you about, is just way up. And there are a variety of contributing factors to that. But what I'm very excited about is not just the top of funnel traffic. It's the down funnel metrics. It's the number of job seekers who are being actively propositioned by an employer without having to go reach out to them first. It's the number of applications per job that we're delivering to jobs in the SMB space. It's the number of times job seekers are shown jobs that they actually have interest in. And should they apply, they will, in fact, be a top candidate for that job because the algorithmic matching just continues to improve. So really, it's the engagement metrics in addition to the top of funnel metrics, which have all been climbing. And there's a variety of inputs that have been driving these metrics up. Some of it is Phil and the process of having a human voice guiding the jobseeker through the experience. It's been a force multiplier everywhere that we have put him. Some of it is just straight technological algorithmic improvements, and some of it is just site experience, which we also continue to improve. But across the board, it's not just top-of-funnel traffic; it's also the engagement metrics on our site. And you can see that in a variety of different places that we have reported on. But also, it's interesting to see that the number of downloads of our mobile app, which is the preferred method of search for the really serious jobseeker has also been going up pretty significantly. And so just generally, it's been a very good season for job seekers.

David Travers, President

I want to emphasize what Ian mentioned about the 65% growth in organic jobseekers and our perspective on it. Over the same year-over-year period, our sales and marketing investments have decreased by 38%. When we combine organic and paid data, according to third-party sources from March, our total U.S. visits increased by 13% despite the reduction in sales and marketing. This reflects the effectiveness of our product and brand investments discussed by Ian, which are aimed at long-term growth. As a result, in March, we are growing over 10 percentage points faster than our largest competitors in the U.S. jobseeker market.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney with Evercore.

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

This is Luke on for Mark. What are some key data points suggesting just general market share shifts or any evidence you can offer that you're successfully gaining share versus your competitors? And then just a kind of second question. In the peak of the cycle, how high can the revenue per paid employer go? Like what are some opportunities out there to grow revenue per paid employer over time?

David Travers, President

Great. This is Dave. I'll take the first part of that. So the two-sided marketplace, and so I would think about market share in two different ways. One, I just referenced, which is growing the jobseeker side in terms of visits year-over-year by 10 percentage points faster than any other major player in our space. So clearly there, and we've seen, over time, a good historical correlation that when there's a major move in jobseeker market share, employer dollars will follow and we've seen that over multiple players over multiple years. And then on the employer side of things, we've seen large public staffing firms release. We don't have any pure play online comps, but large public staffing firms have released quarterly performance for Q1. And we saw U.S. permanent placement revenue as low as 40% down year-over-year, which we think as we look across the market and our partners' data and our scope of the entire U.S. labor market, that's a pretty good indicator of what's going on out there. And so just stepping back about where we are in the macro and how to make sense of that. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released that in March, the total hires in the U.S. was 5.5 million, seasonally adjusted. And so if you look back over the last couple of recessions in 2007, right before the GFC, we were actually above 5.5 million in 2007. And then back to the previous recession before the dot-com crash in early January 2001, we were also above 5.5 million. So if you think back over the past 23 years, the GDP of the U.S. adjusted for inflation in real terms has grown 61%. The labor force or the number of employed people has grown 19%. But over that same time period, the number of hires last month was down 4%. And so that's an extremely unusual set of backdrop conditions. And so when we think about how we're doing in the broad scope of that and our games with the 65% growth in organic jobseeker growth, we feel very good about how we're doing against the market.

Timothy Yarbrough, CFO

Luke, this is Tim. I'll take the second part of the question about revenue per paid employer and where we see that going. So one of the long-term trends that we've seen in this business is that the revenue per paid employer has reliably trended up over time. And so that's true when you look at it on a consolidated quarterly basis, and that's also true, perhaps more interestingly, when you look at it on an employer cohort basis. So we disclosed this a couple of times in the past in our annual filings. But if you look at the monthly revenue per employer per annual cohort, reliably those numbers trend up into the right as each cohort ages. And what we've seen in this last super cycle and the downside is that there have been just a few exceptions, but the larger trends, I think, still hold to be very clearly true. Now where do we see this number going? We have a lot of confidence that there's a lot of headroom in revenue per paid employer. And to that, we can look at the offline solutions out there right now that are often charging anywhere from 15% to even 30% of first-year salary. We're not in the same ballpark as that. And so as our technology gets better and as this overall addressable market of $250 billion starts shifting more towards the online solutions, we feel like we have much more pricing power as our technology gets better and better, as we continue to win share away from the offline competition.

Operator, Operator

Your last question comes from the line of Justin Patterson with KeyBank Capital Markets.

Miles Jakubiak, Analyst

This is Miles Jakubiak speaking on behalf of Justin. First, I would like to know your thoughts on current visibility compared to the beginning of the year. Secondly, I would appreciate hearing more about the efforts to enhance application rights or application rates now that you are witnessing strong jobseeker trends and the potential impact on the business.

Timothy Yarbrough, CFO

Yes, this is Tim. I'll take the first part of the question. So on visibility, I would say the future is still pretty murky because we haven't seen that return to seasonality that we would normally see in a year much more like 2019, for example. So while we're encouraged by these signs of stabilization and by paid employers being up modestly on a quarter-over-quarter basis, I wouldn't say that we're calling a trough or anything like that. So I would say our level of visibility still remains fairly low, which is why we're still guiding one quarter out. But again, there's more optimism around the trends that we've seen.

Ian Siegel, CEO

And this is Ian, who will address the latter part of your question. When we analyze our marketplace, we focus on understanding what facilitates strong connections between employers and job seekers. This understanding informs many of our product decisions, such as encouraging employers to reach out to job seekers first, which is preferred by job seekers, or clearly communicating to employers the importance of including salary information in job descriptions, as this significantly boosts the number of applicants for those positions. In our marketplace, we continuously explore various strategies to enhance the application rate. Over the past few quarters, we have introduced several improvements that have successfully increased this application rate, subsequently enhancing job seeker satisfaction and leading to the surge in traffic you're observing today. This goes beyond mere advertising; it involves delivering a quality experience. We are confident that we are already providing an exceptional experience and are excited about the potential for future growth. Moreover, this is not solely about attracting top-of-funnel traffic; our engagement metrics are also improving. We believe this is a trend we can continuously drive upward.

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.