Google has jumped into the recruitment market with its very own job search engine, Google for Jobs. Their aim is to provide a more efficient way of matching candidates with the jobs most relevant to them. But where does that leave recruiters?
To help you understand a little more about it, we’ve pulled together some information on Google’s new feature, the main concerns for recruiters and what you can do to overcome them.
“OK Google – what is Google for Jobs?”
Google for Jobs is an enhanced job search tool developed to make job hunting a more simple and enjoyable experience for candidates. To do this, Google’s AI algorithms pull information from employer and recruiter careers pages (as well as LinkedIn, Glassdoor and Monster) organises the data, eliminates any duplicates and presents them clearly on a search page as soon as job ads are posted.
Google for Jobs has been live in the US since June 2017, and whilst there’s been no official date announced for a UK launch, there are signs that the search engine has already started scraping UK sites in preparation.
Here's a video guide on how to try it out before it launches.
Why is Google for Jobs important for recruiters?
The way people apply for jobs has changed vastly in the last few years. 30% of all Google searches are employment-related, indicating that candidates will already Google jobs as their first port of call when beginning a job search. And since candidates will be able to both look for and apply to roles directly on Google for Jobs, it’s likely that the platform will quickly become ubiquitous in the recruitment process.
Therefore, it’s more important now than ever to ensure your job ads are SEO optimised. The better optimised they are with all the right relevant keywords, the more likely your ads will be prioritised by Google for Jobs, in turn boosting your chances of finding the best and most relevant candidates.
Will Google for Jobs be good or bad for recruitment?
Despite what you might be thinking, this doesn’t spell disaster for the recruitment industry! However, being unprepared for the changes could certainly result in you being left behind, as it’s likely that traffic to your job pages will drop substantially if Google isn't scraping them.
According to a recent study, more than half of the UK’s top recruitment agencies still aren’t ready for Google for Jobs. The report surveyed one hundred of the country’s largest recruitment agency websites and found out that only 47 of those had implemented the formatting needed to make a job post visible to Google for Jobs (more on this below).
Not being prepared for Google for Jobs roll-out is likely to be the biggest threat recruiters will face in the coming months. Whether you’re an agency recruiter or you’re recruiting in-house, if your website’s job pages aren’t optimised, you risk being left behind.
Are my jobs pages ready for Google for Jobs?
The key to getting ready for Google for Jobs at this early stage is to focus as much as possible on your own website, ensuring that Google is able to easily ‘read’ and scrape your jobs pages so they appear in candidate searches. To find out how well-optimised your job pages currently are, try entering your website URL into our recruitment website grader and see how you score.
Aside from this, here’s a checklist of the main things to ask yourself when preparing your website for Google for Jobs:
- Do you have the job posting schema implemented? This is a piece of code that’s entered into the back-end of your website to make your job posts visible to Google for Jobs. You can use this Google testing tool to see if your site will be picked up.
- Are your job ads tagged correctly? Google relies heavily on tagging using this standard system, so it’s important to make sure your job ads are tagged appropriately. For example, are your job titles clear enough (no ‘gurus’ or ‘ninjas’ please!)? Are they keyword optimised?
- Do you have a separate page on your website for each job ad? Having more than one job per page could result in your page being ignored by Google.
- Have you included a clear location for each position? Whilst some agencies won’t want to highlight the location of their clients, this will be necessary for Google for Jobs.
Google for Jobs has the potential to change the initial stages of the recruitment process as we currently know it. Using AI algorithms, the platform will gradually learn more about a job seeker and deliver them more relevant results.
Whilst some will worry this could put recruiters out of a job, it’s important to remember that this will actually benefit us in practice, as we’ll be receiving more applications from more suitable candidates – as long as we’re prepared for it!
To get the full downlow on Google for Jobs and how you can use it to your advantage as a recruiter, download the playbook below...
