Google for Jobs Basics
Have a look at the questions below for more information but for a brief summary of Google for Jobs have a look at this 1 minute 20 second video.
Contact us to talk you through it in more detail.
Google is entering the jobs market, effectively launching a job board embedded into the heart of Google.
Their aim is to show every job on the planet and allow users to search, filter, review and read about available jobs all without ever having to leave Google.
They want candidates to have all the information about a job without having to leave the platform. The only time a candidate needs to exit Google is to go to the final destination to apply.
Google’s aim is to generate more relevant results for candidates, ensure a higher quality user-experience, and to remove duplicate listings of job posts from its results pages.
The product is easy to use and will work very much like Google Flights.
88% candidates use Google as part of their job search, so we can be pretty sure this is the biggest shake up to recruitment in the last 10 years.
Read the rest of these questions to find out more or contact us and we’ll talk you through Google for Jobs.
It's free.
Ultimately, Google may show promoted job listings near the top of the fold within Google for Jobs, similar to how PPC advertising currently works for normal searches.
However, unlike many in the industry, we think Google for Jobs is likely to remain free for quite some time. Google are primarily focused on protecting their $750bn+ market cap.
Google Flights, Gmail and Google Maps are all free. This is about Google’s quest for world domination rather than an income stream. Scary eh?
Many people think this is Google's way of generating more money from the job market. At Enhance Media we think it’s a little different to that. A little bigger …
We think Google were scared of becoming a “bounce on, bounce off service” with people using it only as a way of getting to sites that they then interact with.
Add to that the fact that SEO results were dominated by Indeed or LinkedIn it started to mean that Google was adding no value.
With Facebook launching jobs and Microsoft buying LinkedIn we think this is Google protecting its core business. Google cannot afford to become an irrelevance in something as important as jobs. If that means sacrificing a few hundred million dollars of income to protect $761 bn of company value – it’s an easy decision.
Of course Google will make money from this eventually but we think this is more about protecting a quest for global domination than it is about short term revenue. Talk to us to find out more.
The solutions
We've been tracking each location where Google for Jobs has been set live, you can keep up to date with where it's been released here.
We got asked this question so many times that we built the microsite around it.
You can look at the full technical guide if you want to really understand Google for Jobs.
Alternatively, our audit is a great place to start and will help you understand how ready your company is for Google for Jobs.
If you’re ready to get going, or want to get ahead of the market, jump straight to one of our three fully defined solutions.
At the moment Google is stripping out formatting in jobs. They want it clean and easy to read. However we don’t know how long that will last. Clearly Google want to show jobs in the best possible light so we expect they will allow certain things to enrich the experience.
The most likely of these will be video - especially as Google has created their own Video Schema – something Enhance has been working on for several years. For now they are keeping it simple. For the future we expect big changes and rich media.
Unlikely. They are trying to roll out Google for Jobs to every company in the world.
They are talking directly to some job boards, some aggregators and a few applicant tracking systems. You might carry enough jobs for Google to talk to you directly, but what would you ask them to do – they’d still refer you to a company like Enhance Media to implement the best practice solution.
Who will gain? Who’s worried?
Incredibly good news. Until now the search engine results have been dominated by job boards, aggregators (Indeed), LinkedIn and recruitment consultancies. This is a chance for employers to finally have their jobs show directly at the top of Google. Given that Google is used by 88% of candidates during job seeking, we think this is the biggest change in recruitment in 10 years.
We think they are very worried. Whilst they are originally being targeted as “partners”, that’s simply to get volume within Google for Jobs at the start.
Enhance Media can already optimise employer jobs to appear above LinkedIn and job boards. When that is commonplace candidates will have a choice between a direct link to the employer or a link to the job board on every job description.
Unless your job board adds value elsewhere, this is something that could be extremely worrying for the job boards and extremely exciting for employers.
And Google for Jobs is free…
Google Shopping was fined $3.2bn by the EU in 2017. The first difference though is that revolved around paying for display. Google for Jobs is free (for all the defensive reasons we discuss in the answer above) so shouldn’t be subject to the same problems.
Secondly, Indeed is currently dominant in Google searches. Google for Jobs opens the market up to employers and allows them to advertise at the top of Google - rather than restricting it to only job boards with deep SEO pockets.
Other questions we’ve been asked
Google+ bombed.
Google Glass was paused but is currently being revived (maybe it was just a bit too far ahead of its time).
Google Maps is now the standard mapping application globally.
Google Mail is the biggest internet mail service in the world.
Google Search is the homepage for half of the world’s internet users and the search engine for 80% of them.
Google Android is the biggest mobile OS on the planet.
Only the very brave back Google to lose.
The first and most important area will be to add direct employer jobs and prioritise these (hence the excitement for employers).
The next thing we expect is for Google to add video into job listings.
The stages after that are to enable direct apply.
Following this, Google can push products that were recently launched but are under the radar to an extent. Google Hire is Google’s own applicant tracking system and Google Cloud Jobs API is a replacement for every job search page in the world.
At that point Google own recruitment – end to end.
ATS providers will need to roll out a major product update to become compatible with Google for Jobs. Of course every ATS will say they are “about to do so” but most are still not compatible with mobile, can’t apply via tablet and don’t display jobs effectively on career sites.
Even if you do get an ATS compatible solution, you will be the same as every other customer so you won’t gain any market advantage. We can add value.
Google regularly change their requirements for search and Google for Jobs. The ATSs have large systems to maintain. They just won’t be able to keep up.
Finally, the best ATS companies already partner with Enhance Media to implement Google for Jobs.
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