The world’s most popular search engine has followed the trend and finally started to make job searching a feature on their search engine, after much speculation the writing was on the wall for Google Jobs to be released.

In this guest blog, provided by James Osborne from The Recruitment Network, we’re going to be talking about Google Jobs and the implications this will have on the Recruitment industry. To help us get a technical stand-point we’ve asked Luke Quilter, CEO of the award winning search marketing agency, Sleeping Giant Media, some important questions you may have about Google Jobs…

All in all, this is a very fascinating topic and one we should pay close attention too, as within the last week of writing this big moves have already been made by companies like Indeed to try and tackle Google’s huge power play!

What is Google Job search?

An inevitability. With smart search functionality becoming the norm, and the rise of voice automated search (like Google Home or Alexa), everyone and their dog is interacting with the smart and easy suggestions that Google offers for your daily searches.

When we can get instant information for the best local restaurants, or what’s showing at our local theatre, it was only a matter of time before we received these smart results for jobs, considering Google is the most likely place we’d turn to when hunting for a new job!

With employment levels low and the talent shortage being one of recruitment’s biggest problems globally, Google have taken steps to capitalise on this huge issue by connecting seekers and employers to the right information quicker and easier.

In their press release on Google Jobs, they said:

“For many people, a job needs to satisfy some key criteria, like commute time, job specialties they’ve honed or the hours they have available to work. For many jobs, you’ll also see reviews and ratings of the employer from trusted sites, right alongside the job description, and if you’re signed in, for some jobs you’ll even see how long it would take to commute to the job from home. We’ll continue to add additional filters and information in the future. Looking for jobs is a personal and complex journey, and one that we’re trying to support in this new search experience.”

“We’re working with a number of organizations from across the industry to bring you the most comprehensive listing of jobs—including LinkedIn, Monster, WayUp, DirectEmployers, CareerBuilder, Glassdoor and Facebook. This means you’ll see job postings from these sites and many others from across the web as soon as they’re posted. To ensure even more jobs are listed over time, we’re publishing open documentation for all jobs providers, from third-party platforms or direct employers, big or small, detailing how to make their job openings discoverable in this new feature.”

How will Google Jobs work?

When a job seeker is on the hunt for a new job they’ll most likely type something along the lines of “Part-time student jobs near me”, “Marketing Manager London”, “NHS Jobs”. Google will recognise these, among countless other choice keywords, which will show the searcher in-depth ‘enhanced’ search results that will allow them to pick the right result based on their personal criteria.

What Google has also done is offered a varied set of smart criteria a job posting can see to help the job-seeker to find the perfect match, criteria such as; reviews and ratings of the employers; commute time for the candidate; descriptions and skill requirements of the position. These are a few of the complex enhanced search features that will be available, and Google has said they’re working to add additional information features.

Here’s an example of the jobs search in action:

google-jobs-in-action

Is Recruitment Ready for this?

With statistics cropping up like I-COM’s survey, which says only “47% of Recruitment businesses surveyed had implemented the required ‘Schema’ formatting which will allow Google to interpret job adverts for Google Jobs’ it’s obvious that this isn’t seen as much of a priority than it truly is.

With Google playing one of the biggest roles in a candidate’s job seeking process, companies who are not moving with the times and pivoting to these new changes will find themselves in deep-water and quick.

Luckily, we over here in the UK have a clemency period, as Google has initially rolled the feature out in the US, giving us some time to learn and adapt to the coming changes.

Luke Quilter, CEO of the award winning search marketing agency, Sleeping Giant Media, has kindly lent his vastly superior knowledge on Google Jobs and SEO to us. He’s answered our choice questions on the matter and kindly produced two videos on the subject answering the most burning questions!

Thanks for your time Luke, I’m sure you’re very aware of the coming changes to Google with their Job search function, and rightly we’ve got some important questions to ask !

Should recruiters embrace the changes Google Jobs will bring?

“This is potentially a really interesting change for recruiters. It has the chance of potentially reducing the need for job seekers to go to job board and recruiter websites. The feature will pull the jobs (previously only viewable on a website) directly into the search results with the ability to refine your search directly on Google’s page. Users can then click through to the job board or the recruiter site from there. With this sort of seismic shift in the way people will potentially use Google to find jobs, there is no getting around it. Recruiters will have to embrace it and see where it goes next.”

Should a company start to invest in a SEO consultant?

“Obviously I am going to say yes… (it’s what we do!) Joking aside I would recommend this perspective on making that decision: When we started the business 9 years ago I ran all the finances and our books. As we grew, I could no longer afford the time, as there were much bigger things for me to be doing, in order to further the business. So we outsourced it. They could do in a day what took me a week, and I chipped in with the odd bit to help, so overall it was a saving in opportunity cost. I would apply the same thought process with SEO consultants and pretty much anything to be fair! Ultimately, the best mix is when you have outside expertise with internal team resource.”

Bring someone in house for a couple of days / full time?

“Maybe.”

Using an agency vs full time person?

“There are 2 challenges companies come up against when doing SEO in house. The first one (more common) you have someone who is keen and does a lot of things, but doesn’t have the expertise to know if it is the right thing, nor do they have the time to keep up with key developments in digital. Generally you make some progress, but sometimes it can be very slow, and at worst it can damage the sites performance. The alternative challenge is you have a “strategist” full time. They may know what to do, but don’t really want to do it, as ultimately some of digital work requires chopping at the “keyword coalface”. An agency has a blend of all levels of resource to try and overcome this issue. Additionally, the tools the agency should have at their disposal are expensive (we spend about 40k a year on them) so even if a company was to use these tools it would generally be more than a management cost for an agency.”

Should we train out consultants in basic markup / schema, because they may be best qualified to make the enhanced search result more appealing?

“I would say no… I think a developer should be able to sort out a template that works each time. The consultants can then just plug in the job details and away you go…”

ARE SME’s and Recruiters ready for the rapid rise in Google’s shift to voice search and Schema markup?

“Generally no… and this isn’t just in the recruiters sector. There is a lot of work for companies to do if they are going to fully embrace voice based search. It is about understanding natural language and working out how voice will change the way people navigate around the web.”

Will Google Jobs even come to the UK?

“So I am speculating that actually this may not happen… Google have recently been fined a lot of money by the EU for manipulating their results in favour of their own offerings. To me, this change will essentially be doing just that. Google won’t make any money out of it, yet… however I wouldn’t be surprised if, once this is adopted by the market, it becomes a pay per click model on each job listing. This is exactly what happened with Google shopping – it used to be free, but now isn’t – and ultimately that is why Google got the fine. So, I think yes prepare for it as you can’t risk not doing it, but maybe wait for more information on the roll out time, as things can – and often do – change pretty quickly in the digital world!”

 

About The Recruitment Network

This blog article was provided by The Recruitment Network.

The Recruitment Network is the ultimate support club for recruitment business leaders. We give our members an unparalleled level of support, guidance and tools to help them transform their recruitment businesses with the ultimate objective of improving business performance, increasing business efficiencies and significantly growing profitability and shareholder value.

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