Google for Jobs Looks to Be a Game Changer

October 5, 2017 – Whether you’re a student looking for a part-time job, an electrician seeking work closer to home, or a teacher moving to another state to be close to family, finding a job can be difficult. With job postings scattered across the web, newspapers and help wanted signs, it’s not always easy to find the ones that are a good fit based on your unique needs and skills.

As a result, many job seekers feel like they can’t find the job they want or apply to roles that aren’t the right fit. At the same time, 46 percent of U.S. employers face talent shortages and have issues filling open positions with the right candidate, said a recent ManpowerGroup report.

Google has a long record of using its technology to connect people with information. This summer it launched Google for Jobs, a company-wide initiative focused on helping both job seekers and employers, through deep collaboration with the job matching industry. This effort includes the Cloud Jobs API, announced last year, which provides access to Google’s machine learning capabilities to power smarter job search and recommendations within career sites, jobs boards and other job matching sites and apps.

Recently, the tech giant took the next step in the Google for Jobs initiative by putting the convenience and power of search into the hands of job seekers. The goal is connect Americans to job opportunities across the U.S.

Connecting Job Seekers

“While job seekers may be looking for openings right next door, there’s a big disconnect here,” said Pichai Sundar, CEO of Google. “We want to better connect employers and job seekers through a new initiative, Google for Jobs.”

Google is teaming with a number of organizations from across the industry to gather its comprehensive listing. This means you’ll see job postings from these sites and many others from across the web as soon as they’re posted. These include postings from LinkedIn, Monster, Ezayo, WayUp, DirectEmployers, CareerBuilder, Glassdoor and Facebook. Google is publishing open documentation for all jobs providers, including third-party platforms and direct employers, detailing how to make their job openings discoverable in this new feature.

The service is similar to Google products that aggregate news articles from different websites, products from different shopping sites, flight booking information from different airlines and travel listings from different online travel catalogs. Google for Jobs is expected to deliver more comprehensive results than any of the original sites can deliver on their own.

How It Works

Google said the concept is to give job seekers an easy way to see which jobs are available without having to go to multiple sites only to find duplicate postings and lots of irrelevant jobs. With this new feature, which is now available in English on desktop and mobile, you type in a query like “jobs near me,” “writing jobs,” or whatever your interest, and the search-result page will show you the new job search widget that reveals a broad range of jobs.

From there, you can further refine your query. For example, you can limit the search to full-time positions. When you click through to obtain more information about a specific job, you can also see Glassdoor and Indeed ratings for a company. You can also filter jobs by industry, location, when they were posted and employer. Once you find a query that meets your criteria, you can also turn on notifications to receive an immediate alert when a new job is posted that matches your personalized query.

Google’s official blog listed the following benefits to employers:

• Prominent place in search results: Your postings are eligible to be displayed in the dedicated job search feature on Google, featuring your logo, reviews, ratings and job details.
• More, motivated applicants: Job seekers can filter by various criteria like location or job title, meaning you’re more likely to get applicants who are looking for exactly for that job.
• Increased chances of discovery and conversion: Job seekers will have a new avenue to interact with your postings and click through to your site.

Over-Automated Recruitment Process Is Leaving Job Candidates Frustrated
Eighty two percent of potential employees are often frustrated with an overly automated job search experience, according to a new study by Randstad US.

“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,” said Nick Zekrasek, product manager at Google. “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,” he said.

“Google’s new job search product aligns with our core strategy and will allow candidates to explore jobs from across the web and refine search criteria to meet their unique needs,” Monster.com’s CTO Conal Thompson recently told Tech Crunch. “Yes, as with anything, there will be some challenges and adjustments to existing job posting sites; the biggest perhaps being for those that are currently driven by SEO.”

Ultimately, Google is determined to crack the code on matching available jobs with the right candidates, Mr. Pichai said. “The challenge of connecting job seekers to better information on job availability is like many search challenges we’ve solved in the past.”

One of the biggest obstacles in a typical online job search is the inconsistencies between industries and organizations in job titles and keywords used in job descriptions. Google hopes to address this issue with its new search feature.

“We worked hard to include jobs across experience and wage levels, including jobs that have traditionally been much harder to search and classify,” Mr. Pichai said. “Think retail jobs, hospitality jobs, etc.”

New App

Shortly after the launch of Google for Jobs, it debuted Hire, a new recruiting app that integrates with G Suite apps like Gmail and Google Calendar.

Hire and G Suite are made to work well together, according to Google. For example, recruiters can:

• Communicate with candidates in Gmail or Hire and the emails will sync automatically in both.
• Schedule interviews in Hire with visibility into an interviewer’s schedule from Calendar. Hire also automatically includes important details in Calendar invites, like contact information, the full interview schedule and what questions each interviewer should focus on.
• Track candidate pipeline in Hire, and then analyze and visualize the data in Sheets.

Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor; and Will Schatz, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media