A Guide to Google Jobs Feature

75% of candidates start their job search in Google…so why are we still relying on job boards to find candidates?

Google for Jobs isn’t changing the recruitment process, it’s simply providing a more responsive and intuitive job search experience that mirrors how people use online search. While the once-relied-upon newspaper classified advertising morphed into online job boards and later Indeed, the Google Jobs feature allows candidates to search for and find job adverts based on keyword and geography typed into Google.

What is the Google Jobs Feature?

The Google Jobs feature was created to simplify the job search function, aggregating jobs from job boards and company or recruiter career sites to display directly within the Google search results. Jobs are displayed by relevance, matching the search query to jobs based on the keyword and geography – like ‘marketing manager jobs in Manchester’, ‘marketing manager jobs near me’ or simply ‘marketing manager jobs’ (which would geo-target based on your physical location).

Google for Jobs is a free service providing organic search results, which – similar to non-career-related search results – are displayed under paid Google advertising but above other organic search results, largely Indeed or job boards.

What does Google for Jobs Mean for Indeed?

For many years Indeed has been the preeminent job search platform, aggregating jobs posted directly from recruiters and employers and providing a *free service* for employers looking for staff. Paid options allow for premium placement sponsorship on a pay-per-click model, inclusion in job alerts and sponsored jobs from your career site or ATS.

Indeed has decided not to make their jobs crawlable by Google for Jobs, instead relying on their own brand and market positioning to compete for candidate audiences. However, as you may have noticed, prior to Google for Jobs, Indeed commanded the top spots on SERPs (search engine results pages), and are now being pushed down the results pages.

Many recruiters rely on Indeed as a major (if not the majority) source of candidate traffic and applications – as high as 85% of website traffic and candidate CVs coming from this source. This (over) reliance is going to come at a price – we anticipate in the near future that Indeed will be shutting off free listings for recruiters. This is potentially concerning, with recruiters seeing the number of applications drying up if alternative sources of candidates are not identified.

It’s possible that the advent of Google for Jobs has delayed Indeed’s plans, but also presents an opportunity for recruiters to not only optimise their jobs to be seen directly on Google, but also to diversify their candidate acquisition channels.

How to Optimise Your Website and Career Site

The Google Jobs feature doesn’t allow you to directly post on the platform. Instead, you need to ensure you have the job posting schema marked up on the back end of your website to ensure your jobs are getting picked up. Career sites should also:

• Be mobile-friendly: With more candidates searching for jobs whilst on the move, ensuring your websites not only render on mobile but enable job seekers to apply via a CV saved on DropBox or through LinkedIn Apply will ensure that applicants convert into candidates.
• Have dedicated jobs pages: Each job posting should have its own unique page and URL to enable Google to crawl and aggregate each specific job

Furthermore, it’s important when writing the job posting itself, that they:

• Are tagged correctly: Job titles should appear as candidates would type them into a Google search. If you’re recruiting a Finance Manager, don’t call them a fiscal guru, wizard or other clever title, plus avoid headline grabbers like ***Amazing opportunity available for career-driven professionals!!!***.
• Match what people are searching for: Similar to the above, it’s important to use terminology that people are looking for – for example, the term Information Technology Manager gets 110 searches per month, whereas ‘Technology Manager’ and ‘IT Manager’ get 590 and 1300 searches, respectively. Using tools like Ubersuggest can help you easily find which keywords are most commonly used.
• Are specific: Including specific information like location and salary may sometimes be sensitive for recruiters, however Google’s algorithms look favourably on this information, increasing your visibility in search results. Other information like office location, work hours and benefits provide more information which may get picked up in search results.
• Are quality: If you’re prone to writing short and snappy job postings, it may be time to change tactic. The Google Algorithm aims to provide the most relevant results, so having a thorough job advert which reflects the keyword and related terms throughout the post, including skills and experience requirements as well as insights on company benefits will help your job appear higher in results.
• Reflect your brand: Google uses the same logo for your job postings as listed on your Knowledge Graph card, however, this can be amended should you be advertising on behalf of a company or separate line of business/subsidiary.
• Promote your brand: From a wider marketing perspective, your website and company reviews become more visible, so it is important to review your online footprint and brand and reputation. Reviews from Indeed and Glassdoor (among others) are displayed as well as images pulled from your website or other Google search results.
• Appear on your website: It may seem obvious, but too often recruiters will post jobs on a job board or on their LinkedIn account but fail to post them on their own website. The beauty of Google for Jobs is that over time, you should rely less on job boards thereby reducing your overall spend. Ideally, you should try to post jobs to your website first to index to Google before posting to the job boards – both will likely index to Google for Jobs, but the aim is to get candidates applying to the job on your website before having to spend credits/budget on the job board itself.

Interested in learning how your can maximise Google for Jobs as part of your wider SEO and candidate acquisition strategy? Thrive helps businesses get more candidates while reducing spend and reliance on traditional job boards and aggregators.