Hiring? You Need to Know How Google for Jobs Works

The folks at Google kicked off the summer of 2017 with a boom by announcing the launch of their new job search tool, Google for Jobs. This may be the IT giant’s first foray into the employment sphere, but it’s important to note that Google for Jobs is not a job board. Rather, it’s an enhanced search feature within Google that aggregates and displays job postings from across the internet.

Confused? Don’t worry—we’ll walk you through what Google for Jobs is, how it works, and how it can help recruiters, small business owners, and large corporations find top talent.

What is Google for Jobs?

Google for Jobs is a feature within the Google search experience designed to improve how professionals look for work and make it easier for job seekers and recruiters/employers to connect. Quite simply, it’s a job search page displaying a list of opportunities that can be filtered by industry, location, job title, company, and many other facets.

The tool is more than just a list of search results, however. By using machine learning, Google for Jobs optimizes these results and categorizes types of positions to display the most relevant options for users.

How do I find Google for Jobs?

Accessing Google for Jobs doesn’t require visiting a special webpage or typing in a secret password, but it’s not prominently displayed either. The feature exists within the normal Google search experience, so your starting point is the Google homepage. From there you can either try to find a specific position (for instance, “Writer Jobs in Frederick, MD”), type “Google for Jobs,” or simply type “jobs” into the search bar. Once you hit the enter button, you’ll notice a blue bar pop up amongst the normal search results with “Jobs” in big white letters.

Clicking on this blue bar will send you to the Google for Jobs search experience.

Can I post my jobs directly to Google for Jobs?

The short answer to this question is no, but there’s a little more to it than that. Google for Jobs is a job aggregator (much like the average job board), which means that they are pulling jobs from across the web and displaying them on the Google for Jobs search page. Many of the biggest career sites and job boards (including iHire) have integrated with Google for Jobs to send their job postings directly to Google for inclusion in Google for Jobs search results. While it may be possible in the future for individual employers to post their jobs directly to Google for Jobs, as of now the only options are to integrate with Google for Jobs or advertise roles with a site that has already integrated (more on that in the next section).

How do I get my jobs on Google for Jobs?

As mentioned above, if you are interested in promoting your job openings on Google for Jobs, you have two options: integrate with Google or find a third-party site/job board that has already integrated and post your jobs with them.

If you decide to go the DIY route, you’ll need to coordinate with your company’s IT/engineering team to edit the HTML of your job postings to add the structured data required by Google for Jobs. Once you’ve added the proper structured data, the next step will be to make sure that your job postings are indexable and your sitemap is constructed to make Google aware of any changes to your postings.

Google for Jobs promises to have a significant impact on the way job seekers look for work. Now that you know how Google for Jobs works, don’t get left behind by refusing to optimize your job postings. Get in front of more talented candidates and leverage the power of the number one search engine to optimize your hiring efforts!