It’s been a mere seven months since Google Jobs launched. The supposed downfall of recruiting never happened. Seven months on and recruiting still stands.
As with every development that comes recruiting’s way, navigating the world with Google Jobs is more about learning how to work with Google Jobs and less about working against it.
The main thing to know about making Google Jobs work for you is finding out how to rank higher in the search results. After all, that’s all that Google comes down to: what links fall where when a user searches for something. If someone searches for “IT jobs” and you’re a an IT firm, even if you are showing up in the search results (and if you aren’t, here’s what you need to know in order to check that first box) you’re most likely way below others (Monster, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn to name a few). While it’s hard to get ranked higher than these massive websites that have ample traffic boosting them higher, there are certain things you can do to get above other competing IT firms.
Lucky for you, our team already started doing the legwork on seeing how recruiting companies can leverage Google Jobs and stop fearing what the implications of it might be. These things are always evolving but, here are some initial steps you can take to get your jobs ranking higher than your competitors’:
Implement a Structured Data Schema.
Structured data wha…?
Yes, it sounds scary. In reality, if you’ve got any sort of tech-y person at your company, they can help you get this going.
To make what can be a very long explanation relatively simple, “structured data” is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content. It’s clear information that’s written into the coding of a website, which Google can read and scan, helping it know when to show your job posting in jobs search results. If you implement a structured data schema on your careers site where your jobs are posted, Google is able to more easily read the page and it’s more likely to put it higher in the search results next time someone Googles “IT jobs”. For a deeper dive on all things structured data, check out this article straight from Google.
Include more information in your job postings.
The more information Google has from your job posting, the higher up it will rank you in the Google Jobs search results. There are certain minimum requirements Google has to have for your job posting, but after that all bets are off on what you can and don’t necessarily have to include. Our advice? The more information you can put in, the better.
A few of these non-essentials-but-still-highly-recommends include:
–Work hours
–Skills
–Industry
–Salary or pay rate
For more information on recommended items to include, check out Google’s guide here.
Use the broadest titles possible.
When titling your job descriptions, you might get caught up in thinking of describing the job to a T in the title. The problem is, candidates don’t know all the finer points yet. To return to our previous example of “IT jobs”, you might be looking for a “customer specialist for product technology” but guess what? No one is ever going to search that. They’re going to search “IT jobs”. By making your job titles broad, you’re allowing for Google to put you into more search results which will lead to more candidates finding you.
Rather than viewing new developments like Google Jobs in terror, treat it as an opportunity to make your recruiting efforts better. Start with these three steps and watch your candidate pipeline flow!