This week Google for Jobs launched in the UK, and it’s generated a lot of interest in the in-house recruitment community.

It’s also led to a number of questions – namely how organisations can ensure that their vacancies are listed on this new offering.

So how does it work for an employer?

Our understanding is that organisations cannot post directly to Google for Jobs.

Instead, Google ‘scrapes’ vacancies from participating third-party job boards which have integrated with Google for Jobs. It is also designed to scrape jobs from careers sites.

This means there are two ways to display your vacancies on Google for Jobs. The first is to post your job on a participating job board. The second is to ensure your careers site is optimised for Google to crawl and index your job listings.

…and what about for candidates?

Having changed the way we use maps, shop and search, it seemed inevitable that Google would start making moves on the way we look for jobs.

When a candidate now searches for, say, ‘Web developer job’, the search results will display a neat ‘Jobs’ box, tailored to your location, between the normal Google Ads and organic search listings.

When a candidate clicks through, they are taken to the original job listing, whether on a participating third-party job board, or an organisation’s career site.

What do in-house recruitment teams need to know?

For many of you, we know that your priority is to understand how your careers site job listings can appear on Google for Jobs search results over third-party job board results.

The key thing is to ensure that your careers site is optimised for Google to crawl and index your job listings. This includes some technical steps, such as adding ‘job posting structured data’ to your job description pages.

Google has provided a lot of guidance around these actions and it may be something your IT team can do in-house for you.

If not, we would recommend that you talk to your ATS provider to understand whether they can support you with further careers site optimisation.

There are also some actions you can take, known as on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), to help make your job descriptions clearer and potentially increase the likelihood of being indexed by Google.

What should industry suppliers like us be doing?

Well, in the first instance it’s vital that suppliers are aware of this new offering from Google and the potential impact it will have on in-house recruitment teams.

The next step is then to understand whether any technical work needs to be undertaken, especially if some organisations are concerned that their careers site job listings are being overshadowed by third-party job board listings.

To support our customers, we are implementing a thorough technical review of their careers sites to ensure that they are meeting Google’s guidelines for optimisation.

Which job boards integrate with Google for Jobs?

At this stage, Google has not published an exhaustive list of which job boards integrate with Google for Jobs in the UK.

If you are unsure if your job board is participating in Google for Jobs, our advice would be to speak to your contact there to find out.

What’s next?

This offering from Google is new to the UK jobs market, and as such there will continue to be questions, particularly around what the longer-term impact on employers might be.

From our perspective, we are committed to ensuring our customers and Hireserve ATS are as prepared as possible for future innovations like Google for Jobs.

And after all, if we got through the GDPR, we can all take Google for Jobs in our stride…