What is Google for Jobs?

Google for Jobs is Google’s new update to its jobs search and job results capabilities. You can say or think whatever you want about Google, but one fact remains: Google is passionate about improving the user search experience from the Google search bar. Google for Jobs is one example.

In most countries in the world, Google no longer returns the old search results page (and lots of Indeed results) when a user enters keywords signifying a job search. Try it in your search bar. Search “engineering jobs in Arlington, VA” or “surgical nursing jobs in Chicago” or some other common search string and Google will return the first page of its Google for Jobs solution. Google attempts to return search results that it believes will be relevant TO YOU. Its complex and mysterious algorithm takes lots of things into consideration, and tries to get it right. While it might not yet be perfect, we believe that Google will continue to get better and the search results will become more and more relevant.

The first page of Google for Jobs that comes back looks like this:

This page lists a few results that Google believes will be relevant to you. It also offers the user the opportunity to expand this list to 100 jobs, or to fine tune the search by department (Human Resources), job posting date, part time/full time, etc. The user can work through this list, or she can go back and perform a different search. When the user sees a job that interests her, she simply clicks on that job.

The second page of Google for Jobs that comes back looks like this:

This is the selected detailed job listing WITH a listing of sites (see the orange boxes in the screenshot above) on which the applicant can apply, and, again on the left hand side, the user finds more jobs that Google thinks are relevant. Now that Google knows which job the job seeker clicked, Google attempts to present other, relevant, jobs to the user. Let’s get back to the sites on which the user can apply – this is really important. Google will ONLY show sites that meet the Google schema and which Google believes are relevant to the job seeker.

At this point, there is no research to show whether or not Google gives preference to the company careersite, to a site with an easy apply, and/or to a site that is responsive. We believe that, over time, Google will fine tune this component of Google for Jobs. Remember, Google wants to maximize the user search experience. Two things that definitely maximize the user experience are 1) the most direct flow to the corporate recruiter with 2) the easiest apply experience for the user. Google has the capability to discover and track this information.