I had the privilege of attending HR Tech in Las Vegas. During my time at the conference, I attended a session given by Google, titled, “I am Feeling Lucky: Google Products for Recruiting” by Bogonil Balkansky. It was so insightful and interesting to learn firsthand from Google about all their new products and solutions they have rolled out. Here’s everything I learned from the session.
TOP TAKEAWAYS
Google entered the recruitment space for two primary reasons.
- It’s a big market and there is a lot of opportunity.
- Google has technology capabilities that can provide a ton of value to job seekers and existing players in the market. As of now there are three core services that they provide.
GOOGLE’S THREE CORE SERVICE OFFERINGS
Google For Jobs – We are all most familiar with this product, but essentially it focuses on helping both job seekers and employers, through deep collaboration with the job matching industry.
- A user will be able to type in a search that is job related, and Google will display aggregated search results sourced from partners at the top of search results.
- Job seekers will have the ability to filter search results by different criteria ranging from job type to location.
- As of now, they do not plan on offering any sponsored paid opportunities.
UPDATE as of November 16, 2017: Google has announced four new enhancements to Google for Jobs.
- Salary information – All jobs will now include salaries. If salary information is not included in original job postings, Google will show an estimated salary based on similar jobs. Job seekers will now have the ability to filter their job search by salary.
- Commute time – Job seekers can now filter by jobs that are within 2, 5, 15, 30, 60 or 200 miles from a nearby location.
- Job-board-of-choice apply – If a job is distributed to Google for Jobs by multiple sources, a candidate has the ability to select which board they would like to apply through. They can also opt to apply directly on the employer’s ATS and bypass the third-party intermediaries as well. For example, if a candidate has a profile with CareerBuilder, it’s easy for them to use their account to apply for a job and therefore they may prefer that job board. It’s not clear how Google prioritizes how the jobs are displayed, but if job seekers have preferences then those boards will likely have higher rankings in the future.
- Bookmarked jobs – When job seekers bookmark a job, those jobs will appear in a saved jobs tab that they can access on any device
Cloud Job Discovery – Job matching that helps people find jobs more easily and provides the most relevant and targeted job suggestions
- Why is this meaningful to companies? It’s easy to misunderstand job seekers’ intent when using keyword search. For example, if a job seeker was looking for a dental assistant job, they could get a job result that includes words such as, “assistant with dental benefits.”
- Why does this matter to businesses? Companies spend a lot of time and money to get job seekers to view their jobs and apply. If job seekers don’t get the most relevant job results, they leave.
- Early results so far? Google has seen an increase of 41% in applicant engagement.
UPDATE as of October 2020: Read all about Hire by Google Shutting Down: When, Why, and What's Next
Hire – This is an application tracking system that makes it easy to identify talent, build strong candidate relationships and manage the interview process end to end. It also integrates seamlessly with G-Suite apps like Gmail and Google Calendar. As of now, roughly 3.5 million business currently use this for their recruiting solutions.
- Why is this meaningful? There is a need for a dedicated recruiting system for small to medium size business. ATS are not integrated with G-Suite products, which can create a lot of busy work for recruiters.
- Who can currently use Hire?
- Companies with fewer than 1,000 employees
- U.S.-based companies (global to come)
- Current users G-Suite products
To learn more about these Google products, please visit Recruitics’ Google for Jobs microsite.
