
What does Google for Jobs mean for the Job Board industry?
For those that missed it, in February, Facebook rolled out its first dedicated jobs platform (read more here). It now seems that all of the major tech players have an eye on the jobs market, with Google last week announcing its flagship Jobs product. You can read more about the launch of Google Jobs here.
As with all major rollouts, the US seems to be getting the first exposure to these products. Facebook Jobs is in Australia, but only a few company pages currently have it. This will probably quickly change over the coming weeks. Google Jobs is also starting in the US but the magic words “with more countries coming in the future” suggests it won’t be long until Australia and New Zealand see the Jobs product in our local markets.
The big questions are: what does this mean for both the existing job boards and job aggregators, such as Seek, Indeed, Adzuna etc., and what impact will this have on the recruitment industry itself?
One incredibly interesting perspective suggests Google Jobs could spell the end for Indeed. This is because Indeed currently gets a large proportion of all its traffic from Google search. The full article can be found here.
Obviously, the Job Board industry is going to experience a lot of change over the next few years. The impact that things such as Google Jobs and Facebook Jobs will have will largely depend on the resources the two companies are prepared to invest. There is no doubt that if they truly want to play in this space, they can do so, but it will require a concerted effort to oust the existing market leaders.
For recruiters, in the short term, this increased competition can only be a good thing with an increasing number of sources that can be utilised for candidate attraction. In the long-term, things are less clear. It may well be that job search is just dominated by different, bigger organisations. Our advice is to keep an eye on these changes and be prepared to try some of the newer tools as you just might strike candidate gold.
With Google services aggregating employer adverts on selected partner sites and a nod to keeping recruiters out of the service in our view it has become the greatest online source of job data for recruiters ever invented. It should be like shooting fish in a barrel for recruiters I imagine the pitch could go something like “Dear Employer, the world’s largest search engine has failed to send any quality people to your job post you paid for on CareerBuilder. Given that would you like to meet Pete or Suzie who are qualified for your job and looking for work today via my agency?
Sure you will get a percentage who will say we don’t use agencies as always but it would be well worth the pitch. Google we salute you, for the leg up you are giving recruiters while trying to solve an employer problem LOL.