It’s time to start taking Google for Jobs seriously. Though it’s only active in the US market at present, a worldwide release is expected before the end of 2017. From by Nicolas Roux, EMEA Partner Manager, Bullhorn.

If you’re a candidate looking for work, it will greatly simplify the power of finding a suitable position. If you’re working in recruitment and looking to find suitable candidates, it will greatly simplify the process of identifying and connecting with them.

And it will achieve these two ends using its flagship search engine. Google for Jobs uses artificial intelligence to syndicate vacancies from job boards, professional networks such as LinkedIn, and even company websites. These postings are then issued through its search filters, making the end-user aware of any suitable postings related to their query.

However, any business looking for suitable candidates will need to adjust their approach to suit this function: new recruitment methods cannot be mastered with old tactics. Google for Jobs requires thoughtful, strategic efforts on your part to succeed.

To make the most of it, it’s first necessary to consider the full breadth of its impact – on you, on candidates, on job boards, and on businesses in general.

Changing candidate experience
Finding work can be deeply frustrating for candidates. The one perfect role that balances salary expectations, aspirations, experience, proximity, and culture is often rather elusive.

But sometimes this job does exist – or something close enough, anyway. Google for Jobs is designed to bring it right to the candidate. It makes the process of searching for work and finding it much faster and much more convenient: its filters will eliminate all roles that don’t suit the searcher’s criteria – all wheat, no chaff.

More importantly, these jobs are much easier to apply for. Candidates don’t have to create profiles across several job boards: they don’t have to spend hours poring through LinkedIn ads – Google, an integral part of their daily internet experience, will do it for them.

Google for Jobs may seem like a minor addition to the company’s ever-expanding feature list, but where candidate experience is concerned, it couldn’t be more important.

The impact on recruitment
Google for Jobs is also good news for in-house HR teams and recruitment agencies alike – if they’re willing to put the work in.

The new feature will require them to increase their digital competence and search engine optimisation (SEO) knowledge, since roles they advertise will be competing for attention with the other roles returned by the query. Keywords, phrasing, and relevance will be even more important than usual, so they’ll want to test certain adverts against each other. But if you master its intricacies and stay scrupulously up to date with it, you’ll receive better qualified, more relevant replies to any job listing you post.

Of course, any attempts to become Google-savvy must be accompanied by certain caveats and warnings. Most importantly, Google for Jobs is not a substitute for recruitment best practice – it augments it. It’s vital to ensure that person-to-person communication and candidate engagement don’t diminish in the recruitment process.

Job boards: obsolete, or more important than ever?
Job boards are long-time mainstays of the HR and recruitment professions – and Google for Jobs will change them forever. Sites like Monster and Career Builder have already adapted to the changing status quo and, if they hope to prosper, other companies in this space will do the same.

Google for Jobs, at present, will return results from sites such as Indeed and Reed. But if businesses understand that they can get the same benefits with some SEO knowledge and a little tinkering with job descriptions, why would they choose to use them?

If HR directors are to continue relying on job boards in some capacity, they should be those boards with clearly-developed SEO knowledge and greater consultative value. If they focus on niche talent groups where candidates are hard to find even with a function such as Google for Jobs, all the better.

Making life easier for employers
But if Google for Jobs causes potential complications job boards, it will unequivocally make life easier for businesses. By making it easier for better candidates to apply for suitable positions, it can drive up the level of talent at any company that chooses to use it.

Recruiters will still be useful, because there’s always a place for expertise: though the pool of respondents will typically be better, it will still need to be whittled down – knowing how to separate the ‘very good’ from the ‘best’ is an art form, and one the recruitment profession has mastered. It goes without saying that effective recruitment can drive value for the business – and lower overall costs.

Google for Jobs won’t replace the HR and recruitment functions – it will make them work more effectively and more efficiently than ever. It will help to close any internal skill gaps and open up new opportunities. It’s not here yet, but when it arrives, there’s a good chance it will change everything. The best professionals will have already begun their preparations.