How Can I Get My Job Posts to Appear on Google for Jobs?
What is Google for Jobs?
When posting open job opportunities on the web, you may find that the same job posting appears in the search results from multiple job sites, through an applicant tracking system (ATS) or on a corporate careers page. To remove these redundant and often confusing search results for job seekers, Google recently launched a new AI-powered job search feature called “Google for Jobs.” This mechanism is built right into the standard search engine everyone is already familiar with.
This means that by searching Google for jobs near me, jobs in “location name” or “career type” jobs, job seekers will see the usual sponsored (paid) results followed by these new job opportunity results. They appear in a prominently located box, followed by the usual organic search results.
Engaging with this new jobs section of the results page will take job seekers to a robust, multifaceted search interface that helps them refine their query to find increasingly relevant job opportunities.
Great, now how do I get my jobs to show up there?
There are two ways to get into Google for Jobs:
1. The quicker, probably more expensive way
Google has created partnerships with a number of job sites and applicant tracking systems. Working with one of them is the easiest way to let Google know about your job opportunities. As of this writing, Google lists their partners as:
- CareerBuilder
- Glassdoor
- ZipRecruiter
- Snagajob
- Monster
- Jibe
- JazzHR
- iCIMS
- Direct Employers
- America’s Job Exchange
- Madgex
- WayUp
- myCNAjobs
- Higher Education Recruitment Consortium
- Jora
- Jobing.com
- Local Job Network
- Care.com
- Jobs.net
- Recruiting.com
Aloysius Butler & Clark (AB&C) can work with you to set up feeds for some of these job boards to ensure that your postings appear there. But in many cases, they will give preferential treatment to sponsored posts.
2. The more involved way
The best approach is a direct integration with Google to be sure they have a complete index of your job opportunities. This typically starts with some housekeeping. It requires that you have your own recruitment website, that you publish job postings on that website, and that you have the ability to edit the HTML on those pages. According to Google’s documentation, integration involves four main steps:
- Ensure your job opportunity posting web pages are indexable.
- Add structured data to your job postings.
- Use sitemaps to keep Google informed about changes to your job opportunity postings.
- View analytics such as clicks and impressions in the Google Search Console.
Contact your web team about this integration. Or call us if you aren’t sure where to start.
A bit more about structured data
Of the four steps listed above, structured data is likely the most important—and may also be the most challenging.
Most web pages are only loosely formatted and structured with things like headlines, paragraphs and other elements you would consider part of a “document.” When Google looks at a page on your site, their AI attempts to make sense of this structure, including its purpose and the meaning of its content. You can assist this process with a bit of work to make sure that Google more precisely understands the content. That’s where structured data comes in.
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex have teamed up to develop Schema.org, a collaborative effort to develop a common structure and vocabulary for various types of online content. This includes everything from cooking recipes to job opportunity postings. By using these structured data formats defined by Schema.org, you ensure that these search engines more precisely understand what your content is about.
Results
As a rule, every site we build at AB&C is indexable by Google. When we noticed that some job opportunities were not appearing in the new Google for Jobs results, we initially feared it was going to be “pay for play,” with official partners getting all of the results. We have found, however, that appropriate use of structured data results in placement on par with the larger Google partners, and in some cases, our job opportunity search results display above the prominent Google for Jobs results block.
