Thought Google had already taken over the internet? Well they’re not done just yet… the guys over at the Googleplex just ordered a taster board, and guess what’s on the menu? 

Recruitment.

Yep - that’s right folks, ‘Google for jobs’ was announced last month at the I/O 2017 keynote, and it could change the way we search for jobs for good!

Making use of the popular ‘search vertical’ feature, it will use machine learning to recognise when users are searching for jobs and cluster together relevant roles and allow job seekers to refine based on a number of factors, such as commute time. CEO Sundar Pichai says he’s “personally enthusiastic for this initiative because it addresses an important need and taps [Google’s] core capabilities as a company from searching and organizing information to A.I. and machine learning,”

Search Verticals have been around for a few years now, providing rich search tools and results when you search for movie times, news stories or flights all without leaving Google... sounds like it could be the end of job aggregators as we know them then, right? Well rather than taking on the kingpins of job search, Google are partnering with them, working with the likes of LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Monster, Facebook and CareerBuilder to bring the service to life. It’s a widely known truth that most job searches start in Google, so rather than searching ‘retail jobs’ and then jumping into a jobs board to refine that search, ‘Google for Jobs’ will allow users to refine within the Google itself, so when they jump into the job board it’s to view the most relevant content. In other words, it creates a much more meaningful interaction which is win win for everyone.

But, eventually, they’ll inevitably start rolling jobs feeds from company careers sites and ATS systems into the search vertical results too. So the ATS’s and businesses that structure their content in a way Google can easily understand will get an instant leg up… and over time those aggregators and job boards will see fewer visitors.

Perhaps the most exciting prospect of ‘Google for Jobs’ is the part that machine learning will play in clustering related job titles. It’s a big problem that different employers use a range of terminologies to describe the same role, but ‘Google for Jobs’ will recognise this and cluster similar titles together, allowing users to filter and refine their searches so they are only looking at the most relevant positions.

Google are also teasing us with a general purpose recruiting platform (or Applicant Tracking System to you and me) called ‘Google Hire’. They’re keeping things very quiet, but are currently testing the service as an invite only beta with a few tech giants in the US such as CoreOS, Medisas and Poynt… so watch this space!

‘Google for Jobs’ is currently being trialled in the US, so give it a go if you’re stateside and let us know what you think using the hashtag #chattertechweek