Google has unveiled a new job search experience that is designed to enable job seekers find employment opportunities through a seamless process that aggregates vacancies and makes the search process a lot easier.
Jobs seekers using their phone or computer to search on Google for a job, will see a streamlined experience letting them explore, research and find relevant, local job postings. This launch according to a statement by Google, builds on its existing commitment in Sub Saharan Africa to improve economic opportunities for job seekers and employers, demonstrated through its Grow with Google initiatives. The Digital Skills for Africa program, Google’s commitment to train 1m African youth between April 2016 and March 2017, which was achieved and surpassed. In July 2017 this program was extended to see 10m youth trained by 2022 as well as 100,000 developers trained across the region.
Juliet Chiazor, Google’s country director, said at the launch of this feature in Nigeria, that “Finding employment is still very difficult for many people. This new job Search experience will help the millions of Nigerians searching for new opportunities. We believe that the web allows anyone, anywhere, of any age, to grow their business, learn the skills they need to get a job, to grow in their career, become an entrepreneur or developer. This new jobs search tool will be a key driver for connecting job seekers to open opportunities, helping more people to Grow with Google.”
As of today, job seekers in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria will be able to use the new job search experience to help them quickly and easily find opportunities suited to them, through an immersive experience that lets them explore jobs from across the web and refine their search to meet their specific needs.
Users will be able to view at-a-glance details about the posting, such as job title, location, whether it’s full-time, part-time or an internship, as well as detailed information should a job be of interest. Using Google Maps integration, job seekers can search for jobs any place they can find on the map, and if they’re signed in, they can even see how long it would take to commute to the job from home.
“Searching for a new job can take time, so if you step away from your job search, Google has made it easy to pick up where you left off as well as stay in the loop on opportunities that are right for you. Simply push the “get alerts” button to get email notifications when new jobs matching your search appear,” the statement read.
Afolabi Imoukhuede, senior special assistant to the President on Job Creation & Youth Employment, commented at the launch that; “The Federal Government of Nigeria under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari has prioritised Job Creation for the teeming unemployed and underemployed youths as contained in the Job Creation Strategy section of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP). It is therefore our pleasure to endorse and partner Google on this job search experience launch that seeks to connect job seekers to jobs.”
As this is an open ecosystem, Google says it is inviting all job sites, platforms and employers — big and small — to integrate with the platform and make their jobs eligible to display in the new jobs search experience. With Google’s newly released open documentation, any jobs provider is able to integrate its content through open structured schema.org web markup standards Google supports.
To optimise the feature and make it more useful, Google says it is working with a broad and growing cross-section of partners, such as the Federal Government, Jobberman, NGCareers, MyJobMag and other job resource websites in Nigeria. These collaborations ensure Google is able to present job postings content accurately, as soon as it is posted, to exactly the people that will find it most relevant.
