Besides providing search service for news, images, locations, and other pieces of information across the web, Google began to leverage its search expertise in job hunting last year with the launch of a feature that scours popular sites for job opportunities and refinement of results. The feature first rolled out in the U.S. and it"s now available to job seekers in the U.K.
To better provide relevant job listings to users in the U.K., Google teamed up with a number of major recruitment services in the country such as The Guardian Jobs, Reed.co.uk, Haymarket, Gumtree, The Telegraph, Reach plc"s totallylegal, CV-Library, and totaljobs.com. These job-matching sites automatically connect job seekers to various opportunities as soon as new job listings appear online.
The new job search feature allows U.K. users to use custom queries in Google Search like "IT jobs near me" and the search engine will surface results from across the web that suit their unique job skills and needs. Users will be able to view information about the salary, methods for applying, and even the time it takes to travel to a prospective job. Users can also save individual job searches and access them across various devices. There"s also an option to receive alerts via email about new job listings in real time.
Joy Xi, Google"s Product Manager for Search, wrote in a blog post that the U.K. rollout of the service complements the company"s opening of a digital garage in Manchester last November to help improve the digital skills of people across the country. In July 2017, Google also launched Hire, its LinkedIn rival designed to make it easier for people to find jobs. Of course, it remains to be seen as to how successful Google"s play in the job market space pans out, particularly given that its original aim for the U.S. rollout was to help "the players in the ecosystem to be more successful."