by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting
Two years ago (June 2017), Google launched Google for Jobs as a way of indexing job postings from around the internet.
Initially, Google partnered with some recognizable recruiting sites (ex. LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, ZipRecruiter) to get traffic flowing.
But over the last year, they’ve made a transition to delivering more organic traffic directly from employers in their search results.
According to industry experts, the increase in Google’s organically sourced job traffic was minimal in the first year (7% increase). However, organically sourced job traffic jumped 168% in year two.
As Google continues to incentivize more employers to feed their jobs directly into Google, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’ll become the dominant driver of traffic to an employer’s jobs and career sites.
What’s this change mean for you?
As an employer, you’ll either need to learn how to play the Google job search game on your own, or partner with someone who can play it for you.
None of this stuff changes overnight, but it does consistently evolve.
There is a broader lesson in play for our businesses in general:
When you notice the effectiveness of your favorite techniques starting to wane, it’s often a sign the underlying current has changed.
Effective leaders don’t fight it–they pivot and head in the new direction.
