Search engine behemoth Google has taken its first steps into the job recruitment market with the launch of its Google for Jobs service. The feature was first introduced to the recruitment market last year in the US before expanding abroad.

The company claims it has already connected tens of millions of people around the globe to new job opportunities. The launch builds upon Google’s commitment to helping 100,000 people in the UK find or grow their career by 2020.

As further proof of this commitment, the firm recently opened one of its Google Digital Garage programmes in Edinburgh, which offers anyone free training in digital skills to improve their CV and job prospects.

Ruth Davidson MSP, leader of the Scottish Conservatives attending the opening of the unit, located on Shandwick Place, and hailed the move a positive step in addressing Scotland’s digital skills gap.

The training centre is the fourth of its kind in the UK, joining centres in Manchester, Birmingham and Sheffield and will help thousands of people to find their next job or to develop their careers.

Job Seeking Made Simple With the Google Digital Training Centre

Similar to its Google Flights, Google Shopping and Google News, job seekers will be able to ask Google to find nearby jobs. It will present a list of roles near the seekers with salaries included and the date the job was posted. If signed in, the user will also be able to calculate the travel distance for each job.

Google for Jobs is designed to streamline the job-hunting process by allowing users to search for recent vacancies across a wide range of websites at once. However, candidates will still have to click through to the third-party site if they wish to apply for a vacancy.

With Google’s search smarts, candidates would not have to carry out multiple searches to find similar jobs listed under different titles. It also has easy-to-use job filter functions, which help to further narrow down the sort of roles the job seeker is looking for.

Guardian Jobs, Reed, Haymarket, CV-Library, Gumtree and Totaljobs.com are some of the recruitment firms already supplying listings to the new service. It has also partnered with numerous other smaller platforms, too.

Google Likely to Dominate Recruitment Market

One of the UK’s largest job search sites, Indeed, has refused to partner with Google. Paul D’Arcy, Indeed Marketing Chief, told the BBC: “At this time, Indeed has decided not to partner because we feel that’s the best decision for job seekers.”

Indeed’s UK Managing Director, Bill Richards, said: “Indeed is confident that it will continue to be successful no matter who enters this space.” It is possible this decision to remain independent will see Indeed’s listing appear further down on Google search engine results.

With Google’s clout in terms of its search engine placement, it seems these recruitment sites have little choice but to agree to partner with the company or risk being left out in the cold. Like Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Ask Jeeves before them, recruitment firms refusing to play ball could quickly find themselves eclipsed entirely by Google’s new offering.

As Google essentially controls the gateway to the internet it could make sense for these companies to cooperate with the company. However, experts warn that eventually Google will start charging for placements and other premium services, which of course is a risk for employment search platforms.

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