It’s no exag­ger­a­tion to say Google’s jour­ney to world dom­i­na­tion, though hin­dered at times, is still in full swing. In its lat­est round of tests, the search giant appears to be mak­ing a move into the recruit­ment indus­try — an indus­try worth a whop­ping €450.4bn per year.

In just the past few weeks, it has launched a beta appli­cant track­ing sys­tem and tri­alled a jobs pack, which is sim­i­lar to the local pack, and which it has now con­firmed will be a fea­ture in the SERPs. In light of these tests, should recruiters be wor­ried? Absolute­ly! But the changes also rep­re­sent new oppor­tu­ni­ties, as we’ll explore here.

The recruit­ment indus­try is huge. In the fight to grab the atten­tion of job seek­ers and employ­ers alike, a range of gar­gan­tu­an aggre­ga­tors have grown, as well as local, much small­er recruit­ment agents seek­ing to thrive in indus­try nich­es.

It’s a mar­ket­place that you’d be for­giv­en for sug­gest­ing is too com­pet­i­tive for any new play­ers. But we’re not talk­ing about a new play­er here — we’re talk­ing about the world’s most used search engine, which has pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence in tak­ing over silos in this way — just look at Google Flights and hotels as two oth­er exam­ples.

As Google seem­ing­ly primes itself to make a big move into the recruit­ment mar­ket, exist­ing recruiters are no doubt wor­ried. If his­to­ry tells us any­thing, it’s that Google can do what it likes with the SERPs and when it finds a for­mat that works, it’s not averse to mon­etis­ing that for­mat either; such as Google Shop­ping. All of this means that recruiters could be look­ing at reduced SERPs vis­i­bil­i­ty and the need to spend on paid adver­tis­ing, where pre­vi­ous­ly that need hadn’t exist­ed.

What exactly is Google doing in the recruitment space?

So let’s break this down. What exact­ly is Google doing in the jobs space?

So far, a few things. First, eagle-eyed Twit­ter user @Aaranged spot­ted a new jobs tab with­in the Google user pan­el. This hint­ed at a new area of focus for Google, but was soon removed, pre­sum­ably after test­ing was com­plete.

Then came a jobs pack test, spot­ted by anoth­er Twit­ter user, @Dan_Shure. In a for­mat sim­i­lar to the local pack, jobs were being dis­played, show­ing job title, descrip­tion, loca­tion and basis (full- or part-time). After click­ing, the user was tak­en to anoth­er page with­in the Google envi­ron­ment, pro­vid­ing more infor­ma­tion on the job before — final­ly — send­ing them to the job ori­gin once the user was ready to apply. While Job­Post­ing has long been an agreed schema for­mat, Google seems to be mak­ing use of it more and more to show­case job con­tent in dif­fer­ent ways.

WOW look out job list­ing sites, Google appears to be posi­tion­ing to eat up that real estate also (cc @dr_pete) pic.twitter.com/g56KxnJCA7

— Dan Shure (@dan_shure) April 28, 2017

The final piece to the puz­zle was the beta appli­cant track­ing plat­form, which was released in April and which could lend itself to mak­ing Google a more promi­nent part of com­pa­nies’ recruit­ment process­es, too.

It all adds up to a pret­ty pow­er­ful mes­sage for recruiters: Google’s com­ing to get you!

What does this mean for the recruitment industry?

Like the trav­el indus­try before it, the recruit­ment indus­try can expect to see big changes in the way jobs are shown in search results.

Estab­lished recruiters, even names as big as Total Jobs, Mon­ster and LinkedIn, will be wor­ried. Their dom­i­na­tion of the jobs SERPs is under threat and there’s noth­ing they can do to stop it.

Small­er or less estab­lished recruiters may see this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty. As the big play­ers are quashed by Google, the focus will, in the­o­ry at least, open new oppor­tu­ni­ties for those that can take them — as we’ll explain lat­er.

For those search­ing for their next job, the par­ty line from Google will no doubt be that it is offer­ing up those jobs list­ings in a clear­er, eas­i­er man­ner, enabling the searcher to browse with­out hav­ing to move between web­sites to do so.

What should recruitment SEOs do?

There are a few things I’d rec­om­mend to any­one work­ing in SEO either in house at a recruiter or on the agency side, but I’d be keen to hear from the com­mu­ni­ty with any oth­er sug­ges­tions.

Essen­tial­ly, it all stems from the idea that Google is try­ing to show the best jobs results, so a focus on qual­i­ty con­tent and best prac­tice schema markup will be key.

Schema markup: That’s the big one. In its jobs pack, Google is using struc­tured data to pull out those com­po­nents of each job — job title, loca­tion, full- or part-time, etc. — so there’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty for recruit­ment SEOs to imple­ment schema markup and take advan­tage of this.

I pre­fer the JSON-LD method of insert­ing struc­tured data as it keeps data and design/build code sep­a­rate. You can find a guide to imple­ment­ing Job­Post­ing markup, includ­ing exam­ple code, here.

Recruit­ment SEOs should also invest in non-job-relat­ed con­tent. This is where the job searcher will still be active, but Google doesn’t seem to be mak­ing a play. Think “how to suc­ceed in a job interview”-style guides, or cat­e­go­ry land­ing pages that pull togeth­er indus­try-spe­cif­ic jobs tips with cur­rent avail­able roles. All of this will, in the­o­ry, still be up for grabs.

Should recruiters be worried?

Yes. Blunt­ly put, recruiters and jobs aggre­ga­tors do have cause for con­cern with these lat­est updates from Google. It’s a bold move from the search giant but giv­en that recruiters are play­ing in the Google envi­ron­ment, it’s unlike­ly to be a game they’re going to win.

The threat of the recruit­ment game becom­ing pay to play in terms of SERPs is also very real. Google mon­e­tised Shop­ping very suc­cess­ful­ly and there’s no rea­son it wouldn’t again, espe­cial­ly giv­en the high val­ue of the recruit­ment indus­try already.

With that said, it’s not a com­plete game chang­er. Recruit­ment SEOs will still, in my opin­ion, be able to be vis­i­ble in the SERPs through strate­gic con­tent mar­ket­ing and a focus on non-job key­words, as well as best prac­tices across jobs them­selves (e.g., schema markup). It remains to be seen how users will respond to the new for­mat, too, and in an indus­try where searchers are inclined to browse more than one source, Google could become sim­ply anoth­er source of jobs infor­ma­tion along­side exist­ing offer­ings.

What do you think? Do you work in recruit­ment and are you wor­ried? Per­haps you work in anoth­er indus­try that’s been affect­ed by a “Google takeover”? Let me know your thoughts and tips in the com­ments below.