Emma Okonji
Google has announced a new job search experience that aims to help job seekers find employment opportunities.
For the first time, when someone uses their phone or computer to search on Google for a job, they will see a streamlined experience letting them explore, research and find relevant, local job postings.
The job experience solution, which was launched at a media briefing in Lagos recently, builds on Google’s 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, which was Google’s commitment to train one million African youths between April 2016 and March 2017, was achieved and surpassed. In July 2017 the program was extended to see 10 million youths trained by 2022 as well as 100 000 developers trained across the region.
Speaking at the launch in Nigeria, Google Country Director, Juliet Ehimuan Chiazor said: “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.â€
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 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
As this is an open ecosystem, Google is inviting all job sites, platforms and employers, both big and small, to integrate with Google 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 is working with a broad and growing cross-section of partners, such as 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.
In addition to its Digital Skills initiative and the new jobs search experience, Google also supports tech startups at various stages of their lifecycle through the Launchpad program. Announced last year, Launchpad Accelerator Africa will provide over $3 million in equity-free funding, mentorship, working space and access to expert advisers to over 60 African startups over a period of three years.
