THE PRAGMATIC STEP-BY-STEP GOOGLE FOR JOBS GUIDE AIMED AT RANKING YOUR JOBS AS HIGH AS POSSIBLE

Under the Google for Jobs brand, Google displays vacancies directly in its search engine. These results show up above regular search engine results that belong to job boards, intermediaries and employers.

Here lies a huge opportunity for employers and intermediaries to instantly move to the top of Google’s results. When done right, this strategy yields more valuable candidate visits and applications directly via your own website.

This guide outlines how to work with Booston’s Google for Jobs integration. But more importantly, it tells you how to get the best rankings with the highest number of applications possible.

(The tips in this article work for any system and are not only relevant to Booston. However, the Booston Dashboard is used in these examples. Check your own system to find out how to set up Google for Jobs in greater detail. Don’t have a Booston account yet? Don’t worry, just contact us. We’ll work out how you can use Booston’s Google for Jobs feature as soon as possible.)

In this step-by-step article, we’ll show you which actions to take to achieve the best results in Google for Jobs. In addition, we’ll provide tips at each step to boost your rankings even further through content optimization. The four main steps are the following:

• 1. Activate Google for Jobs (in the Booston Dashboard)
• 2. Set up mandatory job attributes
• 3. Set up optional job attributes
• 4. Add the new Google for Jobs attributes to your job postings

SPOILER ALERT: DO YOU WANT TO GET THE HIGHEST RANKINGS? FULL TRANSPARANCY AND THE MOST RELEVANT JOB TEXT MARK-UP ARE THE WAY TO GO. IN THIS ARTICLE, WE’LL GIVE YOU PRACTICAL EXAMPLES OF THIS APPROACH.

Step 1: activate Google for jobs (in the Booston dashboard)

To make your job visible on Google for Jobs, you must provide information in a ‘structured’ way. This means that you’ll have to clearly identify all the different elements of your job ab, like job title, location and salary. (In this article, we’ll be referring to these as ‘attributes’.)

For example, your job ad should clearly communicate to Google that the phrase ‘Full-time Carpenter’ concerns the job title and is not part of the overall job description.

Does that sound too technical? No fuss! Booston takes care of almost everything. All you need to do in order to activate our Google for Jobs integration is check an option in the settings menu. From this moment onward, your vacancies will be indexed by Google for Jobs and all information will be automatically structured. Don’t have a Booston account? Be sure to read up on creating structured data to manage this important process on your own website or career pages.

WITH BOOSTON, NEW JOBS, DELETIONS AND ANY CHANGES YOU MAKE ARE AUTOMATICALLY FORWARDED TO GOOGLE IN REAL TIME. WE MAKE SURE THAT THE LATEST ‘HOT JOB’ IS SENT TO GOOGLE WITHIN SECONDS AFTER PUBLICATION.

Step 2: set up mandatory job attributes

Now that Google for Jobs is activated, the next step is to tell Google which job attributes are present in your ad and ‘what they mean’. Google for Jobs works with eleven important attributes, all of which we’ll discuss below. The first six are mandatory, so definitely include these in your structured data. If you use Booston automation, you are basically done at this point. Just make sure you optimize your content. (Tips are provided for most attributes.)

1. Publication date: the date on which the job was initially posted. Booston adds this automatically.

2. Job description: the complete job description as listed on your website.

Tip for recruiters. Really put some time into making the first five to twenty lines of your job description super catchy. Why? Google for Jobs initially only shows the first five to twenty lines in its search results. The rest is hidden behind the read more button. This is your opportunity to entice a reader with your elevator pitch for the job. Briefly outline what makes it unique and interesting, but above all be to-the-point. In any case, the primary purpose of the first sentences is to entice potential candidates into learning more.

Another tip for recruiters. Are candidates clicking on your read more buttons? Superb! Even now, though, your aim should be to engage them in a positive way for as long as possible. This is where Google’s renowned ‘Relevance with a capital R’ comes into play. It’s in the interest of a good search engine to present content that users consider relevant. A relevant job ad has been written for its target audience. Always think about the information that a reader or candidate would really like to look up, and then trigger him or her to respond. Adding job videos via Booston is one way to improve relevance, but good text and images also work wonders.

3. Employer: the company name of the employer.

Tip for agencies that do not identify employers in their job descriptions. Consider how this strategy impacts your online presence. Mentioning the name of an employer improves indexation. Why? This is relevant information for the candidate, and it therefore leads to higher rankings, more candidate views, more traffic, more applies, and so on. Is ‘hiding’ company names really in line with an optimal online strategy?

4. Location: the workplace’s full address. Country, region, city, street and even street number.

Tip for agencies that do not identify employers in their job descriptions. The advice we provided under point 3 applies here as well. An exact address is relevant information for a candidate. Jobs with a full address are more relevant and get better rankings because of that.

5. Job title: a few words describing the nature of the job. Make this as plain and to-the-point as possible.

Tip for recruitment managers. Make sure that all recruiters follow this rule. A job title like ‘Enthusiastic Jack of all trades’ is simply too vague. Try ‘Part-time trim carpenter’ instead. Much clearer. A relatively small effort with high impact!

Tip for recruiters. Not sure which job title is sought out most by candidates? Use Google Trends. Google for Jobs is aimed at ‘active seeking candidates’. A job title that directly matches the search behaviour of potential candidates really gives you an edge!

6. End date: the date the job will be closed.

So far, so good. As promised earlier, Booston will set up these six mandatory attributes automatically. Only the location attribute needs a final check in some cases.

In the Booston Dashboard’s menu, go to Settings > Attributes and proceed to the heading ‘Location attributes’. Make sure you activate all switches from ‘Address’ up to ‘Country’. An activated switch will turn orange. Does it all look like the picture above? Great! These attributes are now correctly passed on to Google when you create a new job. The ‘Country’ field is the only thing that still needs a bit of attention. This is how to proceed:

In the menu go to settings > attributes and then check the heading ‘location attributes’. Make sure you activate ‘address’ to ‘country’ by making the leftmost sliders active (orange). Does it look like the picture above? Superb! These attributes are correctly passed on to Google when creating a new job. Only the ‘country’ field still needs a little treatment. This is how you do it:

1. Click on the hamburger menu icon (three horizontal lines) on the right side of the row that says ‘Country’. You should now see something like this:

2. Choose a country value by clicking the downward-pointing arrow. You’ll see the Google for Jobs input option.

3. Add the ‘country’ label to every country value in the list.

There you go! Step 2 of the set-up process has now been completed. In step 3, we will set up the ‘optional’ job attributes.

Step 3: set up optional job attributes

ALTHOUGH THE OPTIONAL JOB ATTRIBUTES ARE NOT MANDATORY FOR YOUR JOB TO BE LISTED, THEY DO HAVE A MAJOR IMPACT ON ITS RANKINGS!

7. The ‘Remote jobs’ location setting. Do you manage jobs in which candidates can work remotely? Then you should activate the attribute ‘Location type’ (1) under the heading ‘Location attributes’.

Through the hamburger menu (3 and 4), add the value ‘Remote job’ (or something similar). After saving this value, open the attribute’s settings again and add ‘TELECOMMUTE’ as the attribute value for ‘Remote job’ (5). Note that this value is case-sensitive.

8. Candidate’s place of residence. Do you manage jobs to which candidates can only respond if they live in a specific region? If so, this last step is important. There are, for example, recruitment agencies that look for craftsmen in other countries, such as Polish carpenters who are willing to work in the Netherlands. In this case, the ‘commute’ is internationally oriented.

If you want to specify a place of residence, a new attribute must be created under the heading ‘General attributes’. Modify an existing inactive attribute for this purpose. In the example below, we’ve used attribute 9. We renamed it ‘Mandatory residential location?’.

To complete this setting, simply add the relevant countries by means of the hamburger menu.

9. Salary. Here, you specify how much money the candidate will make. A salary consists of three parts: amount (minimum and maximum), currency unit (euro, dollar, etc.) and time unit (hour, day, week, month, year). You will find these attributes under the heading ‘Salary attributes’. Activate all attributes from ‘Min salary’ to ‘Unit’. Additional tweaking for Google for Jobs is only necessary with the attributes ‘Currency’ and ‘Unit’, and the approach is the same as with ‘Country location’. You will find the appropriate settings in the two screenshots below:

Activate all salary attributes for better visibility. Note. Are you not mentioning salary in your job description? Then Google for Jobs will add indications based on an average for comparable jobs.

Another note. When creating units, use one of the fixed and case-sensitive Google for Jobs unit names pictured above: HOUR, DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR.

10. Employment. As part of the Booston set-up process, we advise you to split this attribute into two separate ones. Why? This Google for Jobs attribute consists of the following fixed and case-sensitive values:

FULL_TIME, PART_TIME, CONTRACTOR, TEMPORARY, INTERNAL, VOLUNTEER, PER_DIEM and OTHER. In our opinion, FULL_TIME and PART_TIME differ from the other values. After all, you can have a full-time temporary contract (FULL_TIME, TEMPORARY). Or a daily contract on a part-time basis (DAY, PER DIEM). In other words, FULL_TIME and PART_TIME indicate the number of hours per week, while the other values refer to the type of contract. Separating these two points of information has its advantages.

Based on our instructions, the Google for Jobs layout will look like this:

11. Internal reference. This concerns the job’s ID number. Booston automatically generates these, so no additional settings are needed.

Step 4: add the new Google for jobs attributes to your job postings

JOB ATTRIBUTES WILL BE ADDED TO GOOGLE FOR JOBS AUTOMATICALLY FROM NOW ON. YAY!

The last step is easy. Just ensure that all existing and future jobs are assigned as many attributes as possible. This is how you do it:

1. Open an existing job via Recruitment > Jobs, then click on the edit button to adjust its attributes.
2. After completing the steps outlined in this article, you will find that the job edit page has more customizable features than before. Complete the job set-up by adding as many attributes as possible.
3. Click on save and simply go on to adjust the next job.

That’s it. Booston will do the rest. Whenever a job is modified, created or removed, Booston immediately passes on all information to Google.

Happy hunting! :-),
– Team Booston.