With all the chatter around Google putting a chokehold on Indeed.com, LinkedIn clearly wants to make sure people know it’s not in the crosshairs too. Jeremy Rozicer, SVP of recruiting at Oak Solutions Group Inc., shared an email from its LinkedIn representative earlier this week.
Here’s the message:
Google has invested time and resources into a new feature, Google for Jobs, that will be reshaping the recruitment landscape in the near future. Below is an outline on how this product will work, and what it means for LinkedIn and our customers.
What is it?
- New feature in search that collects millions of job postings from the web and lists the actual jobs. Clicking on a job to apply will redirect you to the job posting destination site (i.e., LinkedIn, Glassdoor).
- Google is partnering with companies such as LinkedIn, Glassdoor and Career Builder, but not Indeed*.
- Initially available in US-only; Primary focus is hourly and mid-skilled talent, although this could change overtime.
- Check out this 2-min video to see the experience.
What does it mean for LinkedIn and our customers?
- LinkedIn has partnered with Google on this initiative to index LinkedIn jobs on search (see USA Today article).
- Most of LinkedIn’s traffic is direct to LinkedIn.com, so this partnership offers a new avenue for job discovery.
- LinkedIn jobs are rich with content about the company, team, salary, etc. Hence, we have the potential to be a preferred source for Google Jobs, which was not possible before.
- We believe that this will translate into more traffic to our jobs and applications for our clients.
Poor Indeed. Last year’s darling is this year’s radioactive waste. LinkedIn shouldn’t get too comfortable though. If it doesn’t think that it’s Google’s eventual target in all this, then it’s fooling itself. Indeed is just lower-hanging fruit.
Eventually, Google will turn its attention to Microsoft and the bigger pie it represents. At that point, I’d be a bit surprised if LinkedIn is still feeding jobs into Google for Jobs, or likelier, I’ll be surprised if Google even shows them in their search results.
Indeed did the same thing 10 years ago. Job boards who fell in love with the free traffic Indeed gave them soon soured as free visitors dried up and marketshare deteriorated. LinkedIn would be wise to revisit that lesson. Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.
