What’s going on here?
If you’ve used Google to look for a new job recently (it’s okay, we won’t tell anybody), you might have noticed that the search results you see look a little different than others. They look something like the image below.
What’s going on here?
What you’re seeing is the result of Schema.org’s effort to make data on the Internet structured combined with Google’s effort to make job listings more ‘findable’ in Google Search. Google is using Schema.org’s standard for publishing job postings. With this standard, Google can find and format job listings in their results so that their users can get the details about job postings in an easy to read list.
We can debate Google’s intentions of pulling job listing content into search results in this manner. It’s certainly not the first time that Google has leveraged other sites’ content to improve the SERP experience for their users. Some would contend that this results in diminished traffic to those sites, which can be a sticky topic. However, what we can’t debate is that jobs displayed in Google’s search results in this new list format are going to get more exposure than those that don’t. Therefore, if you have job listings on your site and want the highest number of potential employees to see them, you should adopt this new standard.
How to publish job listings that google will promote in this list
There are two ways to get your job listings into Google’s new list format.
- Use a third party job listing service that integrates with Google (i.e. that uses this structured data standard)
- Have your web team revise the code on your website to use the schema.org standard.
If your organization uses a recruiting or job listing service such as Monster.com or LinkedIn, your job postings will already be coded with the structured data rules and should appear in Google’s enhanced job listings format.
If your organization is listing jobs on its website, your web programmer will need to modify the job listings to use structured data. Everything is outlined here on developers.google.com.
Once the transition to structured data has been made, Google should start including this information in their job listing results. By configuring your website to use structured data, it will introduce a new opportunity to increase your firm’s visibility in search rankings
For those interested in a little more technical detail…
Structured data is a “standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content.” Every element of the job listing – industry, employment type, base salary, description, etc. – is labeled in a standardized way that Google can interpret and re-post in their own listings. While structured data is a “standardized format,” there are actually three acceptable types of data than can be used – JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa. Google prefers JSON-LD.
To start using structured data, your web developer will modify the job postings on your website to use JSON-LD in the code instead of regular HTML. On the front end of your site, the job posting will look the same in JSON-LD and HTML but on the code side of things, instead of looking something like this (HTML):
<div> <h2>Software Engineer</h2> <p><strong>Location:</strong> Kirkland WA</p> <p><strong>Industry:</strong> Computer Software <br><strong>Occupational Category:</strong> 15-1132.00 Software Developers, Application <br><strong>Hours:</strong> Full-time, 40 hours per week <br><strong>Salary:</strong> USD 100000 </p> <p> <strong>Description:</strong> ABC Company Inc. seeks a full-time mid-level software engineer to develop in-house tools…
… the on-page code for the posting in JSON-LD would look more like this:
<script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "http://schema.org", "@type": "JobPosting", "baseSalary": "100000", "jobBenefits": "Medical, Life, Dental", "datePosted": "2011-10-31", "description": "Description: ABC Company Inc. seeks a full-time mid-level software engineer to develop in-house tools.", "educationRequirements": "Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related fields of study.", "employmentType": "Full-time", "experienceRequirements": "Minumum 3 years experience as a software engineer", "incentiveCompensation": "Performance-based annual bonus plan, project-completion bonuses", "industry": "Computer Software",...
Thanks for reading and happy structured data-ing!