According to Charles Murito, Google Kenya country manager, job openings are one of the most searched terms, in Kenya. “The essence of getting jobs is something that is critical across Africans,” said Charles Murito. “With Kenya’s high unemployment rate, this new job Search experience will help the millions of Kenyans searching for new opportunities,” he added.
The service that was first announced at Google I/O in 2017, has been launched in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. With Google for Jobs feature, Google doesn’t actually post the job listings themselves, they actually aggregate job openings from various platforms across the web. In Kenya, Google has partnered with BrighterMonday and Fuzu to aggregate job listings from these platforms. Google also reached out to other job listing platforms to integrate with Google to make these platforms eligible to display in the new jobs Search experience.
How to Google for Jobs
The service is fairly simple to use and does not require any extra downloads. All one needs to do is access Google search either through the app or via web and search for job listings, for example, “jobs in Kenya”, and a card-style result will pop-up displaying various job opening from partners.
From the card, one can customise the search results by filtering them according to the category of job you’re looking for, Title of the job, Location, Date posted and even select the company whose job listings you want to see. The card also allows users to save any jobs that may be of interest through a bookmarking feature or turn on alerts for a particular type of job, based on your search terms.
Spam and Fraud
Those worried about fraudulent job listings, Google assures that they have set up a Trust and Safety team that does “background checks” on job openings and ensures that there is no spam being posted with the help of Google Algorithms.
Current partners, BrighterMonday and Fuzu, already run intensive verification processes to ensure that jobs being listed on their platforms are legit thus making the work easier for Google.
“This new job Search experience is part of our broader commitment to improve economic opportunities for job seekers and employers through Google technologies in partnership with the broader employment industry. Google is committed to providing useful, accurate and relevant information based on your search queries and helping you connect to your next job. In this way we hope to make a contribution towards matching job seekers with jobs, thereby taking steps to tackle the skills gap,” Mr Murito said.
