Despite having tons of stores of all sorts (app stores by microsoft apple and google, movies streaming stores like netflix, game stores like steam, ...) no one has truly found a way to solve the discoverability problem that feels really satisfying.
Some are decent, but that's mostly by sending you so many stuff at once that a few are bound to be acceptable, but that doesn't mean they were the best choices for you (eg you buy that game or look that movie, but there are other stuff you would have taken over it if the store had been able to identify them).
Job/recruiting is even harder in that it's a two way attraction, the employee need to convince you but you need to convince them back. Result being, we self impose the same "spam" of propositions by seeing tons of candidate / interviewing in tons of companies, wasting a lot of people time (let's face it, in a big share of interviews either if not both of the parties knows it won't fit after just a couple of minutes).
I have no doubt that companies who are not merely looking for marketing / reselling gimmick have a share of that space to own, Google or not.
I completely agree! After all I'm basically admitting that what my company does (albeit we make company job portals and job marketing tools) is devoid of imagination :) .
But this in part because it is so high touch and is actually a really really hard problem.
I think it's dangerous, in all honesty. The same goes for Apple/Facebook/Amazon. If they build an ecosystem they shouldn't be able to take advantage of it to build and deploy products.
This is because most if not all the jobs come from the companies website. They are a search middleman similar to how Google is for almost everything else. They don't provide an ecosystem like say HN, Stackoverflow, Yelp, etc. In some ways they steal the content.
Sites like Indeed are basically doing the same thing that Google really should have been doing.
Now the boards/aggregators tried to provide "ecosystems" but they could never get it right because when people are looking for the job they are desperate and just don't give a... (or at least that is my theory. its also why linkedin works because its is passive).
I have noticed through our metrics (and I'm biased because we make job web sites for companies that hire) that the best candidates (despite what Indeed says) come from going directly to your website or come from LinkedIn (assuming non referral based).
If you are wondering how then Indeed/Career Builder et al do so well its that its hard to measure actual success (ie source to hire). It should be easy but sadly its not (don't have time for the details).
So what these guys provide is ton of traffic with lots of noise. Traffic that google could have easily provided.
So honestly I think it is sort of good they fail.
There is added value. Indeed, and plenty of other job sites, have done things like quick apply which bypasses the horrific process of legacy ATSs like Oracle's Taleo.
People, in the most general sense, should be extremely concerned if Google -- or any specific company -- gains a market hold on job search / recruiting.
If, say Google and Facebook, or Google and LinkedIn had control of 90% of the hiring vertical they could, in effect, take a large chunk of an employee earnings. How? Employers would have to spend a lot of money just for the employee to know some opportunity exists for them. Big, high margin, corporations would be just fine. Small businesses would be disadvantaged.
This is what has happened with the travel aggregators. Two companies dominate (and own all of the other travel search engines you think are independent.) The big hotel chains can negotiate slightly better deals, the small ones pay full price for visibility.
In a more narrow definition we can see this with on demand work start ups. Uber, Postmates, and others have spend massive amounts of money to recruit workers. Of course as start ups they have time constraints and geography constraints. They need to grow really fast so they pay tens of millions of dollars on buying search ads, display ads, and so on. Perhaps they could grow organically but it would be hard.
A good job search / recommendation would just show users the best economic opportunities for them at this moment. Yes, it would be hard to rank and filter out stuff that looks good but is crap (Maybe Uber falls in the crap category?) However, if someone wants to work, certainly they shouldn't be sitting at home idle because a potential employer didn't spend millions of dollars on an ad campaign. (Those "reach" dollars should be going to workers, not platforms.)
But where do you draw the line? It's fine when all the available solutions aren't that great?
Personally I don't care if a company built atop of Google fails.
The only thing I care about is consumer welfare, and good quality products + lower prices.
This kind of development is a vertical leap? I don't see it like such... just like I don't see it when Amazon brings their branded products to category's that are doing well.
I don't say Google, Amazon, don't invest in proper tech development - but this kind of development is just to establish themselves deeply at the cost of their user base.
I feel split in this subject honestly - on one side, why can't they leverage something of their own? On the other hand, that's when things start to get shady.
> All Indeed, Monster, CareerBuilder do
> is buy Google Ads and then essentially
> resells the marketing
> if you wondering the what the difference
> is between aggregator and job board
Actually they all sell additional HR software (I know this intimately well but unfortunately I can't legally go into the details) but just like Google they make most of their money by selling advertising space.
> Generally one pays for the latter and not the former, in fact.
Originally aggregators were like that but Indeed changed that later on. Actually the major difference (and I didn't want to go into it before) is the pricing model. Aggregators charge similar to how Google does.
They have promoted search results and charge based on impressions/clicks.
Job Boards charge like traditional advertising. A flat fee for placement for a certain amount of time.
One thing is for sure none of them provide things for free. The free job postings on Indeed is on the way out (I mean it will always be there but its not how they make money nor does it work that well).
(as a friendly note I recall people do not like when you use the code feature (ie space indentation) for quoting comments.. I don't mind though)
Both from the outside looking in, and from discussions with people who have worked in Google, the overwhelming impression I get is that anywhere outside of a few key areas, it's mostly a bunch of geeks playing with something until they get bored.
Come to think of it I wonder if LinkedIn etc swoop in on the engaging talent as well before the recruiting companies catch wind of them.
Particularly because the major players other than LinkedIn basically rely entirely on Google. All Indeed, Monster, CareerBuilder do is buy Google Ads and then essentially resells the marketing. This is similar to the situation TripAdvisor is in but generally worse.
The current job boards / job aggregators (the companies above) are terribly unimaginative, generally not helpful and often price gouge companies (if you wondering the what the difference is between aggregator and job board... there really isn't much but one pulls the jobs aka crawls the web for them).
Now the boards/aggregators are trying to become more service based and offer higher value offerings for long term strategic reasons. Indeed is rolling out "Indeed Prime" and I believe Career Builder is offering something similar as well.
So as creepy as it is that Google is in the recruiting space I am optimistic that will finally provide some spark of innovation that is much needed in a very high touch industry devoid of it.