Google’s New Remote Jobs Tag Can Help You Find Your Next Hire

As I’m sure readers know - IMPACT is a remote-friendly workplace.

We’ve written extensively about managing and maintaining remote teams, and making sure that company culture transcends state lines or time zones.

Why, you ask? Because the right candidate for your team might not be located in your city or even your state.

With current technology enabling most employees to do their jobs from any location, many companies are starting to be more open to remote work in order to get the best people on their team.

And this trend is beneficial for employees too - as remote work tends to provide a better work-life balance, improved flexibility, and ultimately leads to higher team morale.

As we know, a happy team typically produces higher quality work, so it’s a no-brainer that many companies are beginning to offer these options.

Google is taking notice of this trend as well.

According to Search Engine Journal, Google will soon be rolling out an update that will make it easier for companies to highlight remote positions in search results.

Google’s “Remote Work Tag”

While Google has not yet formally announced this feature, an email was sent to site owners via Google Search Console that notified them of this change.

In their email, Google confirmed that in order for the filter function properly in search results, companies will have to markup their remote job postings with structured data.

For this structured data to work properly, any remote position must have the data set jobLocationType set to “TELECOMMUTE”.

Google also noted that positions marked this way must be full-time remote positions, not partial work-from-home or other flexibility options.

Additionally, this feature allows employers to set more specific attributes around where they need employers located.

For example, they can select the specific country, state, or group of states they need candidates to be located in order to apply.

This can help eliminate time zone or language barriers, or even for companies that require state-specific licenses in order to do business with them.

Expanding Your Hiring Pool

While this Google feature might not help your marketing efforts like most updates we discuss, it might help you reach the candidate that can.

Top job candidates know their value, and if they’re seeking remote work opportunities, this feature can help you stand out in search results.

If you mark a position’s location as your company’s HQ, your ideal candidate may never see it.

This update enables you to show off that your offer remote opportunities - and candidates will likely begin to search for jobs using this feature alone.

It also has the added benefit of being able to set a core “telecommute” filter while still being able to specify where you do need candidates to be located, even if the position doesn’t require them to come into the office.

This is another step in the right direction to help more employees seeking remote work options connect with employers that offer it.

It’s speculated that Google will post a formal announcement upon launch of this feature, and sent this update for companies so they can get ready early - so take advantage of that!

Evaluate your own job listings and see which ones you’d like to promote as a remote position.