American multinational technology company, Google has announced a new job Search experience that aims to help job seekers find employment opportunities.
This was announced at an event held at the country office at Ikoyi, Lagos State, hosting stakeholders like Jobberman, NGCareers, MyJobMag among others.
In her speech, Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor, Google Country Manager in Nigeria observed that unemployment contributes largely to the pressure that families, the society and the Nigerian nation suffer from, posing serious threat to national security.
The Google Country Chief noted that unemployment is a major problem but emphasised another problem as “Connecting the right people with right employers.”
“Job seekers say no job, employers say no employable persons. So even if the jobs are available, seekers don’t know how to find them, hence Google launches Job Search Within Google.”
“Through the job search feature on Google, when someone uses their phone or computer to search on Google for a job, they will see a streamlined experience letting them explore, research and find relevant, local job postings.
According to the search engine giant, this launch builds on its existing commitment in Sub Saharan Africa to improve economic opportunities for job seekers and employers, demonstrated through its Grow with Google initiatives.”
Recall that the Digital Skills for Africa program, which Google committed to between April 2016 and March 2017 to train 1million African youth, was achieved and surpassed.
In July 2017 this program was extended to see 10m youths trained by 2022 as well as 100,000 developers trained across the region. Ehimuan-Chiazor noted that the company took 6 startups to Silicon valley last year and will bring the initiative to Nigeria this year.
Also speaking at the launch, Afolabi Imoukhuede Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Job creation & Youth empowerment, confirmed Ehimuan-Chiazor’s observation of the unemployability cases in Nigeria.
According to him, the root causes for unemployment in Nigeria is largely unemployability. He stressed that when anyone disaggregates the unemployment rates in Nigeria, the real issues is when you begin to cascade down to youth demography.
The NPower Project Coordinator noted that the whole point on the core of technology is that a lot of things would have been difficult to achieve without technology.
“The job world is really evolving and I guess it has changed. In Nigeria, maybe our catch-up is a little slower but the job world is changed. All the job contracts I could see are traditional job contracts.
“Thanks to Google, the world is moving in a completely different direction with new and emerging skills that are not even thought within the four walls of the university.
“This is clearly an initiative, and a project that speaks very closely to the heart of what we do. Because it is a problem that we must attack head-on, and platforms like this, alliances and networks like this are the sustainable ways by which we can give a lasting solution to it.
“This project is what the federal government is proud to endorse. We must commend Google for what they do. We recognise what technology means to us in Nigeria and what it means to the world.
“We have the assets. The greater number of our population is the youths demography. Our focus is how to turn these our youths into an asset and not a liability,” Imoukhuede said.
Ehimuan-Chiazor further added that fnding employment is still very difficult for many people. This new job Search experience will help the millions of Nigerians searching for new opportunities.
“We believe that the web allows anyone, anywhere, of any age, to grow their business, learn the skills they need to get a job, to grow in their career, become an entrepreneur or developer. This new jobs Search tool will be a key driver for connecting job seekers to open opportunities, helping more people to Grow with Google,” she summed.
What the launch means is that job seekers in Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya will be able to use the new job search experience to quickly and easily find opportunities suited to them, through an immersive experience that lets them explore jobs from across the web and refine their search to meet their specific needs.
Similarly, users will able to view at-a-glance details about the posting, such as job title, location, whether it’s full-time, part-time or an internship, as well as detailed information should a job be of interest. Using Google Maps integration, job seekers can search for jobs any place they can find on the map, and if they’re signed in, they can even see how long it would take to commute to the job from home through Google maps.
Searching for a new job can take time, so if you step away from your job search, Google has made it easy to pick up where you left off as well as stay in the loop on opportunities that are right for you. Simply push the “get alerts” button to get email notifications when new jobs matching your search appear.
“As this is an open ecosystem, Google is inviting all job sites, platforms and employers — big and small — to integrate with us and make their jobs eligible to display in the new jobs search experience. With Google’s newly released open documentation, any jobs provider is able to integrate its content through open structured schema.org web markup standards Google supports,” the tech firm said.
To optimise the feature and make it more useful, Google is working with a broad and growing cross-section of partners, such as the Federal Government, Jobberman, NGCareers, MyJobMag and other job resource websites in Nigeria. These collaborations ensure Google is able to present job postings content accurately, as soon as it is posted, to exactly the people that will find it most relevant.
