Google Is Using Machine Learning to Improve Your Job Search

During last month’s Google I/O developer conference, the company laid out its ambitious plan to incorporate AI technology into all of its products in the coming years. It has some potentially revolutionary plans up its sleeves, most notably Google Lens, a combination of AI, computer vision, and AR that turns your smartphone camera into an instantaneous search device. This kind of technology is catnip for innovation-obsessed Seattle Android app developers, but Google is also using AI for simpler, more practical applications such as its new jobs search engine. The tech giant may not be using machine learning to reinvent the wheel with this new function, but it is streamlining an often agonizing process — something anyone on the job hunt will be thankful for.

As any Android app developer looking for the next step in his or her career knows, finding jobs on the internet is a surprisingly complicated process. There is a glut of sites featuring job listings, including LinkedIn, Monster, Indeed, and (lest we not forget) Facebook — and therein lies the problem. It’s too easy for the humble job-seeker to get overwhelmed by all the site-jumping and overlapping job listings (and that’s not to mention all the inapplicable or spammy postings). Google’s solution with its freshly unveiled jobs search engine is to utilize machine learning to sort through the mess of job postings. All a job-hunter has to do is type in a job-related search query (like “jobs in my city” or “IT jobs”), and the new job widget pops up with helpful results and options to hone search criteria.

As it stands now, this job search engine is a handy tool, but it could potentially develop into a real existential threat to a site like Monster. Google is claiming that it isn’t interested in encroaching on the major career search sites terrain, and so far that seems to be the case. While Google could likely make a killing by allowing companies to post jobs directly to the search engine, it is currently resisting the temptation to tap that revenue source. According to Google, its AI-equipped search engine will link to the site with the most complete information on the job, whether its CareerBuilder or LinkedIn or the actual hiring company’s website. Android app developers will be tuned in to see if Google’s intentions really are just to make the job search process a little easier.