Job Seekers Want Data on Commute Times. Here’s How to Deliver

What does your commute to work look like today? Is it a roll-out-of-bed-and-sit-on-your-couch situation? Or does it involve some rush hour traffic? Whatever it is, your commute probably impacted your decision to stay at your current job (or start looking for a new one).

Here, we outline why including addresses in job listings is crucial for today’s job seekers and how both job boards and ATSes can start adding them if they haven’t already.

Background: Remote Work Upended Commute Expectations

Remote work became the norm for many workers through most of 2020. And while flexible work accommodations have ebbed since then, one thing remains true: job seekers are thinking about employers’ locations differently.

Ninety-eight percent of employees now want to work remotely, in some capacity, for the rest of their careers. Given this reality, it’s not surprising to hear of job seekers turning down high-paying offers that require full-time onsite attendance.

Despite this enthusiasm for remote work, most employers don’t offer it. Seventy-three percent of business establishments either rarely or never offered remote work in 2022. As a result, commute times have become a lot more important.

Here are three ways job boards, ATSes, and employers can ensure they’re providing the information job seekers want – and getting clients’ jobs filled as fast as possible.

1. Include an Address (Field)

The first step in getting job seekers the commute information they need changes based on the audience.

For employers, it’s simple: add addresses to job listings. That’s it. This information helps job seekers determine whether the roles that companies post are an ideal fit.

If you run a job board or ATS, the first step is offering an “address” field for available jobs.

When you create a dedicated field for address information, you increase the odds that employers will include addresses, which increases the odds that applicants will have the information they need to make a decision about whether to apply.

Once you have an address field, encourage employers to put addresses in their job listings every time.

Adding an address field ensures that every potential applicant has the commute info they want. Now let’s look at how to increase the total number of potential applicants.

2. Optimize for Google for Jobs

Optimizing listings for the Google for Jobs algorithm increases your audience by increasing the odds that your listings appear as results for “jobs” searches in Google.

Put differently: without Google for Jobs optimization, the potential audience for your clients’ listings is limited to people who choose to come to your job board or ATS. When your listings are optimized for Google for Jobs, you expand your audience to everyone searching on Google for things like “accounting jobs near me.”

Why do addresses matter so much? Google’s overall business objective is to give Google searchers what they want most. An algorithm update in 2021 made job listings with salaries and location information rank higher, likely because candidates had been clicking more on results with salary info and addresses.

Address listings in Google for Jobs results are particularly helpful to applicants who want commute information because, when a listing appears in Google for Jobs results, applicants can click through other results for employers and see commute times in seconds (Figures 1, 2, 3, and 4).

How big is the opportunity here? People search the term “jobs near me” 2.24 million times per month. The listings most likely to appear in Google for Jobs results are those that include addresses and salary data.

3. Fill in Gaps from Employer Listings

We’ve covered the importance of including location in job listings. But, as a job board, what do you do if an employer doesn’t list an address in the “address” field?

You probably upload the listing as is. But that choice has some consequences (less CPC or CPA revenue and fewer qualified candidates, to name two). Your best bet is to find a way to fill in the gaps whenever possible.

The easiest way to do that is to outsource it to a web scraping partner who will do it for you. Specifically, they can…

• Clean and organize data in job listings. Web scraping partners are kind of like puzzle masters. They take all the information in a job listing and put it where it belongs (e.g., salaries go in the salary field, addresses go in the address field, etc.). This means that if an employer lists the job location in the description, a web scraping partner can put that information where it belongs – the address field.
• Manually enhance jobs data. As you’re nearing the end of your puzzle, you may realize you’re missing a couple pieces. A web scraping partner can track them down and add them to job listings. For example, let’s say Boston University is hiring a receptionist but doesn’t include its location anywhere in the job listing. In situations where the location is pretty clear, your web scraping partner can manually update the listing with the missing information.

Other questions to ask as you consider web scraping partners: what kinds of data enhancement they offer, which data formats they can deliver scrapes in, and how often they clean and update job listings.

With Aspen Tech Labs, you can get clean and enhanced job listings that we update sometimes as often as every hour, but no less than daily. Say goodbye to 404 redirects and say hello to a seamless user experience built on accurate, real-time data.

High-Quality Jobs Data Is a Gamechanger

In the world of recruiting and hiring, the job boards and ATSes with the best data win. And when so many job searches start online – three out of five job seekers use job boards to find openings – data is the lifeblood of recruitment advertising.

But accurate jobs data doesn’t just help employers fill vacancies quicker. It can also aid in business intelligence efforts.

Whether you’re interested in improving the quality of your job listings or in using jobs data to fuel your competitive intelligence, shoot us a message. We’d love to help.