Google tends to suck up a lot of oxygen when it comes to big news in the search space, but when it comes to the world of Artificial Intelligence, Microsoft has made some big moves in recent history. They were an early investor in ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI, and their investment swelled to $13 billion in April of this year. They incorporated ChatGPT directly into their Bing Search Engine back in February, within a day or so of Google announcing their Bard AI technology. “The New Bing” had some questionable outcomes as users and journalists dove in to test it out and attempt to trick it up. By summertime, ChatGPT was removed from Bing, among copyright lawsuits and content concerns. More recently, after a storyline straight out of Succession, it appears that Sam Altman is back as the CEO of OpenAI, shortly after being ousted by their board. As part of the deal, Microsoft earned a non-voting board seat. Not to be outdone, Google has recently released Gemini, their most advanced multimodal AI model yet. The AI “Space Race” between these tech titans is definitely on.
However, this blog post isn’t meant to analyze the behind-the-scenes corporate drama (although I do recommend watching Succession if you haven’t yet) or to compare the under-the-hood technologies that drive these AI advancements. It’s about the real-world functionality of utilizing the artificial intelligence of ChatGPT on Bing in the real world – and more specifically what this looks like from a career site and talent acquisition perspective.
Bing Rebrands Experience as Copilot
After the aforementioned three-month “time out,” ChatGPT-empowered Bing is back, now known as “Copilot.” They offer a slick conversational experience that is reminiscent of an online messaging or chat interface. ChatGPT can also now browse the internet to provide more up-to-date information, compared to the previous versions that were trained on information before September 2021.
This is what Microsoft has to say about it: “Our efforts to simplify the user experience and make Copilot more accessible to everyone starts with Bing, our leading experience for the web. Beginning today, Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise are becoming Copilot, with commercial data protection enforced when any eligible user is signed in with Microsoft Entra ID.”
You can access Copilot directly from the top of the search results page. Just click the ‘CHAT’ link with the info bubble next to it and you’re in. It’s interesting to note that this experience doesn’t automatically appear when you perform a search query. At least for the moment, you have to enter into it manually.
How Does Bing Copilot Differ from Google’s SGE?
Let’s see how Copilot handles some of the search queries that I tried on Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) from my previous blog post.
At its essence, the end result is rather similar to Google’s SGE, although the user experience is quite different. Bing’s Copilot chooses to keep users within the chat interface vs. showing a full set of organic search results alongside the AI-generated response. It’s also interesting that Bing takes the question asked and then reconfigures it in a more traditional search query. For example:
- I asked, “Do employees get free food at Chipotle?”
- Bing searches for “free food for employees at Chipotle.”
- ChatGPT provides a response (with emojis!). Relevant links back to the same piece of Chipotle Benefits content that Google SGE referenced are included, along with “Learn More” links back to web sources below the answer.
It’s also interesting that you can download the response as a .pdf, .txt, or edit in Word. I’m trying to think of how or when I would use this. Do they expect people to share these as Outlook email attachments? Go old school and print them off like MapQuest directions?
From here, I clicked the recommended question, “How do I apply for a job at Chipotle?”
This result is a little more interesting. A link to Chipotle’s career site is prominently featured in the first point. The second point takes it a step further, including a link directly to the job search link on Chipotle’s career site. It doesn’t appear that Chipotle has a clear piece of content on the site outlining this process. Instead of relying on that exact information, ChatGPT is providing logical steps to apply, along with relevant links. I’d be curious to see if and how this result would change if Chipotle built a clearly defined page of content that outlined this process.
This seems to be the bigger difference between Google and Bing to me at this point. Within Google’s SGE, the search result answer seems to be compiled from existing web content. Within Bing’s Copilot, the step-by-step process is actionable, even when the exact content isn’t there. To be honest, I have used ChatGPT more than Google’s Bard thus far in my day-to-day life, and the experience of utilizing Copilot feels very similar to interacting directly with ChatGPT.
This is cool. Below this answer about applying for a job at Chipotle, Bing’s Copilot lists available jobs at Chipotle near me. Clicking on a listing opens up a new window, where I’m able to browse Bing’s job experience, similar to Google for Jobs. At least for the time being, it appears that Bing’s index of jobs is smaller than Google’s and limited to a handful of 3rd party job board sites. Overall, there tend to be fewer apply button options than you’ll find within Google for Jobs. These job search results appear to be schema-driven, so I would expect them to start indexing career sites directly at any time, to maintain parity with Google for Jobs.
Here’s the Capital One work-life balance question that I searched on Google. In this case, Bing’s Copilot clearly references content from their Career Site page. Capital One associates like Mora, Evan, and Ali from the content are all mentioned in the result. Key points like “Ownership of Your Schedule” and “Establish Boundaries” are taken directly from sub-headers in the article.
What Can I Do to Prepare My Career Site?
- The content-first strategy that applies to Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) applies to Bing’s Copilot as well, as seen from my test queries above. Both of these AI systems rely on content from the web to generate their responses. To address these questions, you should continuously build high-quality pages of content through a career site Content Management System (CMS).
- Make sure your jobs appear on 3rd party job sites like CareerBuilder, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Ziprecruiter, Snagajob, etc. to appear within “Bing for Jobs” in the shorter term. Drive those job seekers back to your career site, where they can experience your full employer brand. Ensure that you’re able to track conversion data here, along with other key insights from the analytics gleaned. If the job seeker isn’t ready to apply at that moment, give them the ability to save it or to sign up for job alerts from a Talent Community. Candidates can also learn more about why they should work for you by clicking links to related content on your career site – some of the same content meant to help inform AI systems.
- Ensure that your career site jobs have a job schema attached. Google already supports this when it comes to Google for Jobs, and I would expect Bing to follow suit. Be ready now for when that happens in the future. Radancy will continue to monitor this and will ensure we develop our career sites to adhere to Bing’s developer guidelines should they open this up for general indexation.
Who will claim victory in the AI Space Race? Will Bing’s Copilot be the “Google Killer” that other search engines have desperately sought to be? Market share data over time may tell that broader story moving forward. Radancy will continue to monitor this and will ensure we develop our career sites, powered by the Radancy Talent Acquisition Cloud, to adhere to Bing’s Copilot, should candidates interact with it during their job search.
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- Bing Rebrands ChatGPT Integration as “Copilot” – What It Means for Your Career Site - January 4, 2024
- Google’s Generative AI Search for Talent Acquisition - November 8, 2023
- How You Can Use ChatGPT’s AI to Accelerate Career Site Content Creation - February 21, 2023
- Top 10 Things to Consider When Building a Career Site Page - December 12, 2022
- ‘Google for Jobs’ Quality Control Guidelines Part 2: What Does the Data Say? - June 24, 2022
- ‘Google for Jobs’ Quality Control Guidelines: Are They Working? - May 12, 2022
- How to Find Job Seekers Who Aren’t Seeking Jobs: Part 2 - September 24, 2021
- How to Find Job Seekers Who Aren’t Seeking Jobs: Part 1 - July 14, 2021
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