The Evolution of Job Search

I have been job searching for 20 years - but only sometimes... I have been thinking about how things have changed, both in obvious and more subtle ways.

During those years, like most things in our world, technology and the Internet have brought about massive change.

I remember looking for my first Toronto job by buying newspapers and scouring the Career sections. I would post my applications by snail mail. Of course, specialized niche services existed, the one I used from IABC was a weekly telephone recording. I remember dialing in and then going to brush my teeth because it took so long to get to the actual listing.

During the 90s, Workopolis emerged as the online search go-to site. I imagine it still remains the leading website in this category. But certainly, competition has arisen, especially from Monster. I have been discovering a new category of sites during my current job search above and beyond the largescale and niche job posting sites. I call them 'agregators' because they search jobs posted on other websites, such as job sites as well as thousands of organizations. They are quite good at going further into the job market. Still, some job postings do not get picked up, for instance if the description is a PDF.

What I find most interesting is that for the first time, I am paying for an online job search service, which is an agregator, Ontario Job Watcher. It provides value for my spending, sending me a daily email with links to an average of 30 jobs/day. Usually one or two are interesting for me. It is the only online service for which I am prepared to pay out of my own pocket. I learned about it from someone who used it during his recent job search - but it is not well known!

Related to this development is the fact that all my applications are now done by email or online. The online process can be protracted and painful. I have spent up to half an hour setting up an account and filling in all the fields and adding attachments. An increasingly common question on these forms is where did you see the job posting for which you are applying. None of them has ever listed Ontario Job Watcher! So I am ahead of the curve in my job search.

What lies ahead? Clearly the online sophistication is growing with niche job boards being created and a number of them obviously thriving. The agregation of job possibilities for job seekers is relatively new and is likely to continue to grow and evolve. Where the power of the net has yet to have full impact is customizing job search. The websites' search engines usually generate hundreds of responses for me, most of which are irrelevant. My prediction is that refining the search criteria based on jobs that are genuinely of interest will be the next big thing in employment search.

Thanks for reading. Let's see if I write an update to this post in a few years!