As a recent graduate receiving a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing Management, I was excited at the chance of being able to finally look for jobs that would start me off on my career. So as someone in my early 20s, with the benefits of technology taking over my life, I naturally looked to online job boards such as Workopolis and Monster to help me start off in search of my perfect job.
It took me a total of 2 hours and 35 minutes before my frustrations got the best of me and I realized that online job boards such as these weren’t going to get me the job that I wanted.
A couple of factors caused this frustration. Firstly, the search options that were made available often brought about the least desirable jobs I could imagine. As someone looking for an entry-level job in marketing, the prospects often ranged from door-to-door sales, to telemarketing ( and you can imagine how excited I got at the thought of going around door-to-door selling knives).
My ideal job would have been working within an advertising firm, learning from a professional what it would be like to create advertisements. Or at worst, acting as an account manager with the possibility of moving up within the company; but even that was pushing it. Even while entering “advertising” in the search features - where I requested the minimum educational requirement be an undergraduate degree - the door-to-door sales jobs never seemed to go away (even though the job description clearly states a minimum education of a high school degree).
Secondly, I had heard the expression that “looking for a job was a full-time job in itself”, but it wasn’t until I had started searching that I realized what that meant. I was amazed to learn that applying to one job could take me sometimes an hour to do, and the only thing that resulted from it was the dismissal of my application at the click of a button. If upon the small chance I was able to find a job that seemed desirable to me, I had learned that “apply online” held a much larger meaning than I quite literally thought it meant.
What it really meant was: (1) Open the link to the company website, (2) Search for the job AGAIN under the Careers Section to make sure it was available, (3) Go to the company profile to learn about the company, (4) Go BACK to the Careers Section and find the job (5) Follow ridiculously long application forms and finally (6) Apply. Who would have thought apply online really meant all that? The result was, as I mentioned, an hour of applying to a job to be screened out in seconds.
Suddenly, the thought of looking for my dream job had turned into a nightmare. Surely there must be easier and more effective ways of utilizing online job boards. Sites such as Indeed and Simplyhired.com are great for bringing about a large number of jobs, from a wide variety of job sites. But even that still doesn’t fix my frustrations with long application processes.
New networking sites such as LinkedIn are a great way to stay connected and find jobs…if you know the right people. But sadly, at my young age I haven’t had many chances to connect with many professionals. But maybe when I meet more people and gain more experience it’ll be more effective for me.
A new online recruitment system that I think may have cured my frustrations is called Jobtac. The really cool thing about the site is that they’ve drastically reduced the amount of time it takes to apply to jobs. By using a new approach which they call iapply, job seekers are able to apply to jobs in just minutes.
When job seekers join they create a user profile, which holds all the information an employer needs to assess them. This includes visual resumes, video resumes, references, availability schedule and whatever else you think an employer needs to properly assess you. When applying to jobs then you don’t need to separately upload your resume each time. It will just take all the information you wish to showcase for that particular job from your user profile and let you apply.
As well, each company posting jobs on the site has a company profile. This way, you don’t have to go to the company website and research everything about the company. All the information you need is at your disposal! This drastically reduces the amount of time it takes to apply to jobs by sometimes even an hour. They also have other cool features including a number of multimedia capabilities and a networking system as well.
This novel approach to traditional online job boards made applying to jobs considerable easier for me. Why would I choose to spend two hours applying to two jobs on Monster when I could spend 10 minutes? Combine this with a networking system as well, I may have just found the cure which will help me be able to return as an excited recent grad, once again.
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