Job Hunting On the ’Net

By Veronica Leonard

"There ain’t no jobs out there anymore for white, able-bodied men in their 30s. You gotta be disabled or a visible minority to get a job these days."

It’s 4:15 p.m. on a Friday at the employment centre, and this client, who doesn’t want employment counselling, has declared to anyone who will listen that this is the problem with today’s labour market.

I want to tell him that low education, poor work habits and that kind of an attitude are the reasons he is not working, but unfortunately it’s always easier to blame the lack of a marketable disability than to face the truth about oneself.

Any person with a disability can tell you that disabilities are not an easy sell. In the language of the employment centre, "job hunting itself is a full time job." But it’s a job that is not accommodating to a great many workers with disabilities. Lack of accessibility, application forms that are in fine print, and unhelpful reception staff are all stumbling blocks in a job search.

Lately, the playing field has begun to be levelled. The Internet is a new avenue for job hunting, and the often technologically savvy worker with a disability has an advantage. Perhaps because we have had to rely on computer technology to overcome barriers to communication and mobility, many people with disabilities have taken to surfing the Internet with the same excitement and confidence that a California beach bum approaches the curls at Malibu.

From the comfort of your home computer or community library or resource centre, you will soon have access to current employment listings at your nearest Human Resource Centre of Canada and at most branches across the country. Every worthwhile job is being routinely posted on the Internet. As each zone and region builds up its website, new resources are being added daily.

Start on the east coast at http://www.ns.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca, at the Nova Scotia regional home page for Human Resource Development Canada. Perhaps because unemployment on the east coast is among the highest in Canada, this is one of the best websites for job searching in the country. It will link you not only to job banks in most of the major Canadian cities, but also to a wealth of information on Canadian mega-projects, market trends and careers. Other options at this site include hot links to the want ads of many major Canadian newspapers that have online databases.

The job opportunities connections on this website are extensive, but an even richer resource is in the Industrial Cape Breton subsection. Check out both Job Opportunities and The Workplace on this site. This is a treasure chest of information that hot links to sites around the globe for the adventurous job searcher.

For the job seeker with a disability, however, some sites are more valuable than others. Provincial and federal governments have made a commitment to being Equal Opportunity Employers. Provincial listings from most Canadian provinces are hot linked to the Industrial Cape Breton site. The URL for the Public Service Commission is also available here, or can be reached directly at htttp://www.psc-gc.ca/recruit/cfple.hitm.

A special service of the Public Service Commission Homepage is Career Alert, which allows you to enter a selection of key words describing your skills or the work sought. Notification of all job opportunities in the federal public service with these specifications will be e-mailed to you weekly or daily, as you request. As many PSC jobs are only open for a 24-hour period, this service gives an advantage to the Internet job seeker.

Another new development is the Electronic Labour Exchange, which is now being actively marketed by Human Resource Development Canada to business. An employment matchmaking service, the Electronic Labour Exchange (http://www.ele.spe-org) has a list of employment categories which, once selected, bring up a checklist of related skills, training and experience. The job hunter checks off those items that relate to his or her experience, fills out an identification box and then transmits. The system will then check to see if there are any job orders in its inventory which match the job seeker’s skills. A job seeker may also choose to save his or her profile in the ELE memory banks for future job matching.

The National Graduate Registry (http://www.schoolnet2.carleton.ca/NGR/) is a similar service for graduates of universities and colleges. Because it requests the applicant’s student ID number, it is one of the few online recruitment services that can guarantee the validity of the information in any job seeker’s profile in its banks.

The Canadian Council of Rehabilitation and Work has its own website at http://www.ccrw.org. It has created a sub-program called the Wide Area Employment Network. This program allows job seekers and employers to input their resumes and job orders at specific sites to create an inventory of skilled workers with disabilities and work opportunities. Unfortunately, at present the input cannot be done online from any home or office computer, but must be done at special sites where the software has been installed. The CCRW website provides a phone number for the input site nearest you.

In addition to its employment matching capability, the CCRW-WAEN program creates an extremely good resume for the job seeker that can be printed off and used for more traditional applications.

The Internet guarantees fairness to all job seekers. They are screened for follow-up based solely on their skills and abilities. As free Internet access becomes available at libraries, schools and employment centres across the country, the door is opening to all -- even able-bodied, white males in their 30s.

(Veronica Leonard works in Employment Services for Human Resources Development Canada and is a freelance writer. She lives in Port Elgin, New Brunswick.)


OTHER INTERESTING SITES:

Canada Job Source http://www.irus.rri.uwo.ca/~jlaw/e_index.html
Lists jobs and employers across Canada.

Career Mosaic http://www.careermosaic.com
A searchable database of North American job opportunties.

CanWorkNet http://canworknet.ingenia.com/user/link.html?newcatno=1
A compendium of employment and recruiting sites

Young Adult Employment Outreach http://www.navnet.net:80/~ymcahfx/jobleads.html
Targeting young adult job seekers.

The Ontario Employment Service Directory http://indie.ca/abilities/
Directory geared toward employers, employees and job seekers with disabilities, listing employment resources available across the province of Ontario. The Canadian Employment Service Directory is currently in development.

Gateway to Diversity -- Abilities in the Workplace http://www.equalopportunity.on.ca/enggraf/ability/ability.html
Information focusing on people with disabilities in the workplace. For employers, employees and job seekers.

There are also news groups related to job searching for many locations in
Canada:

Canada Jobs (can.jobs)
Nova Scotia Jobs (ns.jobs)
New Brunswick Jobs (nb.jobs)
Ontario Jobs (ont.jobs)
Toronto Jobs (tor.jobs)
Ottawa Jobs (ott.jobs)
Kitchener-Waterloo Jobs (kw.jobs)
Alberta Jobs (ab.jobs)
British Columbia Jobs (bc.jobs)