Where Do You Find Jobs These Days?

Devon and Sarah-Jane discuss how you actually find job openings discussing specific in-person and online ideas. Giving very simple tips and strategies for finding openings, Sarah-Jane and Devon set you up for success in both identifying openings which interest you and being successful in the application process to secure an interview.

Transcript

Welcome to The One About Careers with Devon and Sarah Jane. A career podcast for adults involved with teens navigating life after high school. We help you help your teens make informed education and career decisions by providing quality information and resources. Join us for weekly bite -sized conversations covering various aspects of careers, including insights from professionals and different fields. New episodes available every week at theoneaboutcareers.com.
Welcome to The One About Careers. Today we're talking about something kind of
exciting and always relevant, of course. Devon, where the heck do we even find job
>> Where do we even find job openings? Don't you just park on your computer and
blast at resumes? Isn't that how it works? >> But blast where? Where do you even
like -- I know where you're going.
>> But I think that's what people think. >> I'm going to play devil's advocate here
in terms of like, where are you blasting them to? Where did -- are there specific
-- >> I think that's what people think like it just you know, I don't know like
something magically appears and you sit down Yeah, when I ask people like where
you're playing online Okay, we're gonna need to
Yeah, there's a online is a pretty big space
I always say well, there's two main directions One is you can play online and the
other is you can apply in person which we talked about of course, with using your
resume and all that kind of stuff, that is where you will also find jobs. Now,
what those spaces actually look like, what kind of job are you trying to find is
really going to define where you look for that particular type of job. And,
you know, as we talked about in the resume issue, there are times when it's like
you, you have to do both more than you, you know, even if you show up in person,
they'll be like, hey, yeah, so you're gonna need to play online as well. Um, so
doing a bit of homework, like listening to this episode, we'll give you an idea of
where to start, depending on what you're looking for.
And what, what do you mean by that? Where you start depends on what you're looking
for. If you are a New graduates and you are looking for a new graduate from what
from post -secondary, let's say, which I recognize isn't super much our audience. Um,
but I go with me here. Um,
then what you may do is actually a lot of people don't do this and they should,
but what you may do is go to your campus career center where they have job posting
specifically for students and alumni from your program. Um, As a high school student
looking for a job in something like fast food or retail, that's not where you're
going to look. You don't have access to that.
I've come across a lot of students over the years who are like, oh, well, I went
on Indeed, which is, you know, everybody's favorite site. And I sent a bunch of
resumes out and I haven't heard anything. And it's, you know, there's a reason
indeed I was advertised themselves as the number one job search site in the world
because everybody's on it from both sides. So yes, there's a very good chance you
aren't hearing much because they're getting hundreds and hundreds of applications that
way. So if you are looking for something where potentially a lot of people might be
applying for it, where is the most unusual place that you might apply that other
people might not be so you can get noticed? So yeah, that's kind of what I mean.
It's, you know, where you choose to look has a lot to do with the kind of job
that you want to find. Right. There and there are actually sites that are specific
for specific industries, like there's one for green, green jobs,
which would definitely be more post secondary, as opposed to like post high school.
So I mean, like post university or post college, love your idea of the career
center at your university or college because they do have connections to people
within the industry. If you're a high school student, yeah, make a list of the 10
top stores you love to shop at and frankly, go to their websites because you can,
as you said, indeed Indeed is, like I've been on the other side, so in terms of
hiring from Indeed, so looking at resumes, putting in, sometimes you can put two to
three key questions, which are sort of qualifying questions, and which help us to
weed through the hundreds of resumes that can come in. What's really surprising is
that the number of people who didn't call me back.
So when I called for an interview,
didn't call back. Really, you want for job online here.
So pay attention to what, like I'm not expecting people to answer the phone to an
unknown number, but please listen to your messages and call those people back.
As I said though, the other thing. You tend favorite stores, favorite places to eat,
go on their websites, apply online. And then you could do that walk into the same
place with your same application.
So do kind of a double whammy. I probably do it in the reverse order, frankly,
like we talked about earlier, go there and apply online.
But some days, and I, when you apply, of course, I'm like, set yourself up, you
know, have a nice something to drink.
Maybe have some good tunes rocking. Give yourself time and space to
deal with the process. Know that you are not the only one in the world who will
find the process incredibly annoying. And you just want to tell them,
look at my damn resume, because the information is on there. And they go, no, you
have to fill in our boxes. Yeah, tell them where the boxes can go.
Don't do that. Just do.
So yeah, be mindful and be it like talk to your buddies too in terms of so I'm
looking for jobs in maybe that are work from home jobs.
Seriously, If you do this thing, use this, you know, a search engine, your favorite
search engine, and put in top 10 job, top 10 online websites to use for working
from home.
You could also put that into your favorite AI and see what they come up with.
Also understand AI is not always accurate. So just to be mindful of that,
but it may give you some ideas that you didn't know of before. - Yeah.
Yeah, this time of year, I'm seeing a lot of help -wanted signs.
And there are certain times of year that it's like, wait a minute, when do I need
to pay attention to this? So this is something you'll often see leading up to sort
of summer job time. You'll see help -wanted signs out in store windows leading up to
holidays. You'll see a helpful wanted signs out in store windows. And very often I
find kind of August, September is another time where you see that because if you
had students working there in the summer and they all left to go back to school,
they're bringing in a new pool of people. So that's another thing to pay attention
to is where are we in the cycle of the year? And is there a hiring push in
certain types of organizations right now. The other thing to be mindful of,
I had a client earlier today who was like, "Oh, I introduced some roles." They
said, "Currently, there's no roles open. They're basically interviewing for future."
Well, there's a reputable company, so I don't think it's a scamming thing. But I
said, "You know, it may just be they're looking out and their budget rolls over at
the start of the new year or their budget rolls over, you know, and March or
April, whatever it is, right? So that's another thing to be mindful of, is very
often companies want to hire, but they have to wait until like their new budget
comes into effect and they have money to hire people. So if you have an idea of
how those things work, again, that can narrow down where you're doing your job
searching and how you're doing your job searching.
- Absolutely.
In A lot of places I'm seeing especially food service places at actually on their
sign is now saying We're doing in -person interviews to stay at 2 p .m.
Or every day from 2 till 4 like just go in Things take time things are processes
and sometimes the hiring you think nothing's happening and things are actually
happening. I do, you and I've talked about this, always recommend following up.
Are there any sites that you're like, oh, be very careful?
Hmm. I honestly, I would say all of them.
Mainly because, well, for a lot of Since one is, and I think we talked about this
when we talked about building resumes, but if you are posting your resume into any
kind of site, and it doesn't matter how big they are, they usually are going to be
major targets for people trying to steal personal information. So that's always
something to be mindful of because obviously there's a lot of database information
stored on a site, on these very large job sites.
it's also, it's maybe not so much the sites, but you want to be mindful of what
you see in job postings. There are plenty of organizations out there who will post
jobs that are, they're just looking to see what's out there. They're not really
hiring anybody.
They're scam jobs, and they're trying to steal people's information or their banking,
get access to their bank accounts. Those are things that can appear on pretty
assedinctions
I
I
no matter where it is, no matter where it is. - Right.
So there used to be certainly online sites that were absolutely reputable and you
could,
you could trust that what was on them was in fact true. I'm thinking of
organizations like Contact
exchange and Sykes. If you Google those names, a new name will pop up with regards
to those organizations and you can view a lot of information online.
And so I highly recommend doing that, like really check out their website,
see what it says. Be mindful that some of these things you do have to be an adult
to apply, meaning 18 or over.
Not saying that's good, right or fair. I'm just saying it is. So be mindful of
that as well.
I would say anytime you're applying through a company website, you're probably fine.
You know, I've seen with students, they'll run into trouble where they think they're
applying for a job with someone big, let's say Amazon, and they saw it on a
secondary job website. But the address is something like Amazon jobs at gmail .com.
And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, that's not that's not Amazon email address. So
that's first off, you want to be where's the email going? But it's like, if you go
on Amazon's website, and you go to their career section, and you're applying through
their like careers portal, you're probably fine. Probably legit. Yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely. The other thing is, So we've talked a little bit about online. Also,
if your, you know, your university or your college will have ideas too in terms of
specific sites that they would highly recommend. There are sites that spring up and
become really popular for a while and then disappear.
You may still be there in the background, but they're not quite as predominant. I
can think of quite a few in my lifetime.
So it's great to like be talking to other people and saying, where have you found
good leads? What is working?
The online, I think sometimes can be just so demoralizing because it's a black hole.
- Yes, for sure. it is really great to talk to your parents,
talk to other kids' parents as well because you never know what might be available.
And in our province, you also need to get 40 hours of volunteer work.
And so sometimes other parents can help you with that and take you along for
certain things and then they actually see how you work and then they can be a
reference for you and they can also be like hey so -and -so needs a couple of
people to do X for a couple of hours this Saturday. Would you be gay? So that
does happen sometimes because you've already demonstrated your work ethic and they
know sort of how comfortable you are with some things you just never know. You have
hit on my very very favorite piece of job search advice. So one thing when somebody
comes to me is like, oh, I've been looking and looking and looking and I can't
find anything. Usually one of the first questions I asked is who have you told that
you're looking for a job? Oh, like my roommate knows. Oh, my friends now. Okay,
who else? What are you telling them? So anytime, like tell everybody is the strategy
I and will say to people, tell obviously parents and friends,
parents, tell your teachers, tell your coaches, tell your grandparents, tell your
aunts and uncles, tell your neighbors, tell anybody you can possibly, anybody.
Your hair stylist, your dentist. Yeah. Yeah. Tell everybody. Yeah. Yeah. We literally
mean that. Yeah. That's a really good point because you just
- Never know. - Well, it's so funny, like here in PI, the joke is, and when you
meet somebody, you're supposed to say, "Who's your father?" Because there's a good
chance that you know their father or you know somebody who's, "Oh, you live there?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we grew up together." Whatever it is. And so it's like, it's this
huge joke. And so often people will say to me, "Weather here or somewhere else."
You know, "Oh, I only got this job because my mom knows so and so who knew so
-and -so. That is how people get jobs. That is how you find a job. You didn't cheat
the system. That is the system. So,
tell people, tell people you're looking for a job. That's how you do it. - Yeah.
And whatever your favorite social media platform is, you can private message or
direct message people in that platform and say, "Hey, did you know I'm looking for
work and this is the kind of work I'm looking for and you can you can give like
some great parameters around that you don't have to be like I'll take anything you
can you can say some things like I'm looking for Tuesdays and Thursdays you know or
I absolutely can do weekends like whatever because you just never know sometimes
there's that lawyer out there who's got this very specific timeframe, which low and
behold matches with your timeframe.
Is there anything else you wanna add in terms of where do you find jobs? - I don't
think so. I don't think so. I think they're in a lot more places than people think
they are. That's mostly what I think, yeah. - Excellent. So I think this kinda
concludes on, you know, planning your fall, what sort of jobs, how do you job search? And our next episode, you know me. I'm always excited about the topics we talk about. You are. You are. I'm not going to even tell you what it is. Just pay attention for the next episode of The One About Careers.

Thanks for listening to the One About Careers podcast. You can catch up with past
episodes at theoneaboutcareers.com. Join us next week for another bite -sized
conversation.