6 Types of Resources for Job Searching

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This article first appeared here in June 2009.

Types of Resources For Job searching

By Gilbert Goh

Jo searching is a exhausting and tiring process for many people and it can be particularly stressful for those who are financially tight. To avoid prolonging the job search process, some simply take up any job that comes their way so that they can resume their normal lifestyle again - never mind if the new job carries a hefty pay-cut.

After a while, normally after none months to a year, the jobseeker may give up job hunting entirely more out of a severely bruised self esteem than anything else. Frustration has also built up to a level that has rendered the jobseeker irrational and ill-tempered. He feels that it is better if he cools things down abit and resume the job hunting later. Such behaviour may be dangerous as the lull period may be so comfortable that he loses the fight to search for a job again.

I remember I took a one-month break from job searching after a particularly frustrating period eight years ago and the break soon turned into a six-month siesta. It felt good not having to pore over the papers daily, sent in my resume, attended interviews and waited for the rejection letters. Naturally, any confidence that I still have remaining then was tore to nothingness and I did everything possible to preserve any remaining self esteem.

Fortunately, there are many resources available for the modern-day job seekers nowadays. Let us examine the common ones here:

Jobs Website Portal

There has being an influx of job website portals serving the online job market now. Some popular sites are listed below:

www.st701.com

www.2myjobs.com/singapore

www.singaporejobsonline.com

www.seekmyjob.com

www.jobhub.com.sg

www.singaporehotjobs.com

www.jobsdb.com

Sharing from personal experiences, I have yet to secure any interview let alone a job offer from such job portals. Maybe the online job portals are flooded with jobseekers and they have a hard time handling the volume. Nevertheless, at least, they bothered to reply and often provide a return standard email explaining that they have received my email request for work and will look into it shortly.

However, the main advantage of looking into online job portals is that it allows one to have a general overview of the current job market situation. For example, I realized that there is always a high demand for secretarial and clerical staff even during down time and knew that people searching for such jobs may end up getting one easily. Temporary jobs are also available if one does not mind the instability of such employment.

My take is not to bank all your hopes and efforts on online job portals. It is one avenue for job search and should remain that way – diversification is the key here.

Newspaper advertisements

This is by far Singaporeans’ hot traditional favourite for job search resources and why not? Nothing beats seeing so many columns of advertisied jobs on the local newspaper. It just lifts your mood up for the day!

However, bear in mind that during down time, companies may freeze employment and there will be considerably less jobs advertised on the newspaper. I remembered during my jobless period, there was not more than 3 pages of jobs available on the advertisement page of the local newspaper on any given day and it was all very gloomy.

Most jobs advertised are either temporal jobs such as telemarketing or sales-related. Multi-level marketing work was also very hot then.

Though job search via the newspaper way is still the most popular source for most Singaporeans, one must think of other ways to look for jobs during down period. Most small companies will not also advertise in the papers – they prefer to rely on their staff to refer friends to them to save cost.

Never put all your eggs in one basket again.

So far, based on my personal experiences, I could only secure less than ten interviews through the newspaper job search source all these years and only confirmed two job placements along the way.

One was a telemarketing position and the other was a civil service position. For the thousands of emails that I sent cumulatively to prospective employers on a daily basis, the success rate is miserably low.

Again, I must emphasized one should never depend on a single resource network for job searching however popular it is.

Moreover, one also needs to realize that many jobs are not advertised on the newspaper so that competitor industries will not know their human resource requirement.

Community Development Councils

The employment arm of the five regional Community Development Councils (CDC), supported by Workforce Development Authority (WDA), has been set up more than five years ago to tackle the chronic unemployment problem immediately after 9/11 and SARS.

It has now evolved into providing retraining and upgrading facilities to mostly matured and lowly-educated jobseekers. Some support programmes are also now being targeted at the unemployed professionals such as the support group activities and motivational talks.

AS CDCs also works around precinct, one has to contact their own CDC before going over so that they will not go to the wrong one. Most CDCs have walk-in counter and the wait for an officer to see you can range from ten minutes to thirty minutes depending on the crowd. It is safe to presume that during a recession, more residents will visit their CDCs for job matching and financial aid assistance. However, how successful are the CDCs in serving the needs of the jobseekers?

First, we need to look at the setup of the CDCs.

Each CDC has a team of Employment Consultants who will go through your job experience and capabilities so that they can match you with a job or send you for retraining. However, though they are widely successfully in helping the matured workers with lower secondary school education, the same cannot be said for their success rate with the professional, managerial, executive and technical (PMET) level.

Perhaps, the needs of this group are far more demanding and diverse than those of ground level workers. It will be difficult to job match a senior manager working in a bank for the past ten years as firstly the job bank of the CDC is rather limited in scope and secondly such senior positions are normally advertised with the headhunters. He will be better off looking for a headhunter than the CDC officer for job placement resources.

Nevertheless, many jobseekers have benefitted from the retraining courses provided and they are all heavily subsidised.

CDCs also have a social support arm whereby they will provide financial aid to those who qualify. There is a stringent set of pre-qualification rules in place and officers will visit your home to ascertain that you are indeed poor and down.

The assisted amount, between $200-$400 a month and given over 3-4 months, is nomally provided to help a family tide over a tough period and priority is given to breadwinner who loses his job.

Approval for such financial aid assistance can take about 4-6 weeks. Urgent cases can be sped up depending on the workload of the CDCs.

As the CDC’s main priority is to help those who are poor and unfortunate, their financial aid is limited to the really down and out and not for everyone.

It is not like in developed countries whereby the jobless can file cliam for unemployment benefit. Ours is more like a social welfare application limited to the very poor in society.

Blue collared workers who are less fussy about employment can easily get a job through CDC. They have a huge job bank of low-level jobs and officers are willing to assist those who want to help themselves more. Their emphasis is focused on helping the jobseekers to be self-reliant if possible.

For the PMETs, CDC may not be the best place to go as executive-level jobs are not so readily available in their job bank unless one is ready to really go very low in their expectation. Some common jobs at CDCs’ job bank include cleaners, security guards, drivers and technicians.

Moreover, a company who wants to look for such high profile workers will not register themselves with the CDC. They may go for elite recruitment agency who does headhunting on a professional level.

As mentioned, a trip to the CDC may not be necessarily fruitless as they have quite good upgrading courses available and it feels good to know that the government has provided some form of resources to help the people find jobs.

Similar smaller scale job search resources and financial assistance schemes are also available from the self-help groups – CDAC, Mendaki, and Sinda.

Networking

I have written on the merits of networking as a way of getting job referrals earlier. I can never emphasize this more as experiences have proven that this is by far the most effective way for many job seekers out there especially in this down time.

This is more so if you are looking for executive or professional work and you are not at the prime of your employability curve.

When one is referred by a friend, you are the only person going for the job interview and if you meet the requirements of position, there is no reason why you could not secure that job on offer.

Many smaller companies also do not want to go through the hassle of advertising, selecting interviewees and interviewing them one by one. Besides the cost factor of advertising, there is also the precious time needed to do all the interviewing. There is also no guarantee that your choice of the candidate is the right one as you base his suitability just on his written resume and an hour of face-to-face meeting.

Employers normally will ask staff to recommened their friends for any vacancy in the company as they trusted their staff referral and normally staff will also refer someone who is a reliable worker so that it will look good on them.

So learn to network on all occasions – attend training courses, church meetings, weddings, class gatherings, association meetings, etc. Learn to keep name cards and drop them an email later to source out for any opportunity

There are four job offers that I have secured through my own networking resources during the past few years and I hope that readers will receive the same success rate when they network more.

I would thus give top priority to networking as one of my job search resources. This will include emailing, telephoning and even meeting them up to inform them of my desire to find work base on their referral. Many people will not hesitate to refer when they see your urgency and earnestness to find work. The only thing that you need to do is to ask. Being shy does not help you much here.

Meet-The-People (MP) Session

Many people have resorted to seeing their Member of Parliament (MP) during meet-the-people sessions for both job search and financial assistance.

It is not surprising to see executives and professionals waiting for hours seeking help from their MPs especially when they are in dire straits.

Some I believe are at the end of the rope and really want some form of assistance and attention and why not?

Most MPs will refer such job seekers to the respective CDCs or self-help groups for attention.

The officers there will contact them to provide relevant job search assistance. As their cases are referred by their MPs, priority may be given to them. However, if such cases become too many for the CDCs to handle, I am afraid that the sense of urgency may be lost here.

Nevertheless, aid seekers always felt better after seeing someone in power. At least, they have found someone to listen to their problems and needs.

MPs also carry with them NTUC food vouchers from which families can use to tide over a certain tough period. I am sure our MPs will readily give away such vouchers if they have them on hand to deserving cases.

Random Emailing

I have also tried random emailing to certain companies. For example, I am keen on the social work sector so I would select a list of voluntary welfare organizations (VWO) and email them about my intention to seek for work in their company.

Surprising, one company replied me and fortunately they were looking for a replacement staff then. About a month or so after the interview, I got the job and left the part time job that was recommended to me by a friend.

I also had a big pay jump (about $800) and have never discounted the power of random emailing after that.

The important thing here is to know which sector you are keen on and go all out to seek for jobs in that area. If not, time and efforts will be wasted on looking for work in all the wrong places.

Conclusion

Some may prefer one mode of job searching than the other. For me, my last four jobs all came from networking channels.

As I will be out of contract wef 13 April, I am sending out feelers to all my friends asking for any work opportunities. This avenue, I believe, will remain an important job searching resource for me from now on.

I have done away with looking for jobs poring over newspapers advertisement or online job portals. There are just too many people out there using this job search method and you need to stand out from the many hundreds of application received to be granted an interview.

As for me, the saying goes: ”It is not what you know but who you know that is important” and will remain so for many years to come.

Illusions surround me, so I listen to the sounds of my heart, and trust the path is below my feet. I believe in the meaning of my journey. Erica Ross-Krieger