A few minutes ago I typed "hidden job market" into the Google search engine. It threw up 4,200,000, (yes that is four million two hundred thousand) entries in 0.41 seconds!
If I were to pursue all those web pages, I can assure you I would be so advanced in years that finding a job would be the least of my concerns!
New immigrants, people who have been laid off, folk who are unemployed, are all apprised of the Hidden Job Market via all the communication channels available in this post modern society that we live in. They talk about it in all the workshops on Looking for Work. Human Resource professionals, market savvy authors, writers and journalists have churned out millions of pages of fluff on the subject. The number of websites devoted to helping the hapless job seeker are as numerous as the stars in the known galaxies. In simple terms, the Hidden Job Market translates to "Networking". To put it bluntly, it means Do you Know Anyone in the Company You Are Applying to For a Job? Almost every single desirable job in Canada seems to to go to people who fulfil the criteria above. It does not matter if you are the best in your field, if you are competing against the boss's niece, guess who will get the job? At a recent interview, the smart young lady who was calling the shots, went to great lengths to reiterate that there was no "mafia" in her workplace, meaning that it was not biased in favour of any ethnic group. I thought to myself : why take such pains to deny a condition which is supposedly non-existent? Needless to add, I did not get the job. On my way home, I stopped at a gas station to fill up. A cheerful attendant chatted with me and spoke in French to my dog who was sitting at the rear of the vehicle. I asked him where he was from. He said Togo and went on to explain precisely where it was on the African continent. Togo is in West Africa, sandwiched between Ghana to the west and Benin to the east, with Burkina Faso forming the northern border and the Gulf of Guinea washing the southern shores. As he handed me my credit card back I happened to glance inside the convenience store attached to the gas station. There was a large man at the cashier's desk with the same skin pigmentation as my new friend from Togo! I made an educated guess as to his country of origin...
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| Networking Not Required for this Job |
This means that if you are not the outgoing, Hail Fellow Well Met kind of person, the odds are stacked up against you. It means that it does not pay to be modest about your abilities, it means that if you cannot muster up the gumption to knock on doors which clearly state No Vacancy and No Soliciting, you might as well pursue a career as a Trappist monk or a cloistered nun. North America has no place for the reclusive soul, the socially challenged, the shy-by-nature creature. Yeah, I hate it as much as you!
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| Networking and contacts required in this industry |
On my many encounters with people who had immigrated into Canada say thirty or forty years ago, I heard wondrous tales of men and women who mailed their resumes randomly like throwing darts in a pub to big corporations and government departments and were instantly rewarded with an invitation for an interview. In many cases a solid job offer followed. Alas, those happy times are mere stories to regale today's harried job hunter in between tweaking the old curriculum vitae!
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| Certification, networking, and luck required for this job |
However, if you are not looking for a steady, full time job with a great pension plan, dental and medical benefits, three weeks or more of paid vacation, and a salary which will allow you to own a home and occasionally eat out at a restaurant slightly more expensive than MacDonald's Happy Hour, there are plenty of options. And fate would decree that this is the world I would explore when I began to live in Canada at the tender age of 46!
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| This job calls for latent talent, outgoing personality, self confidence, entrepreneurship and sheer perseverance! |
In my next few posts I shall regale you with the agony and the ecstasy of working at jobs you can find without taking the boss's niece out to dinner...
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| Use of CSA certified workgloves reccomended for this job! |
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| City permit and possibly Mafia connections required! |
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| Many vacancies...Few candidates...APPLY NOW! |
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