Making Yourself Known: Finding Your Next Job in 2018

With recession headlines dominating Alberta’s news cycle for years, the focus that is often lost in the constant updates is the personal aspect. Unemployment statistics are people without work. Percentages increasing and decreasing are people whose lives are completely changed. But now, with Alberta’s employment statistics and job growth numbers steadily rising for nearly two years, many people are eager to see what opportunities are out there.

Alberta’s job growth and unemployment are surprisingly strong, despite detractors, and employment statistics point to a resurgence in Alberta’s economy. At the end of last year, unemployment had fallen to a 26-month low, to 6.9 percent. “Full-time employment increased by 45,800, and overall employment increased by 55,000,” according to the Alberta Government’s released December 2017 statistics. Oil and gas was the second largest sector for employment growth, behind accommodation and food services.

Alberta’s economy is recovering but there is no heading back. What companies look for in today’s applicants is different than before, which is a struggle for people returning to the job market. Companies that ran on lean budgets before are more focused on efficiency, which poses a challenge for anyone looking to see what is out there.

Many hiring companies are doing so cautiously and they are willing to wait for the right candidate. “There’s much more strategic hiring going on today than a decade ago,” says Rowena LaFlèche, vice president, Edmonton area for the David Aplin Group. “Employers aren’t willing or able to retrain because they are running at such a lean capacity. More often than not, they will wait for someone with the right skills instead of getting someone approximate and training them up.”

This need for specific skills has another, seemingly counter, consequence as well: the need for people to occupy multiple roles. “Before the recession, you would apply for a job in accounts receivable and that would be your job,” LaFlèche explains. “Today, you could be doing accounts receivable and helping with other accounting duties. So companies need people who can do multiple things to help them keep their operations lean.”

The hunt for specific skillsets is proving extra difficult for many who are coming back into the workforce after considerable time off. For people who are re-entering old industries, they are finding their years of experience cannot compete with current expertise, especially when it comes to industry-specific software…