In the age of oversharing online, it seems that searching for a job is one of the last topics that anyone wants to share. The world’s largest job site, Indeed.com, recently commissioned a study by Censuswide, surveying 10,000 job seekers around the world – in the U.S., Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
As you would expect, 65% of job seekers worry that others may find out they’re looking for a new job. 24% of job seekers ranked their job search as the topic they’re least likely to share on social media. This is right up there with personal finances.
And, this makes sense. In much of the U.S., workers have limited employment protections. Simply put, an employer can fire you for a reason. Or, they can fire you for no reason at all. If they know you’re looking for a new job, they may perceive you to be disloyal. And, disloyal employees are at risk for being let go.
They don’t have to give you advanced warning. We’ve all had a friend who has been walked out of the building of their workplace with a small box of their personal things. That horrific thought is enough to cause you to never speak about your own search, ever again.
Professor Paul Dolan, Behavioral Economist at London School of Economics also pointed out the need to be seen as successful. “Admitting that we are looking for a job means exposing others to our potential success or failure. To avoid embarrassing ourselves, we choose to hide our searches.”
This also holds true in romantic relationships. Researchers found that half of job seekers don’t tell their partners when they’re applying for a new job. Those over age 55 are even more likely to keep searches hidden.
Although surprising, this finding makes sense. If you’re searching online, you may apply to a large number of jobs before landing a first round interview. If it takes thirty applications to land one phone interview, who wants to have that conversation with a spouse thirty times? Rather than feel like one successful phone interview, it may very well feel like twenty nine failed applications. Often, a new job requires a lifestyle change of some kind. Waiting until things are more firm allows the job seeker to avoid some level of judgement and conflict.
That said, keeping career changes from your partner isn’t recommended. Your career greatly impacts your personal life, and if you’re sharing that life with someone else, your decisions will impact them too.
But, when it comes to colleagues, there really is good reason to be cautious. Even if you’re doing a great job in your current role, your boss may have second thoughts about you if they know you’re looking. When you tell others about your search, you risk losing control of your search. As it’s clear, job searching really is the last taboo.
Angela Copeland, a career coach and founder of Copeland Coaching, can be reached at copelandcoaching.com.
First, can you believe it’s December 11th?! Wow, this year has really gone by fast! Let’s look at what’s happened in the job search world in 2017…!
Each year, Indeed.com takes a look back at how job searching has changed in the last year. And, they ought to know. Founded in 2004, Indeed holds the title as the world’s largest job website. They get over 200 million unique visitors each month from over 60 countries.
As you probably have, those millions of people use Indeed to search for jobs. And, Indeed has saved all that data about the millions and millions of job searches. They’ve analyzed it to share insights with us for this year — by country.
Some of what they found is widespread. People around the world are looking for jobs related to technology — and to flexibility. And, it makes sense. Who doesn’t want a work-from-home job?
In the U.S., searches for ‘hurricane relief’ are up 682% and searches for ‘no experience required’ are up 1,114%. I have to imagine that searches related to experience have to do with young employees feeling the strain of entry level job postings that require many years of experience.
In Canada, ‘tech,’ ‘finance,’ and ‘full time‘ searches grew. But, older programming languages including Perl, Ruby, and Delphi dropped by 48%. This is just a reminder that to stay relevant in technology jobs, you’ve always got to be learning and evolving.
In Ireland, some of the hot searches were: part-time, talent acquisition, summer internship, and new store opening. But, searches around the construction industry dropped by 65%.
In the Netherlands, ‘furniture maker’ grew by 245%, while ‘nurses’ dropped by 72%.
Belgium has seen a jump in people looking for ‘java‘ related jobs – by 422%. Searches are also up for government related jobs and student jobs.
In France, the number one rising search is for “happiness.” French workers searched for jobs related to happiness by over 200% of what they searched for in 2016. And, ‘PR manager’ jobs were down by 49%.
In Germany, folks were searching for: part-time job, education, optometrist, and cyber security.
In India, people were searching for more jobs related to digital marketing (80%), government jobs (60%), and tech-related jobs (98%). Interestingly, as the government promoted Ayurveda medicine, searches for the holistic system jumped, while searches for pharmaceuticals dropped.
In Australia, the search term ‘457 visa sponsorship‘ rose by 91%. This coincided with the government cutting back on its skilled foreign worker program.
It’s both interesting and a little nuts to see how changes in government or in business can so quickly refocus us and our job searches. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2018! To learn more about Indeed’s trends (and a few I left out), check out their entire piece here.
I hope these tips have helped you. Visit CopelandCoaching.com to find more tips to improve your job search. If I can be of assistance to you, don’t hesitate to reach out to me here.
Also, be sure to subscribe to my Copeland Coaching Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher where I discuss career advice every Tuesday! If you’ve already heard the podcast and enjoy it, please consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.
Episode 143 is live! This week, we talk with Raj Mukherjee in San Francisco, CA
Raj is the SVP of Product at Indeed.com. Indeed is the world’s #1 job website with over 200 million visitors per month from over 60 countries. In addition to Indeed, Raj has also worked at a number of other organizations, including GoDaddy, Google, and Microsoft.
On today’s episode, Raj shares everything you need to know about using Indeed Prime. Indeed Prime’s tagline is “Get hired within one month – job search not required.” Listen and find out how this recruiting tool (that targets technology candidates) is helping both employers and job seekers.
Listen and learn more! You can play the podcast here, or download it on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.
Thanks to everyone for listening! And, thank you to those who sent me questions. You can send your questions to Angela@CopelandCoaching.com. You can also send me questions via Twitter. I’m @CopelandCoach. And, on Facebook, I am Copeland Coaching.
Don’t forget to help me out. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and leave me a review!
You may have noticed on my social media. I took a trip to Austin, Texas in May. But, it wasn’t any ordinary trip. Indeed.com invited me to come as a member of the press to their annual Indeed Interactive conference.
As far as conferences go, this one was awesome for me. It was like a job nerd’s dream. I had the opportunity to interview Paul Wolfe, the SVP of HR at Indeed for my podcast and for my Career Corner newspaper column. Indeed employees presented on all sorts of job search related topics, including the economics of hiring and what job seekers are looking for in a new job. They brought in outside speakers too, including my very favorite author, Malcom Gladwell. If you wondered what was going on with my crazy Twitter feed, this was it!
I will be releasing my entire interview with Paul Wolfe soon, and you should check out my Career Corner Column about him this Wednesday. We talked about everything from employee benefits to why employers “ghost” employees during the job search to the supply and demand of job seekers (and how it can impact your search).
Here’s me with Paul.
I can’t possibly include all the excitement in one newsletter, but I do want to share a few facts and photos from my trip.
First, did you know that career decisions are one of the most stressful life decisions? Of course you did! But, here’s a slide with the data to back up that feeling. Dismissal from work is rated as more stressful than foreclosure on your home!
And, here are some of the top (stressful) issues reported by job seekers.
#1 – Waiting to hear back from the prospective employer.
#2 – Finding the right jobs I want to apply to.
#3 – Circumstances that triggered the initial decision to begin my job search
Can you relate? Of course you can! The job search process can be very, very frustrating.
Speaking of #3 above (“Circumstances that triggered the initial decision to begin my job search”), Indeed found that people often start looking for a new job after a trigger event. For example, you were thinking of maybe, possibly one day getting a new job. Then, your boss acted like a real jerk and yelled at you for no reason. Suddenly, one day just became today. Your job search has started – now.
The conference was geared toward the Human Resources departments at companies across the U.S. It makes me excited to think that HR teams were exposed to so much great information about the factors impacting the job seeker, and the job seeker’s perspective. Here’s one last photo. This is Malcom Gladwell explaining what it is that we (as hiring managers) are getting all wrong about the job search process — and what we can do to make it a little more fair for everyone. Exciting, right?
I hope these tips have helped you. Visit CopelandCoaching.com to find more tips to improve your job search. If I can be of assistance to you, don’t hesitate to reach out to me here.
Also, be sure to subscribe to my Copeland Coaching Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher where I discuss career advice every Tuesday! If you’ve already heard the podcast and enjoy it, please consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.
You must be logged in to post a comment.