How-to Find a Job During a Recession

This guest blog post is part of Techvibes new How-to series.

The current recession is creating a challenging climate for job seekers in British Columbia. The best way to find work is to get online as much as possible – here are some tools to help.

Recruiting trusted talent can be challenging for employers in the best of times. During an economic downturn, the number of applicants for a given position can increase by 1000%. To avoid this impersonal process, many companies prefer to hire referrals from current employees.

• You can connect with a range of professionals by using the Business Datebook from Business in Vancouver – a portion of the site that does not require a subscription to access. This date book provides a color-coded look at key events where you can get offline and meet people. Building these relationships will help you access 80% of the job market that often goes unadvertised.

• Follow your favourite organizations on Twitter. Some users search for employees or leaders of a company you are interested in working for. You can gain information about the company, culture, and other latest news before it hits the paper. By following prominent leaders, you can also learn if they will be at certain conferences or other events that you could attend or volunteer at.

• Techvibes itself has a fantastic hyper-local job board. If you are looking for work in a field related to technology, chances are they have a great posting for you.

• LinkedIn can help you manage the connections that you meet offline and present a shortened resume with recommendations from previous supervisors or colleagues.

Finally, here are some portfolio and resume tools that you may want to play around with:

VisualCV creates portfolios from their customizable template. You can connect this with your LinkedIn page to increase predominance of your web image and coordinate the postings.

Prezzie allows you to create presentations that highlights your work and demonstrate the quality of your past projects with an interactive and visual twist.

Compare your Salary to other cities using the Salary Wizard. Learn if your expectations are in line with the current market rates and stay competitive with other talent.

To best prepare yourself for an interview, watch these examples and read quick tips from How to Nail an Interview. Lastly – to help pay the bills between jobs, look for smaller gigs and temporary work with oDesk.