The Myth of the 'Job Market'

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The Myth of the 'Job Market'

Parachute Newsletter
by Richard N. Bolles

Three Scenes from a Job-Hunter's Notebook

Scene One:
The Flower Market
A number of years ago I visited the Aalsmeer Flower Market, in Holland. This Market (actually called an 'auction') is the largest covered trade center in the world, with an area equal to 120 football fields (or 100 soccer fields, if you prefer)! And you can stand on a catwalk, looking down on much of it. I have never forgotten the sight. 17 million flowers and 2 million plants are auctioned or sold there daily.

I was told at the time – and being of simple mind, I believed it – that Aalsmeer was the only flower market in all of Holland, and that to this central market each day came every flower that was to be sold in the Netherlands, and every wholesale buyer (or shipper) who wanted to buy flowers in the Netherlands. I thought at the time that it was a wonderful image, and idea.

\Unfortunately, it turned out not to be true. Though Aalsmeer is the largest to be sure, there are actually seven flower markets (which is to say, 'auctions') in the Netherlands. But never mind. That fantasy of one central flower market for all of Holland, has been indelibly branded on my mind, forever.

Scene Two:
'The Job Market'
When, some years later, I came into the field of job-hunting and career-change, and I had to deal daily with the phrase "the job-market," I thought to myself: Wouldn't it be wonderful if the phrase "the job-market" really meant what it implied. That there really was one central market for jobs, somehow, where all came to meet: everyone who had a job to offer, and everyone who wanted to find a job. Here to this one central place they would come, and meet and find each other!

Alas! The phrase "the job-market" was a merely a poetic metaphor, that existed only in a poet's head.

There was no real "job-market" – not in the sense of that Holland market, as I fantasized it. There was no catwalk anywhere – metaphorical or otherwise – that looked down on all the jobs to be sold, and all the potential buyers of those jobs, in one central place.

Rather, an employer could go out their door, and walk up and down the streets, looking for a certain kind of person, while some job-hunter who was that very person could pass right by them, on the street, without the two of them ever knowing how close they had come to finding each other. And often, often, the thought went through my mind, how much of the difficulty of the job-hunt would be solved if ever it were possible to create that one central job-market in real life.

But it remained a vain hope – at least until the World Wide Web was born.

Scene Three:
The Internet
And there, at last, we had the chance to build what our Neanderthal job-hunting system had been aching for: one central place, one central "job-market."

On the Web we had a chance to establish one job-hunting site, to which everyone who had a job to offer, and everyone who wanted to find a job, could come. All jobs would be posted there. All job-hunters could come there. The beauty of this possibility was that the one site could be reconstituted in the twinkling of an eye, into various configurations. There would never be a need for a job-hunter to go through all 120 football fields, looking for a particular job. Since it would be a 'virtual' building (hate that phrase!), it could be approached in a number of configurations: you could hunt for jobs that were only in a certain geographical area, or only in a certain field, or only with a certain job title, or only with a certain salary, or any other criteria you might choose.

A clever society would have built such a site – would have used the World Wide Web as the opportunity at last to create this one central job-market, as the only place we needed to come – employer and job-hunter alike.

But we are not that society. So, what have we ended up with?
Well, the flower market in Holland has but seven places ('auctions') to which you must go if you want to try to cover everything flowery.

Whereas, the job-market on the Internet now has at least 2,500 places (sites) to which you must go if you want to cover all the jobs listed on the Web. What a tragedy! What an opportunity missed!

And yet, I still see in my mind's eye that market in Holland. And I still hope, that someday, we will be able to talk about 'the job-market' and mean it as more than just poetry.
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