Job Discussion Forums

[Anne Stevens]

Hi,

I have been a regular on ESL Cafe for a few years, although i post few messages (a couple). Here are some comments which may be of relevance for all experts, expats et al:

1- I have found out that the web ( and ESL Cafe) have become less helpful over the years: Dave's ESL Cafe is a great, ok the best (in case Dave Sperling is reading, as he always must be), there must be many reasons for that. One is obvious: there are so many sites, so many users and people must have changed their habits a little bit.

2- I have come to realize that there are some great teachers out there; but to put it bluntly, they may not be a click away: they have so much to do. They make money (hey, remember, they already have a job

3- On a more personal note: i have posted a couple of messages; some people have responded (merci/thank you). But, I never [underlined] never got the info requested from that source.

This is not a complaint, by no means. It is just a sign of the times, and a comment on how we use the web, different sources. I have used Career Centers, the Parachute book, etc.

Check this info any day:
only 4% of all job-seekers find a job via the internet.
Think about it.

Ciao,

Anne Stevens
[email protected]

P.S. On a another note: I have discussed the issue privately and on Africa Forum: where are the Francophones? my guess is that very few are on those sites.

[scot47]

Is this so important that it should be elevated the the exalted rank of STICKY ?
Who decides ? Mods ? I do not understand this whole business about francophones . Why would francophones be posting on an anglophone site ?

[rogan]

Je suis francophone mais mes observations sont toujours en anglais !!

[Stephen Jones]

Dear Anne,
Only 4% of job searchers may get their job through the internet but I suspect the figure iis much, muich higher for EFL teachers, and near 95% for those who get the job while living in another country.

---" i have posted a couple of messages; some people have responded (merci/thank you). But, I never [underlined] never got the info requested from that source. "----

I've checked your two posts out and it is not surprising. To get information you must post the right question in the right place and you did neither. It should be abundanlty clear that there is nobody who frequents these forums who is working in Morocco, and the Africa forums are pretty well dead anyway. One of the basic problems with the new forum style is that it is too fragmented. The old one-size-fits-all forum was hopeless for refenening archived material but it did mean that everybody was reading the same posts, so somebodly living in China who knew something about Morocco might have noticed and been able to answer. Now certain forums have sufficient critical mass to survive such as China, Japan, or Saudi but many of the other forums are dead, and unless Dave changes his policy and starts amalgamating,wll stay that way.

Your question on the General Forum got an excellent answer from Glenshi and another vaguer answer. Both answers were more than you deserved. Firstly if you know that a question has been asked before then use the search box! Then, and only then, ask about the specific details that you have not found an answer to. And if you phrase your question in terms as vague as "what qualifications does every cournty in the world require to teach in all the different types of educational establishments" don't expect an answer. If making your mind up about where you want to go is so much effort, why should people bother to make the effoirt for you.

To sum up, the Internet is a tool and the two old saws about "the right tool for the job" and "the bad workman blames his tools" both apply here.

[/b]

[Anne Stevens]

Thanks for your response.
I guess that there will be more feedback. Also, I note that there must be stats re: EFL and the Internet (rather than vague statements such as yours ("Only 4% of job searchers may get their job through the Internet but I suspect the figure iis much, muich higher for EFL teachers".)


I don't know what you mean by your remarks:

"Both answers were more than you deserved..."
"and "the bad workman blames his tools" both apply here."

All in all, yes, it may be difficult to get some specific info re: Morocco and
I will welcome any hints, addresses, websites or any ideas and could do without the patronizing tone - as i am not blaming anybody!
To sum up: "tell me what you can do ... not what how bad i am, etc"
Thanks anyway.

Anne Stevens

[Stephen Jones]

Dear Anne,
There are unlikely to be reliable statitistics on this. They would have to be collected before they could be published. For our college the figures are between 65-85% since we started advertising on the internet. It's hard to give exact figures because most print adverts are online adverts too.

What I am saying is that you did not get the information you wanted because you are asking on the wrong site in the first instance, and because you were not specific enough in the second. If you ask about the whole world you are indeed lucky to get answers about any part of it.

To ask about Morocco you need to find the right forum. You are a French speaker so ask on the French forums, and do some intelligent searching. The internet is a tool and you appear to be blaiming it becasuse you don't have the skills to get the information you want. What you need to do is to learn how to ask and that takes a lot of time.

One rule you can follow is not to expect replies from any forum that does not get at least half-a-dozen posts a day. Forums are like coffee shops with the added proviso that nobody goes to them to drink coffee so if nobdoy is providing any stimiuating conversation expect them to close down. The problem is that on the Internet they close down but are never boarded up.

[Anne Stevens]

Hi.

I'd rather go to the experts and do it every day; i don't know where people get their ideas on sites like this one: I only shared some comments. So, it's not about me, please: we are all in the same boat - 'Dave's boat' in this case. If my comments can help, or if somebody out there has been through this job-search, fine.

And I do realize that you have addressed the issue but your figures are wrong and, as to specific data, as you said yourself, you don't have any*.
Let's go to the experts: the Parachute [What color is ...]
If you want the whole article (which is very long), I'll send it to you privately.

Btw, my comment was misunderstood: you do find some expats, teachers, etc - here {Dave 'S ESL Cafe} and there {other similar sites} - and some are working in Morocco, as we speak. Very few have the info I need or the time to get it. Again, I am not blaming anybody.
Thanks.

Anne Stevens

* "There are unlikely to be reliable statitistics on this ". Why do you say that? I think that's wrong: the Internet has been around long enough and there are some experts out there collecting info.

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The Net Guide
(Quote from the Parachute)

Overview

Thirty years ago, few had ever heard about fax machines, FedEx, cellular phones, desktop computers, e-mail � or the Internet. But now, all these are omnipresent in our world. The revolution, in people's habits, is growing, and growing fast. Particularly with regard to the Internet.
Radio took 38 years to gain 50 million listeners. Television took 13 years to gain that number of viewers. The Internet, as we currently know it, took just four years to gain that number of users -� and now over 72 million Americans (35 percent of the U.S. population 16 years old or older) are on the Internet, with 40 million more are coming soon; the worldwide total of Internet users will be 327 million people by the year 2000.

The Internet's growth continues to be prodigious. The amount of information processed over the Internet is doubling every 100 days, according to the U.S. Commerce Department (4/15/9.

Some of that information is, of course, devoted to job hunting � and it is increasing along with all the rest. In 1995, there were just 500 job sites online; in 1998, an estimated 100,000 sites had some job listings or job information on them. 1

Job hunters' use of the Web is also increasing. One measure of this: In 1994 there were 10,000 resumes posted online; in 1998, there were 1,200,000. I would guess that means that about 2,000,000 job hunters are online during a typical month.

These numbers still represent only a fraction of the labor force. From an advertiser's point of view, two million is an impressive figure. In terms of a percentage of the total work force, which now numbers 138 million, it's not. One survey confirmed that only 5.5 percent of the 99 million households in the U.S. had ever done any online job hunting. 2 I would guess that means that about 5,000,000 people are online during a typical year specifically to do job-hunting � but really nobody knows. (Rating services' figures vary widely, and are therefore not to be leaned on with any confidence.)

All this is certain to change, and people will start coming on the Internet in larger and larger numbers, over time, in order to job-hunt. But the question of the moment is: What's keeping them? Three reasons spring to mind:

(1) Slowness, of course. The Internet currently can be agonizingly s........l........o........w. That should change with cable modems coming, that are able to conduct operations at up to 100 times the current speed. We will see. But there's also:
(2) Bad word of mouth. Currently, there are too many messages posted on the Internet and repeated in neighborhoods by disgruntled job-hunters, that run along the lines of "In spite of all the hype, Internet job-hunting is a total waste of time." Until that perception changes, job-hunters will still avoid the Internet in droves. Remember, if the survey (above) is correct, 94.5% of all U.S. households have not done any online job-hunting. Yet. And finally:
(3) Job-hunters need to know more exactly what goes on, on a job-hunting site. Currently, the Internet is a world where reality and illusion are as seamlessly blended together, as they are in David Copperfield's show. In both cases, the audience can't figure out where reality ends and illusion begins.

.....


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[quote="Stephen Jones"]Dear Anne,
There are unlikely to be reliable statitistics on this. They would have to be collected before they could be published. For our college the figures are between 65-85% since we started advertising on the internet. It's hard to give exact figures because most print adverts are online adverts too.

[johnslat]

Dear Anne Stevens,
I have to admit I was baffled when I first read your posting. I really didn't get the POINT ( or points ) of it. I mean, first you told us that the web in general and Dave's ESL site have become ( in your opinion ) less helpful over the years. Perhaps so - but I didn't see any constructive criticism there, no way to improve this ( alleged ) situation. Then you mentioned that statistic - " only 4% of all job-seekers find a job via the internet ". But where did that come from and how does it tie-in to your first point ( which was, I suppose, that the web is not helpful and becoming less so ).
Then there was the ( to my mind ) rather odd plaint about there being so few Francophones on an ESL site. Quite honestly, I can't put it all together and moreover I'm not sure just what we readers were supposed to get from it. To sum up, what exactly WAS the point of your posting, and how was it supposed to either effect some change and/or convey some important and useful information?
Regards,
John

[Stephen Jones]

----"Let's go to the experts: the Parachute [What color is ...] "----

Experts in what? How on earth is the writer of that book an "expert"?

Has he done research into the hiring prefeences of Korean Hagwons, Spanish language schools and Sauid petrochemical companies?

General statisitcis are meaningless in this respect. I am yet to know of anyone in Saudi who hired their maid or houseboy or electrician directly through an ad on the internet.

However for hiring EFL teachers the matter is completely different.

Like John Slattery I fail to understand what you are getting at.

[Irish]

Like John, I'm not sure what the point is here. As for the Parachute book, isn't it aimed at people seeking jobs within the US? Even if we accept their statistic for this group, what evidence do they have that this number applies to US citizens seeking employment outside the country? What about citizens of other countries--Australia, France, Japan, take your pick--seeking employment outside their borders? How do we know this data (assuming it is accurate) can be generalized to these other groups?

I'm not trying to be critical, Anne, only to understand what you're want to tell us. Obviously, you think it's important but the message isn't getting through.

[Anne Stevens]

Hi,

Thanks for your comments.
The quote is an excerpt from 'What color is your parachute?': a great book for all job-seekers all over the world [ Btw, their book is translated in 12 languages or so ...]
I also gave another excerpt; their work is as good as ... (well, you you see my point)
I hope that other people may add other hints, data: about ESL, the Internet and other sites.
My point was/is: " only 4% of job-seekers find a job via the Internet". You may like it (or not). It's just a fact, and there is nothing 'negative ' about it.
Hope I made that clear
Thanks.

Anne Stevens

[Stephen Jones]

----"My point was/is: " only 4% of job-seekers find a job via the Internet".----

And our point is "So what?" It's so vague as to be no use to anybody

And if you want to say "It's just a fact" then you had better rephrase it to " according to a US self-help bestseller only 4% of a sample in a limited geographical location used the internet at a certain point in its development at a certain stage in the economic cycle."

Specifics are all important here. For example every permanent full time local authority school teaching job in England and Wales is advertised in one publication; you can buy the paper edition or get it off the web but that is the way it works. And in fact if you wanted a job in a school in Kuwait you used to get the paper edition of the same UK publication because the jobs would be advertised there and not in the local press.

[johnslat]

Dear Anne Stevens,
OK - let's, for the sake of discussion, even concede that your point IS a fact. What do we do with it? Are you suggesting that, if we're seeking employment, then using the Net is fairly useless? Do you suppose that anyone looking for work would limit themselves to using only the Net? Are you advising job-seekers to employ multiple avenues to find a position? If any or all of these were what you were aiming for, well, I suppose there MIGHT be some out there who profited from your posting. But I find it hard to believe that anyone would be so dense as to rely on only the Net to find employment. But hey - maybe I'm wrong. For all I know there could be people out there who ARE that dense, who say to themselves: " Whoa, I really need a job, but I'm not going to look anywhere for one except on the Net. " Of course, such individuals might also profit from a posting that gave detailed instructions on how to pour water from a boot.
Regards,
John

[Irish]

My question isn't about how many languages Parachute has been translated into. My question is about the data. 4% of job seekers...where? Looking for what type of job? What were the characteristics of the 4% who got jobs via the internet (age, level of education, work history, etc)? What percentage of them sought employment in a foreign country (a point of special relevance for many of us around here)?

Citing the US Commerce Department is fine, but how can we generalize studies about US job seekers to people in other countries? Assuming the data is accurate--what the heck, let's go as far as to assume that it applies to US citizens seeking work abroad--how is it meaningful to Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, UK citizens, or anyone else?

Sorry, but you're not giving us enough to work with here. This isn't about liking or disliking your number--it's about putting it into context so that it's useful. It's too general to apply to our specific group of job seekers here.

[guest of Japan]

The article's information if from 5 YEARS AGO.

It no longer presents any relevant facts. If your talking about Religion, Education, or History then an article posting info collected 5 years ago is fine. However, when talking about something like medicine, genetics or the internet, it is no longer valid.