3: Print
The first of the 3Ps is Print. Here, the notion of print is interpreted broadly. It includes what you can read either in hardcopy (e.g., newspapers, magazines) or softcopy (e.g., internet-based news outlets, podcasts, news reports, videos). It also includes information posted to social media.
News
Valuable informal LMI can often be found in the news. Considering what impacts, opportunities, and outcomes a news event might trigger unlocks the informal LMI that’s embedded.
Imagine you read a story about efforts to clean up a local waterfront after years of neglect and restore its natural splendour.
- The story mentions that the local municipal council passed a new bylaw to help protect the waters and surrounding green space.
- A budget measure was also passed to add three new conservation officers to help protect the area.
What impacts could this have on the local labour market?
Will the clean-up be done by volunteers, or will there be contracts awarded to provide paid work to get the job done?
Could a revitalized waterfront contribute to more economic activity in the area through increased tourism and the opening of local businesses?
When will the hiring process begin for the three new conservation officer roles this initiative is expected to generate?
Considering news through an LMI lens transforms it from neutral information, disconnected from us to potentially useful information related to the local labour market, job search, anticipated future trends, and work opportunities.
Try applying this lens to a news story now.
Click here to read the story Canada’s First Carbon Fibre Production Hub Launches at InnoTech Campus in Edmonton.
Considering news through an LMI lens allows you to integrate your understanding of the structure of the labour market by applying it to real events.
Social Media
Social media is both an influencer on the labour market and a tool to find LMI, primarily on available jobs. The rapid evolution of social media created entirely new roles. For example, “Social Media Manager” was a job title that didn’t exist 25 years ago. Social media has also given rise to platforms dedicated to job postings, many of which are never posted to the national Job Bank platform and are therefore never captured in formal LMI data. Social media has become a vital tool in identifying trends and in supporting work search.
There are many useful social media sources for informal LMI.
For Job Opportunities & Local Hiring Information
These sites are particularly useful for those in the Job Search dimension, with a range of posted roles from entry-level to seasoned professional available to search.
- LinkedIn Jobs
- Indeed
- Kijiji
- Glassdoor
- Craigslist (still used in some regions)
- Industry-specific job boards, such as:
- Charity Village (nonprofit sector jobs)
- GoodWork (environmental sector jobs)
- TechJobs (tech sector jobs)
For Networking & Labour Market Signals
These sources provide real-time access to job trends, employer behaviour, sector chatter, and skills insights.
- LinkedIn (for joining groups, monitoring news feeds on trends, and identifying job postings that are outside of LinkedIn, for example those hosted through an employer’s Human Resources Information System (HRIS)
- Instagram (for trades, small businesses, creative industries)
- TikTok (growing platform for career content and sector trends)
- Facebook Groups (for local job boards and newcomer communities)
Additional places to find informal LMI include podcasts (available through services like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Pocketcasts), videocasts (available on YouTube and other video platforms), and self-published blogs like those found on Medium or Substack.
Online Discussion Forums
Many websites, including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Reddit host discussion groups. Groups typically have a specific focus, for example a particular company, sector, or occupation. Users can join groups to observe activity. They can also contribute to groups with their own posts, comments, and replies to others. Joining groups gives visibility into informal LMI that might otherwise not be seen.
Actively participating in group discussions can quickly build networks. For example, commenting on a post with a professional insight or a question can lead to others in that group, including those in hiring roles, to reach out to request a personal connection. Even moderate participation in online groups can broaden networks, provide insights into the realities of working in a particular job or company, surface in-demand training and certification that would help someone get hired, and uncover hidden opportunities.
As with all LMI, it is critical to consider the credibility, reliability, and relevance of social media information. When viewing social media sources for informal LMI, keep the following considerations in mind.
Are the sources CREDIBLE?
Looking for supporting information, for example to confirm whether a Facebook group offering employment services to newcomers has a formal company website and established history, is an important way to confirm whether the group shares credible information.
Is the information RELIABLE?
A post on a personal page from a friend who feels overworked and under-resourced does not mean that there will be budget to hire more staff. By contrast, a post in a professional group about a short-term project for which additional support is forecasted to be needed is a more reliable indicator that the information may well lead to real-world opportunities that are worth exploring.
Is the information RELEVANT?
Social media is typically designed to keep the user online as long as possible. Algorithms can push a lot of irrelevant content into view to try to keep a user engaged. When using social media, targeted searching becomes an important skill to avoid losing time to scanning irrelevant information.
Using social media is not required in your practice, but it is almost impossible to ignore. Because it is so widely used, most clients include social media in some form as a source of information when considering their career questions, and when looking for job opportunities.
Just as you would with formal LMI, the CDPs role is to focus on need as the first step in integrating informal LMI. Identify what you and your clients need, then help match the best tool(s) to those needs.
In the Print category of informal LMI, this can mean helping clients identify sites outside of Job Bank to look for job postings, as well as social media and news sources that help them identify hidden and upcoming opportunities.
