Student jobs are becoming rarer in the region

It is increasingly difficult for young people to find a job in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. Employers who were looking for staff a few years ago, now accumulate curriculum vitae and must refuse new candidates.

Antoine Fortin knows this difficulty. The 16 -year -old is looking for a job for the summer, but struggles to find it. For a few weeks, he has distributed CVwithout however being recalled.

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They told me we’re going to see if we call you back, but for the moment, we don’t really ask for people […] It’s flat because often they ask lots of questions, so you hope he calls you back, then finally, well they don’t remind you. You have to go and postpone others.

Antoine is not alone in this situation. In May, the unemployment rate among young people aged 15 to 24 was 14.2 %, according to Statistics Canada. Among the overall population, the rate is rather 7 %.

Employers have adapted

The director general of Carrefour Jeunesse-Emploi Saguenay, Bernard Belley, notes this new reality.

Job search time without CV is indeed finished […] There, what we notice this year is that you have to go back to the old method of looking for a job. So you have to have a good CV. You have to prepare. A job search is structured, it is prepared.

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He adds that the time when young people could find a job in a few days is over.

In recent years, it was employees or job researchers who had the big end of the stick. So companies have organized, reduces the opening hours, reduces contracts. They also automated. So there is less need for labor.

The organization observes that candidates must stand out and persevere to hope to be hired.

You have to trust yourself […] And most end up finding a job, but it requires much more effort, then a little more forecasts, then organization. So we are still confident. Then maybe there are on the other hand, given that it slows down, that they will not find immediately, but you have to persevere because it can go at the latest in the summer, it can go to the fallspecifies Bernard Belley.