Daily BrewSearch engine Adzuna identifies top 10 buzzwords from Canadian job-posts
Want to know the secret to snagging that job you're after? According to a new study, you should highlight two very specific skills: how effective you are and how well you can communicate.
A study by Adzuna.ca, an online job-search engine, found those two traits appear to be the most valued by Canadian managers looking to hire. They rank at the top of Adzuna's list of job-post buzzwords.
Adzuna found that job-seekers who could show how effective they were in previous positions could expect an annual salary of almost $7,000 above the average advertised figure.
The study analyzed the language employers used in millions of online job ads last month in several countries to highlight the most sought-after attributes in a potential employee.
In Canada, effective showed up the most, in about 25.6 per cent of job postings. Communication skills came a close second at about 25.5, followed by possession of a degree (so take heart, you over-qualified baristas). The word qualified appears least often, about 12 per cent of the time.
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The $59,044 average salary for postings where effectiveness predominated was higher than the overall average for all jobs, and about $3,000 more than for ads where communication was No. 1. But jobs that stressed having a degree seemed to offer the biggest payoff at almost $69,800.
Flexibility – No. 4 in the rankings – seems to offer the least monetary potential at a below-average $48,308.
The analysis looked at some two dozen commonly found words and phrases, such as leader, self-motivated, innovative, quick to learn and team player.
Based on that, traits for the ideal Canadian employee include an "experienced," "flexible" "senior" hire who can show "leadership skills" and demonstrate "creative" abilities while being "willing to learn," Adzuna found. Canadian employers are also looking for "innovative" and "energetic" employees who can help their business grow.
"Team player" is not a highly desired trait, apparently. It doesn't even make it to Adzuna's top 10 list of job-post buzzwords.
Canada makes an interesting contrast with other countries, the only one among seven in the chart that most highly rates effectiveness. Almost all the others value work experience most, while France puts organization skills at the top and German employers want a team player most of all.
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"Despite calling for a wide range of skillsets and qualifications in future employees, Canadian recruiters proved themselves to be amongst the most practical in the world, valuing effectiveness and results in the workplace over all else, while their counterparts in Brazil, Russia, South Africa and Poland remain preoccupied with previous experience," said Gabriel Puliatti, country manager for the Canadian arm of the U.K.-based Adzuna.
Employers have begun to take notice of social media, Adzuna found, though only 1.3 per cent of job ads in the survey mentioned the term explicitly. LinkedIn, not surprisingly, rated the most mentions, followed by Facebook and Twitter. Instagram and Pinterest not so much.
Puliatti told Yahoo Canada News the research is useful as a guide to employers who want to fine-tune the language they use in job postings.
"I'd say it's useful to jobseekers, who have to tune their words and approach in CVs and covering letters to what seems to be the norm in the market," he added.
Although there are variations across different countries, Puliatti said the data provides a broad-strokes picture of what employers everywhere want to see in prospective workers.
"They're not secret codes, but it can only help people to try to embody those values in the respective job markets," he said.
