im also experiencing the same 'lag', i immigrated from south africa 3 months ago and after sending out mass personalised resumes the only prospect that has returned any interest is london drugs of all places, ill take the job anyway because im in dire need of work but this coming from a background of network administration and IT lecturing in SA.
i feel the industry here in calgary is saturated.
I completely agree with you about the job market being saturated. Jason says that it's better than it was two years ago, and since I wasn't in Calgary at that time (Ontario), I can't comment that far back, but I do think the market is at as low of a point as it has been in the last year. I have heard of other people jumping ship and looking for other careers, and my gf-unit has suggest the same to me.
right now I think finding a job involves chance as much as it does anything else, that is unless you have tons of contacts, which isn't the case for people new to the city, or those relatively new to the industry. for example, lets say you apply for a job that your skills and experience match perfectly for, and maybe you even have some extra "features" that the prospective "buyer" (or you could say "user") will find attractive. first, they have to recognize that you are a strong prospect for the position, which may not happen if you are not in the first chunk of resumes[1]. some places may have machines or "assistants reduce the resumes, and I think it's safe to say neither machines nor assistants are best for this task. second, they may have too many apparently near perfect candidates, which means they may recognize your experience for it's quality, but some additional (arbitrary?) filtering could take place to reduce the number of good resumes into a list of people to actually be interviewed. if there is a dozen really good resumes, I'm guessing most places will try to reduce that to at least 8, maybe less. this all assumes that your resume gives them what they are looking for, they'll likely be over critical given the large number of choices they'll have. this is all how I view the process, maybe I am wrong, but I think I am close.
here are my suggestions, some may be obvious: (you better not use these to beat me for :-)
1. send resumes ASAP, try to win the race for getting your resume to them.
2. don't worry as much about the cover letter, as I understand it, most places don't look at them much ...
3. on the other hand, do worry about your resume. make sure you list everything appropriate to the job at the top of the resume, or at least on the first page. I use a "highlights" section. I always customize my resume.
4. unfortunately it seems that most places don't care about experience unless it's work experience. really try to show things from a work perspective. don't focus too much on non-work related experience.
5. I try to be as unique as I can (which is drasticly different than how I approach my real life perception). I think it's bad to use generic looking resumes, especially Word resume templates. I try to give mine a bit of style.
6. try to know your target, some place really want to know about your various certifications, however some places really don't wanna see your various certifications and their logos plastered all over your resume. again, this depends on the company, try to guess right :-)
7. overall, you want to do your best to mirror their job posting back at them, but of course it has to be backed with experience.
if I can think of anything more, I'll send another posting.
oh yeah, here's a trick I do. I send my resume as HTML whenever possible. I use keep my resume's CSS file on my server, and for each resume I customize, I change the CSS link to "http://.../myresume.css?company_X"; so that I can monitor who an when is looking at my resume. doesn't help in getting a job, but it's still interesting.
Dave
[1]. I think it's an agreed upon fact that many HR departments are not equipped to properly evaluate all of the overwhelming resumes that are sent their way. I got my last job (december 2002) because I had dropped off a paper copy of my resume, and the HR person I interviewed with admitted that she hadn't seen my emailed resume because they received more than they could properly deal with.
