Introduction

Job search becomes a big deal when skilled professionals fail to plan and set their priorities right in their career journey, as most encounter several hurdles when deciding on a career path, or job hunting due to inefficient plans in an imperfectly competitive market. These imperfections of the labour market are those barriers or threats that limit professionals from making meaningful career progression. The prevalence of labour market barriers is due to low labour demand amidst high volume of existing labour supply.

As a result of the shortage of labour demand amongst companies, the workforce is prone to face discrimination amongst employers amidst a highly competitive labour market. Consequently, most professionals try to play safe by accepting job offers from companies with values and missions that contradict their personality and interests.

This article explores how labour market imperfections, biased hiring, and poor career planning affect the career journey of professionals. Additionally, different human resources research papers and articles were referenced to examine and address the prevailing impediments that prevent a professional from making headway in their career pursuit. And how such conditions make workforce compromise their value by settling for less, doubt their potential and competencies during job search. Furthermore, the article highlighted essential solutions for cohesive career planning that will help professionals to land their desired job at the right company.

Labour Market Imperfections and Biased Hiring

The Labour market is exposed to several imperfections when the market is imperfectly competitive, such that the employers or the labour unions can have control of the market decisions. In other words, the employer or the workforce through the labour union can decide the wage rate, amidst high barriers to entry and exit, and limited labour demand and supply (Hulatt, 2022), and the influence employers and workforce have on wage rate makes the dividend of labour to be assumed beyond standard level of marginal revenue product theory (Pettinge, 2017).

On the other hand, the propensity for labour market accessibility and transparency can be determined by the availability of jobs, job policies, requirements, the discrimination amongst employers, and workforce availability. According to Pettinger (2017), labour is a derived demand because companies rely on the sales of goods and services, such that a company will be willing to recruit more workforce when there is an increase in the demand of the products being produced. When employers have dominance in an imperfect market, they tend to become biased in the hiring process because they can choose to use recruitment practices and procedures that favours their business, and a certain workforce.

Furthermore, employers tend to have hegemony over the workforce when there is a high unemployment rate because they can have firm control of the wage rate due to limited job availability. As a result, most professionals tend to settle for less by accepting jobs that underpay for their value, and that even contradict their personal values, and personality. According to Wadensjö (2013, p. 4) labour market inefficiency becomes imminent when the labour market lacks transparency, companies tend to hoard information of job vacancies, and channel their interest in hiring a certain group of workforces.

Challenges Faced in Canada’s Labour Market

The barriers of entry in the Canadian Labour market have been a major setback for the existing workforce. The visible minorities still face discrimination and are underrepresented in the labour market despite gaining more academic qualifications (Ranee, 2024).

A major setback affecting the labour market is the bureaucratic red tapism that occurs due to lack of seamless process for the recognition of foreign credentials, and failure of most organisations to recognise international work experience of new immigrants. Unfortunately, many immigrants with extensive backgrounds and high-level academic qualifications are unemployed, while some are precariously employed. There was an increase from July 2023 to July 2024 in the unemployment rate of immigrants that arrived in Canada in the last five (5) years, as their unemployment rose from 3.1 percent to 12.6 percent, compared to 5.6% of employed Canadian Citizens (Statistics Canada, 2024)

Even though the immigration program has astronomically increased the human capital of Canada, unfortunately, the qualified immigrants still struggle to gain employment amidst the prevailing discrimination and increase in unemployment rate. Although the labour market of Canada has made headway as it increased by 0.1 percentage points to 60.6 percent, however the unemployment remained stagnant at 7.1% (Statistics Canada, 2025), Canada has recorded the highest rate of unemployment this year since COVID period, as at January 2025, it was at 6.6%, it then rose to the current percentage of 7.1 points on August (Hughes, 2025). 66,000 jobs lost was recorded in the month of August 2025, this resulted in a 1 percent increase in layoff which was higher than 0.9 percent of August 2024 (Hughes, 2025).

Impact of Labour Market Imperfections on Job Application

The prevalence of downturns in the labour market limits skilled professionals to land their desired jobs and attain the Zenit in their career pursuit. When there is a shortage of labour demand, too many professionals will become unemployed as there’s too many workforces chasing few jobs.

There is a high tendency of underrepresentation of visible minorities in the imperfectly competitive labour market. Some hiring managers tend to be biased in their hiring process. As marginalization still exists in the Canadian labour market, workforces are sometimes discriminated against because of their race, sex, religion, and belief. A report from Rotman School of Management argued that only 30 to 50 percent of Blacks and Asian workers get call backs out of the equivalent resume submissions (Kang 2017).

Immigrants and International graduates also have their own share of discrimination. It is usually challenging for them to get a decent job even after gaining Canadian qualifications required for the profession. Most companies are likely requesting 2 years of Canadian experience or refuse to hire immigrants in entry level positions aligned to their career field. Consequently, making immigrants become unemployed for being overqualified or under qualified, such limitation is one of the partialities that has impeded the new workforce from progress or suffer underrepresentation in the labour market. Some employers tend to exploit immigrants, restaurant employers in the province of Saskatchewan were found guilty for taking unfair advantage of foreign workers as they charged them a fee for recruitment (Dudha, 2025).

How Professionals can Improve their Job Search and Overcome Precarious Employment  

Professionals should not give room for complacency in their career pursuit, regardless of their competencies. Having the qualifications, skills and abilities is essential for career progression, however, professionals tend to surfer a mismatch in their career when there’s no plan with the right level of commitment. Such a mismatch is imminent when the workforce fails to have clarity of what they need, in terms of knowledge and resources to equip themselves with the essential competencies required to land their desired job and achieve their career goals. On the other hand, some professionals aren’t self-aware, which makes them lack the required level of confidence in their job search, this in turn makes them undermine their potential, and settle for less.

Hence, it is important to effectively plan towards your career development in order to have a better understanding of what needs to be done to make headway in the profession and meet their future goals. Here are the essential tools for efficient career development planning:

1: Career Development Plan and Personal Assessment

Both employed and unemployed workforce can leverage Career development plans to ascertain how, where and when they can achieve meaningful career progression. While personal assessment helps professionals to become self-aware and develop a professional development plan aligned to their values, attributes, and beliefs. The career development plan can include:

1. 1. Professional Development Goal: this involves upscaling professional competencies by developing skills and knowledge through continuous professional development (Havard, 2022). It is important for both the employed and unemployed workforce to develop a career development plan that will enable them to improve in their overall competencies, this in turn gives them a head start in their profession.
   2. Social Network Goal: the plan can also include how you intend to improve your network of contacts, and what value each stakeholder in your network can bring for you in your career pursuit. Professional social networking can be achieved through meetings and events organised by professional associations or institutions, as well as LinkedIn connections.
   3. Resources management goal: in order to stay afloat in your profession, it is important to plan how you need to reduce consumption and improve savings, because it’s important to spend it on relevant training and resources that would contribute to your professional development.
   4. Career Advancement Goal: It’s important to have a career advancement goal in order to predict the time frame you can progress in your career field. From entry level position to becoming an executive.

2: Personal Assessment

Self or personal assessment is important to career planning. It helps professionals to be self-aware by knowing their personality, strengths, weaknesses, competencies, and potential. This can be conducted through self-assessment tools which helps professionals to make informed career decisions as they are able to identify career options, predict their career path, and confidently follow their career goals University of British Columbia (n.d.).

The tools that can be used include, personality tests which includes Myer Briggs MBTI, 16 personality tests etc., and Emotional intelligence tests. Other tools for individual assessment are SWOT analysis, Strength and weaknesses helps a professional to know what qualities and skillset gives them the competitive edge, while their weaknesses enable them to know the shortcomings that can limit their career growth, on the other hand, opportunities are those accessible resources and jobs to professionals in their career pursuit. Conversely, threats are those challenges and risks that can impede a professional’s career progression. PESTEL analysis is also helpful, it will help the workforce to stay informed of the trends of the external forces of political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors, this enables them to make meaningful career decisions, to avoid any career regrets in the future.

3: Vision Boarding

The vision board can be used to effectively visualize your goal and vision as a professional. Several successes have been recorded by those that use vision board, over 76% of entrepreneurs reported that they made progress in their business, and 82 percent of them accomplished more than half of their goals using the vision board (Travers, 2024).

As a professional and personal development tool, vison boards are created with the use of images and words that depict your desired goals. It can be done digitally/online, through some software, an example can be the usage of power point of the Microsoft office suite to create the visual representation of your goals in an organized or categorized format. On the other hand, the vision board can be done physically on a poster board, where professionals can create career development themes, with a collage of images that depict their goals and vision in an organized pattern.

Importance of Career Plan in Job Search and Application

Career planning is very helpful for career progression. It would serve as a blueprint towards success in an individual’s career journey. The following are the importance of career planning:

1. Self-Awareness: career planning process enables you discover your strengths, and strategies to put your skills to practice and make the best of opportunities within your reach.
2. Skill and Abilities Enhancement: with self-assessment conducted, you are able to identify areas of improvement and the missing competencies, which will in turn enable you to set professional development goals and engage in essential continuous professional development training to equip you with skills that will enable you to have a competitive edge in the labour market.
3. Effective Decision Making: it will enable professionals to confidently decide on their career path, give every skilled worker the clarity of their competencies and make informed decisions on their career journey, thus contributing to their sense of ownership.
4. Motivate Professionals: the career plan instills the right momentum in the workforce to keep hope alive amidst job shortage, and work with intent, and channel their efforts towards developing an impressive professional profile by engaging in the right personal and career development programs., that will enable them to land their desired job and overcome precarious employment.
5. Helps to Accomplish Career Goals On time: the plan in place will enable every professional to understand what to do and take the right action without doubt to accomplish their career goals within the stipulated time frame in their career plan. The plan is always timebound, which encourages the workforce to avoid procrastinating and work towards their goals on time.

Conclusion

That said, it is unfortunate that high number of visible minorities face an unpleasant rate of unemployment and people tend to settle for less, amidst the prevalence of irregularities. To crown it all, the statistical proof of the current reality of the Canadian labour market shows that drastic measures need to be put in place to resolve the identified limitations to prevent the challenges facing the workforce in the labour market. In addition, professionals should be goal driven by setting aside meaningful career plans that meet the needs of the evolving work environment.

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References

Dudha, A. (2025, October 21). Restaurant employers in Moose Jaw, Sask., charged with violating immigration law. CBC. Retrieved November 1, 2025, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/immigration-employers-foreign-workers-guac-9.6947766

Hughes, A. (2025, September 5). Canadian economy bled 66,000 jobs in August as unemployment rate at its highest since ‘pandemic days. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canadian-economy-bled-66-000-jobs-in-august-as-unemployment-rate-at-its-highest-since-pandemic-days-1.7625918251010/dq251010a-eng.htm

Hulatt, L. (2022, August 26). Imperfectly Competitive Labour Market. StudySmarter. https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/microeconomics/labour-market/imperfectly-competitive-labour-market/

Kang, S. (2017, October). Discrimination in hiring. Rotman School of Management. Retrieved November 1, 2025, from https://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/insightshub/talent-management-inclusion/discrimination-in-hiring

Parsons, L. (2022, August 23). Why is Professional Development Important? – Professional & Executive Development | Harvard DCE. Harvard Professional Development. Retrieved November 1, 2025, from https://professional.dce.harvard.edu/blog/why-is-professional-development-important/

Pettinge, T. (2017, November 28). Imperfections in the Labour Market. Economics Help. https://www.economicshelp.org/labour-markets/labour-market-imperfections/

Pettinger, T. (2017, November 1). Demand for labour. Economics Help. Retrieved October 27, 2025, from https://www.economicshelp.org/labour-markets/demand-labour/

Ranee, P. (2024). Employment in Canada. EBSCO Knowledge Advantage TM. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/economics/employment-canada

Statistics Canada. (2024, August 9). The Daily — Labour Force Survey, July 2024. Statistique Canada. Retrieved October 31, 2025, from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/240809/dq240809a-eng.htm

Travers, M. (2024, March 29). A Psychologist Explains The Power Of ‘Vision Boarding’ For Success. Forbes. Retrieved November 7, 2025, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2024/03/29/a-psychologist-explains-the-power-of-vision-boarding-for-success/

UBC. (n.d.). Self-assessment tools and resources. UBC. https://students.ubc.ca/career/career-resources/self-assessment-tools-resources

Wadensjö, E. (2013, September). Labor Market Transparency. IZA Discussion Papers, (7658). https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/90125/1/dp7658.pdf

Ibezimako Nkwogu, CPHR is a Human Resources professional with over five years of experience in talent acquisition, training and development, employee relations, and project management for small and large businesses across sectors. He studied his Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a major in Human Resources at the University Canada West (UCW).

His passion for human capital development, HR, and the management profession motivated him to become a CPHR and a professional member of Chartered Managers Canada. He strives to promote an inclusive and barrier-free labour market that will give every profession a level playing ground and eliminate underemployment.