Past trends predict the future
Information about past trends can provide valuable intelligence and insights as to the future projected outcomes that you are trying to verify and hopefully achieve.
What is Google Trends?
Google Trends shows the relative popularity of Internet search terms over a specific period where interest shows demand.
The relative popularity of a job-related search term can be a good proxy for telling us something about its future demand and even competition. This is where higher Internet search volume may likely point to higher demand in the future.
The power of Google Trends is in its ability to compare search terms across countries (i.e. Australia) and subregions (i.e., different states within Australia) for different periods and search type, as shown in the diagram below.
Google Trends will also tell us what gets searched the most on the Internet and whether it’s growing (e.g., ‘Data scientist” – blue line), flat-lined, or declining (e.g., “administrator’ – red line), as shown in the diagram below.
The positioning and comparison of the trend lines give us the relative volume of the search terms. In our example, ‘administrator’ as a ‘Search term’ is more popular than the ‘data scientist’ search term.
When people are searching for that upward trending (or even flat-lined) term, it can be assumed that there is demand for that search term in the foreseeable future.
Therefore, based on the results from Google Trends, we could consider taking on a ‘data scientist’ job over an ‘administrator’ job notwithstanding the lower volume of search results, assuming all other factors line up.
As part of your due diligence, perform as many Google Trends searches as possible using your chosen job titles. These can be based on your MBIT personality type, job cluster, future job growth, or other sources that you may come across.
You could also compare the trends and growth of different industries.
Select your country of interest
Your Internet browser will default to your country location.
This free tool is very handy if you are living outside the U.S. when data is not available freely. On the top right-hand side of the screen, select the country you want to analyse, as shown in the diagram below. In our case, it is ‘Australia’.
By default, Google Trends shows the relative ‘Worldwide’ popularity of a term over the ‘Past 5 years’. But you can adjust the period as part of your due diligence.
Forecasting job demand and competition
An upward-trending search result will most likely show an increasing interest or demand in that search term into the future.
With increasing future demand, there is also increasing competition from other job seekers. If you’re looking for a job, it pays to know where the competition is strongest and how to differentiate yourself from other competitors (e.g., job seekers).
What is good about Google Trends is that you can make many different search comparisons within the same search category of ‘Search term’, ‘Topic’, ‘Profession’, ‘Professional field’, or ‘Job’, as shown in the diagram below.
By using the same search category when comparing different job titles, you are comparing apples with apples. For example, you want to search and compare ‘teacher’ and ‘nurse’ using the ‘Search term’ category for both search terms.
Don’t compare ‘teacher’ in the ‘Search term’ category with ‘Teacher’ in the ‘Profession’ category, as shown in the diagram below. It will not give you a good result and comparison.
Note also that not all jobs can be categorised under the ‘Profession’ or ‘Professional field’ search category due to the availability of data or search results compiled by Google. When in doubt, stick to the universal search category of ‘Search term’.
As part of your due diligence, try out different search parameters like ‘Worldwide’, country, period (suggest ‘Past 5 years’), and categories (suggest ‘All’).
Interpreting the information
For the search results, you can either get a nice straight line or a saw-teeth line, as shown in the diagram below.
A nice straight line shows a constant interest or demand over the selected period, whereas a saw-teeth line shows seasonal or variable interest.
You may want to select ‘Worldwide’ to find out whether the trend line is like Australia, as shown in the diagram below.
Thinking about working overseas?
If you were thinking about working in another country, Google Trends can give you valuable information for you to plan your overseas career, as shown in the diagram below. You can sort by your search result under ‘Interest for ….’.
By selecting different countries of interest, you can see how the results vary for different countries.
More Internet searches
The Internet contains a wealth of job-related information that will increase the likelihood of you finding a job upon graduation.
Long-tail search terms
Here is a partial list of potential long-tail search terms you can use for your due diligence. Use quotation marks to limit your searches.
(1) [Your job] [your city/country]
(2) [Your job] / job sites in [your country] (i.e. type in ‘job sites in Australia’) – If you want to look for all job sites promoting job vacancies in a country.
(3) [Industry that you are interested in] jobs/vacancies in [your city/country] (i.e. type in ‘retail jobs in Melbourne’)
(4) Job vacancies [your job] [your country]
(5) Job seekers [your job] [your country]
(6) Job/employment statistics [your job] [your country]
(7) Employment growth [your job] [your country] [year]
(8) Employment/labor market trends [your country] [year]
(9) Casual/part-time/factory jobs/vacancies in [your city/country] – If you want to find generic jobs.
(10) Graduate jobs/apprenticeships in [your city/country]
(11) [Industry that you are interested in] trade associations/professional bodies/registration board in [your city/country] – If you want the contact members of your local trade association to find out more information about job prospects or if you want to network via local events and talks.
(12) Fastest growing jobs [your city/country]
(13) Jobs with the most growth [your city/country]
(14) Best/worst paid job [year] [your city/country]
Be creative in your Internet search terms to uncover more valuable information about your short-listed jobs.
By spending time in conducting due diligence on these jobs, you will be in a better position to make that final job selection.