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Looking for a job can take as much time and effort as actually working, and that has some players in the job market calling for potential employees to be paid for their time.
Consider the amount of effort put into a job application: For every position you apply for, you have to update your resumé or portfolio, plus write a fresh cover letter.
Sometimes prospective workers are also asked to fill out lengthy questionnaires or complete assignments.
And that's before the interview process — which can involve hours of prep work, multiple meetings and time-consuming appointments.
More than 80 hours spent by one Calgarian
While searching for work in 2019, Calgary resident Roslie Main was called in for 20 interviews. She estimates she spent more than 80 hours on them collectively, when preparation and travel time was factored in.
"When you spend so much time on these interviews and then they don't work out for whatever reason, well, it's sort of soul-crushing," said Main in an interview with CBC Radio's The Cost of Living.
Main was eventually hired by a local non-profit, but said the interviewing process took up big chunks of her calendar.
"I applied for the job in May. I had the first interview in June. I had a second interview at the end of June, a third interview in July and a fourth interview in August," she said. "And it was for a contract position that was only six months."
Hours of prep, all of it unpaid
When Sanya Bhushan moved to Calgary this summer, she went through a similar experience. Bhushan said she wanted to find a job quickly to move out of her extended family's home and into her own place downtown.
Bhusan worked as a mental health counsellor in India, and when she received a call for her first job interview in Calgary, she dropped everything to prepare for it.
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