social networking though personal contacts) are a crucial part of day-to-day job seeking
activities. In West Lothian, on the other hand, the highly formalised services offered by
the Jobcentre Plus agency were more important.
Table 3 illustrates this point. When asked about the job search methods that they
used on a weekly basis, West Lothian respondents were far more likely to mention the
information facilities and advice of staff in Jobcentres. Almost 70% of West Lothian
respondents had received advice from Jobcentre staff on a weekly basis, compared to
only 44% of those from Wick and Sutherland. Clearly, the remoteness of some
settlements in the northern Highlands makes it impossible for job seekers to travel to the
area’s ‘local’ Jobcentres on a regular basis. However, the freephone telephone helplines
offered by Jobcentre Plus appear to be unable to replicate the relationship established
between job seekers and staff within ‘real’ Jobcentre settings, at least in terms of numbers
of contacts. Conversely, Wick and Sutherland sample members were much more likely to
use personal contacts and direct approaches on a regular basis to look for work. Only
42% of West Lothian job seekers (and only 27% of the long-term unemployed) had used
their contacts to look for work on a weekly basis, compared to 73% of the Wick and
Sutherland sample - a figure which was constant even when the sample was analysed by
unemployment duration (around a threshold of twelve months of unemployment) and
geography (separating the Wick and Sutherland TTWAs).
INSERT TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE
In both study areas, the Internet appears to be an important job search tool for a small -
but still significant - group of job seekers, with 16% of Wick and Sutherland respondents
and 18% of those in West Lothian using web-based services on a weekly basis. However,
in this case the internal geography of the Wick and Sutherland labour markets had more
of an impact. The figure of 16% using the Internet on a weekly basis masks a wide
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