Delivering job search services in rural labour markets: the role of ICT

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Servaes and Heinderyckx (2002) suggest that low take-up and use of ICT among
excluded groups can be explained in part by a lack of need or awareness, but also by
problems (whether financial or geographical) in accessing technology, and individual gaps
in the skills required to effectively exploit ICT. These potential problems of access, skills
and awareness provided a framework for a further investigation of the barriers and
opportunities presented by ICT-based job seeking. Our objective: to identify the nature
and extent of the digital divide or ‘technology gap’ experienced by rural job seekers.

Job seekers and ICT: access, skills and awareness

If facilities delivered via the Internet are to enable job seekers to identify appropriate
vacancies, and provide opportunities to extend social networks, access to ICT is an issue
of central importance. Comparing domestic access to ICT across our two study areas,
members of the West Lothian sample emerged as slightly more likely to have a home or
mobile telephone (83%, compared with 76% in Wick and Sutherland) and a PC with
private Internet connection (26%-19%). Members of the Wick and Sutherland sample
who resided in the more rural Sutherland TTWA were clearly more likely to have
Internet access (27%, compared to 12% of those in the Wick TTWA). They were also
more likely to have a home telephone (85%, compared to 68% in Wick). However, it is
perhaps more worrying that a small but significant minority (15%) of those from rural
Sutherland reported that they did not have a home or mobile telephone. (Among the
long-term unemployed this rose to 21%.) The telephone-based services provided by
Jobcentre staff to clients in very remote areas of Sutherland supposedly replicate the
quality of advice and counselling offered to those who attend Jobcentre offices in person.

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