Simply Hired Trends Graph

Simply Hired now has a trends graph that you can use to look at the ups and downs of the number of job postings for your occupation, based on the numbers available in their search engine results.

Generalist Librarian, Reference Librarian trends

Generalist Librarian jobs | Reference Librarian jobs

You can compare various titles, as shown above, to see what has increased, decreased, or what the fluctuation looks like. It can also give you a glimpse into when most of the jobs you are looking for are usually posted. Actually, for librarian, it looks like jobs are posted all year round, with very few extreme high-low periods, unlike, say camp counselor.

What I found most valuable was using it to discover how jobs are listed, i.e. jobs with similar skills and what the preferred title is for the job posting. This may not come as a surprise for anyone, but I found that I got more relevant searches if I used a number, as in Librarian 1, than if I just searched for reference or generalist, though those searches also returned relevant results.

The percentage of matching jobs refers to all of the results harvests by Simply Hired, which indexes lots and lots of jobs, so don't freak out because the percentages are low. This tool is only available on the US version of the site.