Find services in your area
Employment Ontario – Search Tips
GUIDED SEARCH
Step 1: Tell us what kind of help you need.
The default is “Any service”, which includes all services.
Step 2: Tell us where you are
By selecting a town/city in the drop-down list or by entering a postal code in the box provided, this step will narrow your search geographically. These 2 options are mutually exclusive. You cannot combine Postal Code and town/city searches
(see note below)
Options:
Choose one of towns/cities:
Select atown or city from the drop-down list that appears.
OR
Enter your postal code
Enter a six character postal code with no spaces.
How step 2 works
If you select a town/city, the search results will display all services that match your step 1 and step 2 selections (or the default if you did not select anything). The results are for services located in the town/city that you selected.
If you enter a Postal Code, search results will show the first 100 services that match you step 1 and step 2 selections (or the default if you didn't select anything) listed by the distance from the Postal Code that you entered from nearest to farthest.
Note: If, by mistake, you select a town/city and then enter a postal code, the system will ignore the town/city and only list results for a postal code search
Step 3: Tell us if you want services for a specific group of people:
Select from this list if you are looking for services especially designed for one of the target groups in the list. The default for this list is set at “all groups.” A search for “all groups” will include both services that are open to all but will also include services exclusive to a particular target group.
Note: If you select a target group, you will see services that are exclusive to that target group. For example, almost all services are available to Aboriginal people but when you select Aboriginal from this list, you will see only services that are exclusively designed for the unique needs of Aboriginal people.
QUICK SEARCH
The Quick Search will try to match each of the terms that you enter in the search box. It matches each term individually and will list any result that matches at least one of the words that you entered. If you want the search to match an exact phrase, you can enclose the terms in double quotation marks.
Example 1: Search for Second Career with no Postal Code entered (default is all of Ontario) will find all records with “second” or “career” in the name or subject indices (286 results). Searching for “Second Career” will find all records where the phrase “Second Career appears in the name or subject indices (176 results).
Note: Although you may have selected a town/city in Step 2 of the guided search, it will not apply to the quick search. Quick search only uses the Postal Code to search.
EXPANDING/HIDING SEARCH RESULTS
The default for all searches based on Town/City selection is to find programs or services located in the community you selected. In some cases, where the selected town is small or where services are spread over a wide area, you may want to include programs and services that serveyour selected town/city but are not actually located there. To expand your search results to show all programs and services that serve your selected Town/City, you can click on the Show results for agencies that serve [whatever location] link (this link is located above the “Modify Search” option at the top of the results page).
When you click on this link you will be brought to a new search results page which will include programs and services that “serve” your selected Town/City but which are not located in that community.
To contract your search back to only those programs and services located in your selected Town/City, there will be a link at the top of the search results page (above “Modify” results”) which the user can click on called:
Only show results for services located in [whatever location}
Note: (By highlighting this link in blue the user knows that they can click on it to cause an action)
Note: There are several services in the database that serve all of Ontario. The Employment Ontario Hotline is a good example. This means that whenever you expand your search to show programs and services that serve your Town/City, you will see the Employment Ontario Hotline listed.
