I have been unemployed for over a year here in the states and I have a rediculous level of education and experience in very tough areas. I have had to deal with looking for work regularly and it does sorta get worse and worse. I mean 20 years ago was 2005 so that was kinda the switch over from newspapers to online classifieds. Not sure which you used. I mostly use linkedin not because its necessarily the best but my profile is more comprehensive than my resume and I have both given and recieved recommendations from people on it. So what I have there is honestly the best collection of information for an employer to make a decision on if to hire me. I feel a lot of employers and job seekers don’t really get the power of the whole setup though. In particular people connecting with all sorts of people they have not actually worked with or posting on it like its facebook.