Western Canada is about to brace itself for another labour market crunch.  Search assignments are up but candidates are not available to fill.  After a two-year run in an employee market, employees are back on top as the industry once again struggles to find the right people from a finite group.  The effects to hiring practise start to change again, taking new dynamics requiring that we clarify for our clients and potential clients the following changes to their recruiting…

Volunteering in the community benefits us all…not just our communities but also enhances our recruiting brand, whether an organization or a 1 or 2 person firm.  The result is good will and making the world a better place.  In fact, we as recruiters are not much different form the general population of volunteers.  Most of the characteristics of volunteers are*:

 1. Highly educated with professional backgrounds

 2. Goal-oriented with highly organized career, family, and…

In September 2007 Canada reached the lowest employment rate in over the last 35 years at 5.9%.  By mid-year 2009 the national unemployment figure rose to over 8.5%.  To put this in perspective, every percentage point change is approximately 180,000 people who no longer have a position.  Today the national rate is 7.4%, lower than the national average for the last 36 years (8.5%) – and that should encourage us, however it is not because the unemployment rate is actually trending in the wrong…

Statistics Canada divides up labour to track and measure performance.  One pool of talent is identified as the ‘Management Occupations’ that includes a number of white collar professionals such as (not a complete list):

• Legislators
• Financial, Human Resource, and Purchasing Managers
• Engineering, Computer and Information Science Managers and Architects
• Sales, Marketing and Advertising Managers
• Insurance, Banking and Telecommunications…

Despite what many fans of the ancient Mayan calendar are predicting, the world most likely will not end in 2012. Instead, we need to prepare for positive changes in the economy and labour market.  This is going to be a year of strong growth and revitalization in several important industries such as it’s also going to be a year where many more baby boomers celebrate their 65th birthday and retire, continuing to retire as a generation through to 2029, creating hard to fill vacancies throughout…

Trillions of dollars in productivity are lost due to illness or personal leave (holiday not counted). In Canada that amount can be calculated on average and Daryl Henry, VP of Southern Alberta at Executrade, promptly pulled out his calculator to do so. The average Canadian in 2010 (most recent data) took an average of 9.1 days of leave per year x the average hourly wage of $23.56 x working population of Canada 14,254,000 = $3,056,000,584. Three trillion is a big number, and…

Who wants to retire?  Who is ready to retire?  Sadly those who raise their hands to the first question are far less likely to raise their hand to the second because they just are not ready.  IPSO Reid (http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=5531) provided research results for Sun Life’s Canadian Unretirement Index identifying that 48% of Canadians between the ages of 30 and 65 are planning for a…

We have seen incredible strides for women in the workforce.  Fifty years ago in 1962 women were mostly still homemakers and just starting to stretch their wings in terms of the labour force.  Today we see in Canada that 50.4% of the labour force is comprised of women, edging men out of the majority by half a percent.  In addition, the market offers more programs directed at encouraging women in the workforce.  For example, based on a test market run in Toronto, Edmonton is the first to…

On 2/12/12 Forbes published an article titled “LinkedIn is Disrupting the Corporate Recruiting Market” (http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2012/02/12/linkedin-is-disrupting-the-corporate-recruiting-market/).  The article attempts to connect some dots between strong revenue growth (and assume market share) that has been captured by LinkedIn’s recruitment services and…