Tips For Employers For Winning The Talent War

(The Toronto Star, Canada’s most widely-circulated daily, was kind enough to offer me space in their opinion section to go into this in more detail. But we’ll move on here!)

Tips For Employers Looking To Improve Hiring Workflows

Be decisive

Hiring in Canada is too slow. It’s like the first hire, every hire. We get in our own way due to our inability to be decisive. Here are three steps that can help you improve your decision making in hiring:

1. Stop passing the buck and determine who needs to provide input on each process. Decision makers should be empowered to make decisions and encouraged to do so with autonomy.
2. Set up service level agreements with hiring managers obligating them to review a resume within a specific period (e.g. two business days). These agreements should define your recruitment process, and outline standards for timelines. Let’s move beyond having hiring managers that are too busy to hire!
3. Leverage technologies in hiring. Technology has evolved around us, but recruitment processes are much slower in spite of all the technology and tools available. This makes little sense. Buck the trend and implement technologies that focus on removing friction in hiring. – like the SparkHire platform, a video platform that offers initial candidate screening and removes the friction of scheduling conflicts for the initial interview. Or a third party company that can be used to complete reference checks, for example: Sterling BackCheck.
4. Document and dissect hiring workflows. Don’t rule out the fact that your company’s labour shortage is probably somewhat self-inflicted by cumbersome processes and a lack of decisiveness within your group.

Get over the flawed obsession with local experience

Close to all of the innovation in the construction industry comes from outside Canada, yet we obsess over hiring candidates who can do things the old way. Yes, local experience is important, but a smart candidate can be trained to do anything if they have the right attitude.

We suggest:

• Hire for attitude, train for skills.
• Instead of beating up candidates in an interview about their lack of local experience, why not ask them “What can you teach us?” or examine how open they are to adapting.

Canada is developing a reputation for hiring the world’s best and brightest talent and then shoehorning them into doing this their way (aka the old way) due to fear of change. How innovative is that?

Stop cherry-picking

Stop waiting for the perfect candidate, and instead be prepared to train the candidate with potential. Too many employers in Canada are suffering self-inflicted labour shortages because they are unwilling to adapt to the ongoing labour shortage. The solid Intermediate candidate has potential to grow into a Senior if you provide the opportunity to gain further experience.

Waiting for that unicorn on roller skates has an opportunity cost to your business that is often not factored into calculations.

Understand immigration

Immigration is responsible for 98% of the population growth in Canada. If you get to grips with the pipeline of talent provided by Canada, you can use the system to your advantage.

You, or someone on your team, should understand basic immigration things like the difference between a temporary work permit and permanent resident status. Given many newcomers arrive on temporary status, you should either understand how a candidate can transition to permanent status, or you should have access to an immigration professional that does know. Your ability to tap into newcomers can have a profound impact on your future success. Learn to manage and mitigate immigration risk instead of avoiding it.

Celebrate diversity

The organisations that can assemble and train and retain newcomers will win the game. Canada plans to welcome 500,000 permanent residents each year in 2025-2026, so it’s time to adapt to the opportunity. Better still, learn how to celebrate diversity in your organisation and you can become an employer that is attractive to the talent pool that is arriving in Canada.

These are some simple ways to celebrate (and attract and retain) diversity at your company:

• Organize potlucks,
• Celebrate national events and special days for staff,
• Enjoy international sports events together.
• Lean into diversity and your firm can become a magnet for newcomers. Expecting them to adapt to Canada is a little backwards and shortsighted. Ask them how you can adapt better to help them settle in Canada also. Your ability to train and retain a diverse workforce at your organisation will future proof your firm.

Evaluate all costs of an empty role, not just agency recruitment costs

Yes, using a recruitment agency costs money to solve a gap. But let’s get familiar with opportunity costs of not having the right person in a role and the hidden costs of overloading other team members before we determine that using a recruitment agency is too costly.

Consider: how correlated is the scenario of losing a star performer in the organisation because you delayed hiring someone to support them and they felt consistently overloaded as you fumbled in filling a vacant role for too long? Do you factor into your equation the costs of turning down work due to a lack of resources? These mistakes have a huge cost that is often overlooked as we fool ourselves into thinking we just need to wait a little longer and the perfect hire will walk through the door.

Set a limit on internal hiring practices and be prepared to invest money in alternative solutions if you are not delivering success internally.

Offer flexible work

Most Canadian employers appear to want a candidate who is ready to commit to being in the office, full-time for 2-3 years minimum to make a positive hiring decision. Can we afford to be so inflexible in a changing world, especially during a decade of labour shortages? This is yet another example of us cherry picking in a labour shortage.

Try to evolve your mindset into what candidates are looking for: hybrid work, contract work, and other flexible ways (work from home, etc.) to contribute to an organisation. Something is better than nothing. Freelance or contracting work is offered in all busy labour markets across the world, but Canada seems slow to evolve and wants its pound of flesh or no deal.

Schedule your full interview process from the get go

The irony of having clients that can schedule 3-4 year construction projects but cannot schedule the entire recruitment process is never lost on me. Time and time again, recruitment processes drag out due to calendars being full. But if you want to be decisive, why not commit to scheduling the second and third interview for a candidate from the get-go? You can always delete them if not needed, but it allows your recruitment process to maintain momentum in a busy world.