The war for tech talent remains precisely that, and likely won’t change anytime soon, but there are reports from the battlefield that suggest Waterloo Region is not only holding its own, but gaining ground.
“I think we’re catching up – I think things have changed quite a bit,” said Jamie Grimoldby, Director of Human Resources at Client Outlook Inc., a Waterloo-based software company in the healthcare space.
Grimoldby was one of 150 recruiting specialists who gathered at CIGI (the Centre for International Governance Innovation) Wednesday for a conference called the Art of Talent, which explored solutions for companies as they work to find the right people to staff and grow their firms in an environment where talent is in much demand, an issue Communitech News explored in depth last spring.
Grimoldby, who has worked locally as a recruiter at companies like OpenText, AGFA Healthcare and McAfee, believes companies in the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor are maturing and growing so much so that they’re now a centre of gravity for talent from around the world. He said the interesting work those companies do, the scale they’ve reached, the value prop of being located in Canada, and the relative ease with which skilled non-Canadians can get visas, are all making a difference.
“What I'm finding now is people are looking at jobs a little differently than they did in the past,” said Grimoldby. “I think the meaning in the job – in terms of what you know, what the company does, how the company acts, what the product actually does – at the end of the day means so much more [than it once did].”
That doesn’t mean a fight for talent doesn’t continue to exist and, as a result, companies have to remain aggressive and look for alternative recruiting methods, said Kaitlyn Holbein, founder and Principal Consultant at Kitchener-based The Employer Brand Shop.
“I think that companies are having to get increasingly creative,” said Holbein, who delivered a breakout-session Wednesday called “Attract and Engage: How to create and manage recruitment marketing campaigns.”
“We see companies paying a lot of attention to [things like] employer branding and marketing efforts, to be able to enhance their visibility in front of these [employment candidates] and start to drive them to action, because a lot of the traditional channels – job boards and the like – just aren't necessarily working to the same extent as they used to.”
The creativity Holbein spoke of was evident in a keynote session delivered by Mark Tortorici, a Bay Area-based training, sourcing and recruiting consultant and manager. Tortorici walked attendees through a session in the sophisticated use of internet search engines through carefully crafted search strings in order to surface potential candidates – candidates that others might miss. The search tools, he said, can potentially level the playing field for a small startup aiming to recruit against a big tech firm with “armies” of HR and search professionals.
“If you just use one source of information, then you're always going to be at a [recruiting] disadvantage,” said Tortorici. “You’ll always have kind of a myopic view of the talent pool. But if you use multiple sources of information, multiple search engines, then you get a little more and you might find those candidates that maybe some of the other big companies are missing.”
Pay and other compensation have long been perceived as an area where Canadian tech firms are at a disadvantage. Grimoldby said the gap is closing, that Canadian companies are increasingly competitive.
“I think we're really, really competitive as a region,” said Grimoldby, and that employees are looking for the kinds of things local firms offer.
“It's all about the people, because you spend so much time at work. I think people are really looking at that [culture and who they work with]. It’s not about just money any more.”
