Tapping into overseas work pool key to growth

Denise Deveau, Postmedia News · Nov. 30, 2011 | Last Updated: Nov. 30, 2011 3:11 AM ET

Like any business professional on the move, Jamie Rogers, a recruitment specialist at Calgary-based engineering firm Hatch, likes to network. But his sphere of influence is a little out of the ordinary.

Mr. Rogers is a firm believer that international experience is a terrific advantage in the Canadian workplace. That's why he spends a lot of time working with immigration agencies, colleges and other associations to meet, greet and mentor new Canadians.

His passion for helping immigrants find employment goes back to the time he spent working abroad after graduating from university. "That experience gave me real insight into how businesses work out there and the many similarities," he says.

Mr. Rogers considers it an important opportunity to find talent that might otherwise be overlooked. "There's been a belief that a person needs Canadian experience before they can be hired. But overseas experience is solid. The language and cultural differences are easy to overcome if you have the credentials."

Tapping into this work pool is quickly becoming a business imperative. Lynn Merrithew, corporation relation liaison for CCIS (Calgary Catholic Immigration Society), says 24,000 new Canadians from 120 countries arrive in Alberta alone each year. "That's a large number. And given the trends - older workers retiring, lower birthrates, etc. - we have to depend on immigration to sustain our corporate growth here."

This is far from being a local phenomenon. Teresa Gonzalez, director, gateway for international professionals at Ryerson University's G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education in Toronto, says "immigrants are expected to account for all of Canada's labour force growth this year. For that reason, access to this pool of talent has become a pressing issue for employers."

The challenge for many employers lies in knowing where to find the right qualifications and talent for the job. Mr. Rogers says he likes to work with organizations such as CCIS and Bow Valley College, who offer a range of networking, professional development and placement services designed to encourage business leaders to connect with new immigrants. "These programs are a great tool for anyone in HR staffing, because you are able to reach out and find new ways to bring in highly skilled talent."

CCIS is one of several likeminded agencies in the Calgary region that have built an extensive network for immigrants and business partners. Over time it has developed a full roster of opportunities to connect, ranging from bimonthly meetings at the Chamber of Commerce and information lunches to workshops and skills building.

"A lot of businesses are just becoming aware of the infinite talent pool that can be found through agencies like ours," Ms. Merrithew says. "Engineering, accounting, IT, HR, business management - we're able to link those types of skills with employers at these sessions."

The numbers show these efforts are having a significant positive effect on the labour picture: in a three-year period, CCIS alone placed 105 engineers in the oil and gas industry.

"Some of the people we placed when we started in 2003 are now in senior and executive positions just because we managed to convince employers to take these people on for their projects," Ms. Merrithew says.

New Canadians can also help themselves enormously by putting themselves in the networking picture and working on building "soft skills" to augment their credentials, Ms. Gonzales says.

"Aside from technical skills many of these professionals have, employers are looking for communication, critical thinking and analytical skills." To that end Ryerson is developing bridging programs in collaboration with industry stakeholders to ensure new Canadians develop the right skills to fasttrack into the workplace.

Whether it's bridging programs or meet and greets, networking is becoming a business necessity given that new Canadians will play a major role in helping employers address staffing shortfalls in future.

"Networking is always a huge focus point in my discussions," Mr. Rogers says. "It opens up opportunities for immigrants to reach out to professionals. At the same time it lets employers connect with a high percentage of internationally trained individuals and establish a common ground for conversations. It's definitely helping me see how I can help my company today."

Canadians With Ethnic Names Less Likely To Get Resume Callbacks, Study Finds

Janet Aschkenasy

A recent study as to why immigrants are struggling so much more in Canada’s job market today reveals some startling findings: A lot of it may come down to ethnicity.

“Why do some employers prefer to interview Matthew, but not Samir?” This is the title of a new study from two University of Toronto researchers interested in ferreting out ethnic bias by human resource professionals in Canada’s largest cities.

University of Toronto researchers Philip Oreopoulos and Diane Decheif e-mailed thousands of randomly created resumes in response to job postings across multiple occupations in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver between February and September 2010.

“Combining all three cities, resumes with English-sounding names are 35 percent more likely to receive callbacks than resumes with Indian or Chinese names,” the researchers wrote.

Where the callback rate for those with English-sounding names, Canadian experience and Canadian education was 13.4 percent, the researchers found, “Changing only the name to one with Indian origin lowers the callback rate by 4.2 percentage points, to 9.2 percent… and changing it to one with Chinese origin lowers it to 10.8 percent.”

Being educated at a Canadian university did not seem to make a substantial difference in callback rates, "as there is only a small difference in callback rates between Type 1 and Type 2 resumes (1.4 percentage points), which systematically differ only by whether they list a bachelor’s degree from a Canadian (Type 1) or foreign (Type 2) university,” Oreopoulos and Decheif wrote.

On the other hand, “Switching from job experience acquired in Canada to job experience acquired from India does seem to matter a lot."

Callback rates for resumes that list almost all job experience from India fall to 5.7 percent, for instance.

Commenting on the study, The Vancouver Sun reports:

“If your name is Alison Johnson or Matthew Wilson, [this] inventive national study suggests you could do better in the job market than if you go by Min Liu, Samir Sharma or Lukas Minsopoulos.”

According to the Globe and Mail, managers were contacted and asked about why ethnic-sounding names might be a reason to not follow up on a qualified candidate’s application.

“Dr. Oreopoulos said it was very difficult to get recruiters to talk about their own potential discrimination, so the researchers asked participants to suggest reasons why other hiring managers might be more likely to choose people with English-sounding names for interviews. Respondents “tended to jump to the conclusion that those with the ethnic names were immigrants,” Oreopoulos said, implying that this would raise questions about whether the person had the social and communications skills to be successful in the job.

One HR professional quoted in the study reported confusion when trying to assess foreigners’ qualifications:

“In the last competition I was hiring for, I was actually looking at the resumes and I was thinking to myself, especially if they had experience from outside of Canada, take a closer look -- are they really qualified? And I found it really difficult because I don’t understand the experience in many cases. For example, it is very common in the Middle East for senior level people to do everything from soup to nut[s]. It doesn’t mean they’re not doing the senior level work, but they’re also doing things that you just normally wouldn’t expect here, to be in a job at a senior level. If you just are looking at it and just are going based on what you know, you’re probably going, ‘What does that mean?’”

Another HR executive confided that “fortunately there is some reverse discrimination at play here: Asians are known to be apt with numbers.”

The study found that of the three cities considered, Metro Vancouver employers were the least swayed by the ethnicity of applicants’ names. But even in Vancouver, resumes with English names were still 20 percent more likely to get a callback than those with Chinese or Indian names.