Canada’s Hidden Talent Pool

Every fisherman has a favourite spot where they always land the big one. But it’s hard to keep something like that secret for long. Soon everyone with a rod and a reel is crowding around to try their luck. Now there hundreds of anglers all trying to hook the same few fish. So what can you do? You can get shiner lures, tastier worms and hooks that look like food, but once that starts working every other angler is going to follow suit and you’ve lost your advantage. Now, what if there was another fishing hole, stocked to the brim with fish just as big, just as juicy and just as trophy-worthy as the last pool, only no one was using it? You’d be crazy not to grab your bait and tackle and go cast out your line. So why is it when it comes to finding the best employees people always look in the same pool as everyone else.

Talent Oyster is about getting employers to that Hidden Talent Pool. Our site specializes in finding the right candidates in the places where employers don’t often look - among Canada’s diverse population of immigrants, minorities, aboriginals and women. These are people with the skills and smarts to make any company shine.

So, would you rather fight with the crowds for a chance to land one of the few big fish in an well used pond, or have the fish fight to be caught by you?

Addressing the Talent Crisis in a Canadian way

Talent Crisis: It's a term you'll often hear in the world o' recruiting, especially in the Canadian talent market, where recruiters have been facing talent shortages in many industries for 5+ years now. But what does it mean? And is it just hype?

It's not just hype: As baby-boomers retire out of the workforce in record numbers across North America and the EU, the lower birthrates of the past 25 years mean there are more people leaving the workforce than entering it. In Canada, the consequences of this reduced workforce is exacerbated by restrictive immigration policies and other factors.

What does this mean? Five years ago, Statistics Canada predicted that by 2011 there would be 350,000 more jobs than workers; thanks to the recession, StatsCan and the Conference Board of Canada now predict the shortfall to happen sometime between 2011-2015. But talk to any Canadian recruiter today and they'll tell you: In many industries, professions and roles, the talent crisis is already in full swing and will only get worse.

According to Paul Dodd (President of Head2Head, a Canadian recruiting services firm) in The talent crisis is coming – are you ready?, "companies are already starting to see the effects of the coming talent crisis [...] employers who continue to ignore changes in the talent marketplace will find that, within five years or less, they will run into serious problems attracting, hiring and retaining top talent."

So how can TalentOyster help?

By connecting employers to new, untapped talent pools.

In Canada, there are just under 6,000,000 people who are in at least one of three of the groups designated as 'diverse' by the Employment Equity Act. But mainstream media doesn't connect with these groups in the amounts or effectiveness that they do with others and since most sourcing is driven by mainstream media the problem with accessing this potential great pool of talent becomes clear. You can't source from groups you're not touching after all.

TalentOyster is a unique job board because it's community driven. The media that does touch these groups, the hundreds of in-language print publications from coast-to-coast, the online and other media properties used by these communites, is the heart of what TalentOyster's parent company does and is. We speak to these communities, with messages they understand and appreciate every day. All of this means that TalentOyster has recruiting-industry exclusive access to an untapped pool of talent, almost 6,000,000 strong.

And that's a pretty good way to start addressing the Talent Crisis.

And we think a pretty Canadian way of addressing it too.