Canadian Organizations Want to Hire More Diverse Candidates

  The official unemployment rate may be holding steady, but most Canadian recruiters are seeing a marked uptick in demand for candidates - and it's renewing their interest in recruiting candidates from diversity groups such as visible minorities and recent immigrants, according to a new survey by TalentOyster.com.

"As the economy picks up, talent shortages are becoming more apparent," says John Sutton, Managing Director of TalentOyster.com, Canada's first multi-lingual job board, headquartered in Toronto. "Companies are actively looking to tap into new talent pools to get the people they need."

Talent Oyster recently conducted a survey of more than 500 Canadian HR and recruiting professionals. 64% of respondents said they were interested in recruiting diverse candidates because they needed to tap into alternative talent pools; 32% said diverse candidates would help them address chronic skills shortages. But it's not just a numbers game.

"As Canada's overall population becomes more diverse - with more than 5 million households containing new Canadians or speaking a language other than English - the consumer base is accordingly more diverse," says Sutton, who's been working in the recruiting industry for more than 10 years. "Companies are looking for employees which reflect their customers, clients and other stakeholders." (46% of Canadian recruiters and HR professionals say their interest in recruiting and hiring diverse candidates is because they want their workforce to better reflect their customers/clients.)

Unsurprisingly, interest in diverse candidates has increased: 73% said that Canadian organizations have become more interested in diversity recruiting in the past 5 years.

What 'diverse' categories are companies most interested in now? Survey respondents indicated that:

--  Visible minorities: 82%
--  Native Canadians/Aboriginal peoples: 59%
--  Persons with disabilities: 46%
--  New Canadians with English as a second language: 32%
--  Age-related (50+): 14%
--  GLBTQ (Gay/Lesbian/BiSexual/Transgendered/Queer): 9%

But they don't necessarily know where to start. "The big challenge for companies now," says Sutton, "is that they don't always know where to find diverse candidates. If they need, say, 10 Arabic- or Mandarin-speaking engineers by next week, where do they start to look? That's where TalentOyster.com can help. By providing a job board in 11 languages simultaneously, we give employers a good starting point."

ABOUT THE SURVEY

Survey was conducted by TalentOyster.com between March 2-9, 2010, using online and offline channels. The 532 respondents were recruiting and HR professionals across Canada, representing small, mid-sized and large organizations in all provinces.

ABOUT TALENT OYSTER

TalentOyster.com is Canada's first employment website/job board in 11 languages, including Arabic, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Tagalog and Punjabi. With employer partners like Xerox, Telus, Loblaw, Head2Head and Molson, Talent Oyster (a division of Multimedia Nova Corporation (TSX VENTURE: MNC.A) a publicly-traded company, publishers/distributors of in-language media across Canada) connects diverse job seekers with the employers who want to hire them.

Contacts: Sarah Welstead Media director 416.809.7829 [e-mail]