Construction Recruitment in Canada
Posted by Steve Thomas , Construction Recruitment Director, UK & Canada on Monday, May 20, 2024
In 2024, Maxim is celebrating 21 years in business, and we are grateful to our construction industry customers around the world, including across Canada.
Our longevity in such a competitive sector as construction recruitment is a pretty decent demonstration of the good job we do for our employer clients and for the jobseekers we work with. We enjoy working hard to solve construction recruitment puzzles for clients around the world, including for repeat customers in the UK, Hong Kong, Australia and across the Middle East.
This blog will take a look at the ‘value add’ that we continue to bring to our Canadian customers in particular and reflect on why we like working in the Canada market so much.
Building a Track Record in Canada
We opened our Canada office in Toronto in 2018, and over the last 6 years we have built a very successful business there. The work we have done has been focused on Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary & in Edmonton, where major construction projects are underway and massive population growth is being experienced.
It is no coincidence that a significant number of employer and candidate testimonials have been received from happy customers in Canada.
A Construction Skills Shortage in Canada
Just as when Maxim opened an office in Hong Kong in 2011, Canada is today experiencing a skills shortage of high-quality construction industry professionals. This has required Maxim to reflect hard on the best strategies to adopt to make sure we are able to add value to the recruitment process. Some employers require local Canadian experience, while others are keen to bring in international talent with experience of other markets that they can bring in to energise Canadian best-practice. We are happy to discuss and advise on this and to ensure that any strategy adopted is built to succeed.
Investing in Recruitment and Candidate Sourcing Strategies
With the growth of LinkedIn, many employers and recruitment agencies adopt a short-lived tactic of just posting job adverts onto LinkedIn and waiting for suitable applications to flood in. Random and totally unsuitable applications may flood in but that is likely to be about all and some smaller organisations find themselves swamped with candidates they cannot use.
While Maxim does use LinkedIn, we also have been investing in and developing our own bespoke website since 2004 and enjoy unique access to candidate applications that aren’t made on any other platform so are unique to Maxim and the clients we work with.
After over 20 years, we now have an expansive database of unique candidates we know and keep in touch within Canada as well as around the world. Careful database searching using both AI and good old Boolean searching and human experience, creates a premium ecosystem of candidates for our employers to be able to access once we have completed the appropriate interviewing, suitability and shortlisting checks.
A Recruitment Partnership with Canadian Construction Industry Employers
In March 2024 I wrote an article about ‘What I Do all Day’ as a recruiter. This outlined in a lighthearted way how recruiting well is a serious business and requires careful planning and management of all stages of the process from understanding client recruitment needs right through to assisting with the on-boarding of the new employee. Again, myself or a member of the team would be happy to discuss our processes and candidate shortlisting procedures with potential new client employers in Canada.
Three Service Level Choices
To match with the needs and level of urgency employers face, we offer 3 construction recruitment service levels to our Canadian and international clients:
- Standard
- Dedicated
- Executive
Once you have worked with a member of the Maxim team, using any of our service levels, we are very confident that you will agree that we are not the same as other recruitment agencies. We believe that to provide a construction recruitment consultancy service worthy of its name, we take our service seriously, and where appropriate offer a retention fee to guarantee a successful outcome for all involved.
So Why Do We Love Construction Recruitment in Canada?
Hopefully our website, job vacancy details, and blogs about Canada all give the same impression – that we love Canada and are excited to be working with our Canadian clients to recruit and fill construction jobs. With Maxim staff based in Canada, the UK and in Asia, we have the capability to resource the very best person for a vacancy from a pool of possible candidates that are both local to Canada but also truly global in reach.
I am looking forward to being able to spend some time in Toronto during May 2024 to be able to meet existing and new clients in Toronto; if you are interested in arranging a discussion with me either in person or via Teams, please get in touch.
Steve is responsible for Maxim Recruitment in the UK and Canada. He is based in the Maxim head office in Leicester, UK and the Toronto office in Canada. He regularly travels to meet employers and job seekers and attend construction industry networking events in the UK, Canada and worldwide. Steve has over 25 years of experience in construction and property recruitment and enjoys working with many repeat clients. He manages dedicated search and headhunting assignments for a range of premium UK, Canadian and international clients.