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Career Edge Blog

Oct 28
Love6

Sound bites from the 2011 Recruitment Innovation Summit

By Events & Holidays

panel smallLast September we announced our upcoming panel session at the 2011 Recruitment Innovation Summit. The conference took place this past week and, not surprisingly, was a great success for the Human Resources Networking Group (HRNG) who hosted the event, attended by hundreds of senior level recruitment and HR professionals from organizations across Canada.

Career Edge Organization was one of a handful of exhibitors, representing the only not-for-profit, diverse talent solution there.

In addition to our booth, Career Edge Organization hosted a break-out session, Global Markets, World Class Talent, which featured a diverse panel of employers who spoke about their successes and challenges in hiring internationally qualified professionals.

Attendees were highly engaged, actively participating in the Q&A following the panel discussion. Many joined us at our booth during the networking reception that followed.

Here is what our panellists had to say during the session:

“We serve over 150 ethnicities within our hospital doors; [there is no] better way to provide culturally competent care than to have health professionals that reflect the patients that walk in the door.”

Kate Wilson
Manager, Corporate Staffing Strategies, St. Michael’s Hospital

“We have an imperative as a government to ensure we are serving [our] communities in a manner that is equitable and which takes into consideration the diversity of its people… There is a commitment to both equity and diversity by the City of Toronto both as a service provider but also as an employer.”

Uzma Shakir
Director, Equity, Diversity & Human Rights, City of Toronto

“We seek to leverage diversity as we reach out to cultural markets within cities like Toronto; leveraging the knowledge and the experience of internationally educated professionals is critical in doing so.”

Blair Crichlow
Manager, Diversity Recruitment, RBC

“[Diversity] is not something we’re striving towards, it’s the basis and foundation of our business. We simply could not exist or compete internationally without internationally educated and qualified professionals”

Peter Kelk
President, George Kelk Corporation

Oct 21
Love6

The return to work – 5 tips for welcoming back employees with disabilities

By Diversity and Inclusion

Coinciding with National Disability Employment Awareness Month (October, for both US and Canada), I attended a conference earlier this week to listen to Rona Maynard (author, speaker and former editor-in-chief of Chatelaine) speak to employers about “the healing power of work,” and working with employees who have mental health disabilities.

The True Cost of Workplace Mental Health was the 4th annual conference held by Business Takes Action (BTA), a program of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME) funded by the government of Ontario.

Rona Maynard who herself has battled with depression and was widely known as a voice to Canadian women (and men) during her reign at Chatelaine, was an ideal choice for keynote speaker, as she had also encountered under her leadership employees with mental illnesses such as severe depression. She candidly shared her successes and failures, as well as things she wished that she – as an employer – had done differently.

One of the things Rona touched upon was managing an employee’s return to work. This needs to be taken into consideration with any employee returning to work after any leave of absence due to illness, maternity leave, etc. But it is especially important when mental health is involved simply because of the stigma that still exists around illnesses such as depression.

If handled well, an employee’s return-to-work following illness could be a great success. Many organizations have written policies on how to handle this but even those with the best of intentions can sometimes miss the mark when it comes to reintegrating the employee into the team. Here are 5 tips for reintegrating employees with disabilities – mental, physical or any kind!

Read More

Oct 14
Love6

Why employers choose Career Edge Organization

By Employer

Earlier this year, Environics Research Group conducted a Client Satisfaction Survey on our behalf. The results were overhwhelmingly positive, and though it’s seldom that we toot our own horns, we thought it’d be ok to make an exception just this once: Toot, toot!

Here are some highlights from the results:

  • 91% felt that Career Edge Organization has exceeded or met their expectations and business needs so far
  • 85% say that they would be likely to recommend our internship programs to colleagues or their network
  • The most important factors in making working with us worthwhile for clients were:
    • access to unique quality and diverse talent,
    • finding cost effective recruitment options, and
    • working with a not-for-profit that contributes to launching the careers of those who face employment barriers.

If you work with CEO and want to make your voice heard, let us know – why do you choose CEO?

Oct 03
Love6

3 Reasons Why Your Business Needs to Hire New Graduates This Year

By Uncategorized

By Anne Lamont, President and CEO, Career Edge Organization

Excerpt from Anne’s blog post for the Toronto Board of Trade’s VoteOntario2011 campaign.

  1. The first good reason to hire young graduates is likely also the most obvious one; without them businesses risk eroding their knowledge foundation. Let’s face it, our workforce is aging – and at an alarming rate for some organizations. Eventually, that knowledge housed within the senior ranks needs to be transferred, or it risks disappearing altogether. Keeping the talent pipeline fresh with new hires allows organizations to plan, build and transfer expertise and knowledge more seamlessly while mitigating timing delays or productivity.
  2. The second great reason to hire young workers is to help grow and develop your middle level managers. By creating coaching and mentoring roles for middle managers, exceptional opportunities for learning and professional development are also created that can only be achieved through first hand experience. When organizations encourage the development of these leadership skills, they are also fostering a supportive and positive workplace culture, in turn improving productivity, enabling the transfer and sharing of knowledge and driving innovation too.
  3. The third very compelling reason for hiring recent graduates is because they bring the latest training to their employers, fresh perspectives, can-do attitudes, and in many case, hands-on experience. Although it may sound trite, an investment in recent graduates is an investment in our future. Through their post secondary educations, university and college students today are not only getting exposed to traditional best practices, but more importantly they’re participating in and contributing to leading edge innovations and emerging technologies through living labs, think tanks, innovation centres, private/public sector partnerships and joint ventures – whether it’s through Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute, Queen’s University’s Innovation Park, University of Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience or George Brown’s Institute of Entrepreneurship and Community Innovation, just to name a few.

To read the full article on the VoteOntario2011 blog, click here.

Sep 26
Love4

Toronto’s lessons on immigration

By News & Announcements

This past week, in an opinion editorial in the Toronto Star, John Tory and Julia Deans of CivicAction reminded us that the world has a lot to learn from Toronto when it comes to new and innovative ways to attract and integrate newcomers. Pointing out that “Canada has a productivity challenge” and that “the competition for talent is heating up,”  our Career Edge paid internship program was cited by CivicAction and an international delegation as “a model for other cities.”

We are delighted to be recognized in this positive way, not only by CivicAction, but by readers of The Star as well.

Still, as Career Edge Organization’s President & CEO, Anne Lamont points out, looking to internationally qualified professionals is only part of the “creative solution” required. Here is Anne Lamont’s response to the article:

“Canada needs to attract, develop and retain a productive workforce – this means leveraging the skills, experience and potential of recent graduates and skilled immigrants to augment the talent pipeline for most companies.  Having these discussions at a time when there is significant economic turmoil creates a disconnect between what is in Toronto or in fact Canada’s long term economic and prosperity interest and the immediacy of employers’ actions of reducing the number of employees as a cost saving measure in response to the challenging business environment. The lost opportunities for recent graduates who have made an initial investment in their future through education and the underemployment of many skilled immigrants that we have attracted to our country are both a reputational and an economic risk. However, the reality is that while it is not business as usual, organizations still have hiring needs, which presents an opportunity for seeking out creative hiring solutions. As the head of an organization that has worked with employers who have faced this dilemma before, I know that access to talent through our paid internship programs for recent grad and skilled immigrants has been an effective option. “

Anne Lamont
President & CEO
Career Edge Organization

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