At the close of 2025, Canada had about 495,000 more job vacancies, though unemployment remained at nearly 6.7 percent and youth unemployment rose to 13.8 percent. Companies find it difficult to fill positions even when they turn down qualified applicants whose resumes do not match the job advertisements. This gap is clear in how we define a ‘great employer partner.’ The experience of Career Edge in working for over 1,000 Canadian employers for 30 years has given it a clear understanding of what this means. Two partnerships illustrate this point: the City of Markham and RBC.
The Market Employers Are Actually Hiring Into
According to Statistics Canada, bachelor degree holders have an unemployed-to-vacancy ratio of about 6.1, while those who hold trade certificates have a ratio of 1.9. The employment rate among working-age Canadians with disabilities is 62 percent, as compared to 78 percent for Canadians without disabilities. Moreover, 32.6 percent of recent immigrants with postsecondary education are employed in jobs that underuse their skills, more than double that figure for Canadian-born workers. These figures once again show that the issue is not one of supply or a shortage of talent; it is an access problem, and it is up to employers to resolve it.
What “Great” Actually Looks Like
What we’ve noticed over the years is that a good employer partner has a clear understanding of their own hiring approach and they know how Career Edge fits into it, including a general idea of the expected number of hires and how many of those positions could plausibly be filled through the partnership. This understanding is reflected in their behaviour: they keep to their payment terms, show professionalism towards every candidate and hire regardless of whether they end up being hired, they respond quickly at each stage so that the process can continue, and look for opportunities to work together on wider industry initiatives, not just on individual jobs.
All of this does not need a large budget; it only requires viewing the partnership as a working relationship that helps to create better hiring opportunities, not as a one-off transaction.
Employers who achieve the best results are the ones who first redesign the access, reconsider degree requirements, and regard accommodations as normal. According to the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work (CCRW), the average one-off cost of an accommodation is 375 dollars. The problem was not the cost but rather the lack of awareness. Moreover, 76 percent of job seekers consider diversity and inclusion when assessing an employer, and companies that prioritize disability inclusion achieve 1.6 times the revenue and 2.6 times the net income. Being a great employer starts with effective hiring processes, eliminating avoidable obstacles, and building accessible workplaces.
Case Study 1: City of Markham
Starting in 2003, Career Edge has partnered with the City of Markham and has helped them with 155 hires, with an average contract duration of 6.7 months. Out of these, 32 of the people hired have become full-time employees. Hires have occurred in waves over the 20 years, showing that the City has repeatedly returned to this kind of relationship rather than running a single onboarding campaign.
The city’s hires consist of 59.4 percent skilled newcomers and 36.8 percent recent graduates, a figure that has remained steady over twenty years. The city has always included funding for new talent through Career Edge in its budget, viewing it as an investment in the workforce rather than an optional extra. A few years ago, Mayor Frank Scarpitti met with the team to acknowledge the partnership, showing how seriously the city’s leadership regards it.
The City of Markham’s example shows what consistency looks like at the municipal level; RBC illustrates what it looks like on a national scale.
Case Study 2: RBC
RBC has been a partner of Career Edge since 1997, one of the organization’s founding partners, and remains its biggest employer partner today. During that period, Career Edge has assisted RBC in hiring 1,599, with an average contract length of 7.35 months. 50% of those contracts have led to full-time positions, and the demographic composition – 41.5 percent skilled newcomers, 38.7 percent recent graduates, and 19.6 percent people with disabilities- shows that the hiring practice is an integral part of the business and not just a separate initiative.
RBC treats Career Edge as an extension of its own talent ecosystem rather than an outside vendor. Internal champions connect the program to sector leads, recruiters, hiring managers, and business teams, so the relationship extends well beyond any single contact. Those champions advocate for the program in internal meetings and regional calls. That integration produces repeat and expanding hiring pathways: when new openings, replacements, or approved positions arise, RBC returns to the partnership for fresh profiles rather than starting a search elsewhere, coordinating through the full hiring journey from requirements to offers to conversion discussions. Nearly three decades in, RBC’s leadership still describes the relationship as one they are genuinely excited to keep building.
What You Can Do Starting Now
Whether you are an employer looking to partner with us or if you want to build a successful talent pipeline, here is what you can do:
- Get a rough idea of the volume of people you expect to hire and how many could realistically be brought in through a partnership like this.
- Choose one individual within the organization who will support the program during meetings you are not attending.
- Audit one job posting for degree or “Canadian experience” requirements that may not be essential.
- Track retention and conversion-to-permanent data, not just placement numbers.
- Provide timely responses at every stage of the hiring process.
After 30 years, the lesson remains the same: an excellent employer partner is not the one who has the most impressive careers page; it is the one that regards access, mentorship, and retention as part of a single strategy and continues to devote itself to them, just as Markham has done since 2003 and RBC has done since 1997. This is the standard that the partnership story refers to.
*The article was written through the combined efforts of our Career Edge staff.