Competition heating up for tech talent

Canadian firms look to U.S. for recruitment

Ottawa became the latest Canadian city to step up recruitment efforts for its technology sector with a campaign launched last week targeting expats south of the border.

Invest Ottawa’s Work in Ottawa program will seek talent to fill positions in software development, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT) and other tech sectors.

With companies such as Shopify and BlackBerry’s QNX calling it home, Ottawa has legitimate claim to being a technology hub. But it isn’t alone.

Similar recruitment drives shave been launched from Halifax to Toronto to Vancouver as competition for the digitally-savvy becomes increasingly fierce.

According to a report released last year by the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) demand for tech jobs in Canada is growing four times the rate of the economy overall.

It also noted about 182,000 technologically skilled workers will be needed by 2019 — and Canada’s own pool would be insufficient to meet the demand.

“All the technology hubs in the Western world are going through major growth and there’s just more jobs than people,” Ryan Gibson, Invest Ottawa’s lead marketing strategist said.

“It’s not just within Canada, it’s a global competition. So it’s really Ottawa versus Toronto versus Barcelona, versus Silicon Valley,” he said.

“I would say within Canada it’s more of a friendly competition, especially within Ontario, but every company is looking … to gain that extra advantage over other companies.”

As the Trump administration promises to tighten rules surrounding foreign workers in the U.S., Canadian companies are looking to take advantage of the opportunity to recruit there.

Gibson said Invest Ottawa is targeting Canadians living in California, Massachusetts, New York, Texas and Florida.

“They understand the landscape in Canada, they are familiar with it, and there’s not a lot of learning that’s needed.”

Ian McKay, CEO of the Vancouver Economic Commission (VEC) described expatriates as the “low-hanging fruit” for bringing up the numbers of skilled tech workers in Canada but he said they’re also interested in American citizens looking for work in Canada.

“Logistically what’s happening in the United States, of course, there are American citizens who are foreign nationals who are now looking for opportunities here,” he said.

Last year, the VEC launched It’s Your Move to Make, a campaign that brought recruiters from major tech companies to cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.

“We’ll hold an event and have these face-to-face meetings where they can get a first hand look at what these companies are hiring for, the scope and scale of the opportunity and why it’s a good time now to come back to Vancouver,” he said.

McKay said they plan to expand the campaign to more cities.

Similar campaigns have popped up in Winnipeg, Toronto, Waterloo and Halifax, according to Heather Galt, an organizer of Go North Canada, a nationwide campaign that works with tech hubs across the country to bring Canadian tech talent back home from the U.S.

“If they left even a couple of years ago they have no idea how incredibly fast the Shopify is among tech sector firms that call Ottawa home. tech communities across the country are growing and how robust the career opportunities are attached to it,” she said.

“Bringing a Canadian back to Canada is a relatively simple process and we also know there are a lot of Canadians who have those strong ties back home.”

CEO Michael Silagadze, the founder of Top Hat, a Toronto-born tech company that worked with Go North Canada, said he’s noticed a spike in U.S.-based applicants since January.

“For the one in Canada we typically get on the order of a few hundred people a day applying to Top Hat. That’s an average number we see,” he said.

Silagadze said six months ago he guesses about five per cent of applicants were U.S.based.

“Today that number has gone up to roughly 10 maybe as high as 15 per cent in some cases”

The Top Hat co-founder said filling engineering positions in his company is “extremely challenging.”

“We’re posting these jobs or reaching out to lots of candidates but everybody else is reaching out to those same candidates because the pool of top engineers is so small in Canada,” he said.

“As a result we’ve had to go elsewhere wherever we can find them we’ll bring them in including from the U.S. and in some cases even outside of North America.”

Silagadze said it’s hard to compete with U.S. companies offering huge salaries to engineering grads, but the changing U.S. political climate along with a housing crisis in San Francisco are making some consider moving back.

“Now there’s just dozens and dozens of people that I personally know that (have) said, ‘You know what I’ve had enough time to move back home.’ ”

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month focusing on reforming laws surrounding U.S. hiring policies.

One of the requirements of the “Buy American, Hire American” order is to overhaul the H1-B visa program that allows companies to hire foreign workers — which Trump said has been abused by companies looking for cheaper labour.

Silagadze said there’s been some concern around it in the tech community.

“There is definitely some concern for people that are on H1-B visas, there was a lot of concern about not being able to stay there.”

The Trudeau government is moving in the opposite direction with its recent announcement to decrease wait times for visas for skilled workers down from six months to two weeks.

“When a candidate comes in from the U.S. the bar is a bit higher because it’s challenging to hire someone from the U.S.,” Silagadze said.

“I guess with the new expedited visas process that’s been rolled out it seems like that might get easier which is great.”