In a country such as Canada, successful businesses know the value of having their workforce reflect their customers and stakeholders. Employment Equity Act aside, it just makes sense; our consumer base is becoming more and more diverse. So, for example, if branding experts are in high demand amongst marketing and advertising companies, it may just be that Canadian businesses and their customers are driving that demand; but is diversity recruiting really on their radar? It seems so.

Case in point: the newest addition to our corporate family (in a “sister division kind of way”) — TalentOyster.com — issued a news release yesterday announcing the results of a survey of 500+ Canadian HR and recruiting professionals. In particular,

• “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.”
• “73% said that Canadian organizations have become more interested in diversity recruiting in the past 5 years”

We’re all really excited about TalentOyster.com — Canada’s first employment website/job board in 11 languages, including Arabic, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Tagalog and Punjabi.  The site links some of Canada’s largest employers – like Xerox, Telus, Loblaw, and Molson – with job seekers of Canada’s diverse cultural community, until now a largely untapped pool of talent. Its “Connect” section, is a place where job seekers can access information; whether its information aimed at people with physical disabilities, seniors wishing to re-enter the workforce, or newcomers wanting culturally-oriented job search tips and immigration settlement information.

And “in a related story”, earlier this week, Statistics Canada released some interesting projections on the diversity of the Canadian population.

Prepared for Canadian Heritage, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada and Citizenship and Immigration Canada, one particular message of the report gained some immediate traction: visible minority groups could comprise 63% of Toronto’s population by 2031.

The results further point out that in just over 20 years from now, between 29% and 32% of Canada’s population “could belong to a visible minority group, as defined in the Employment Equity Act.  This would be nearly double the proportion reported by the 2006 Census.”

Along with our parent company, we/DMS will help TalentOyster reach 5 million unique households across Canada with our 500 in-language community media partner network.

The site has been ‘in beta’ since November and fully functional since February; the feedback we’ve received so far has been fantastic. I expect over the coming months I’ll post some updates here on our progress, but in the meantime, we hope you get a chance to visit www.TalentOyster.com.