Videotron launches massive street recruiting campaign!
With the assistance of the Wasabi Communications agency, Videotron launched a field operation to recruit young people for full- and part-time positions in its customer contact centres, boutiques and kiosks.
It invited passers-by in the Greater Montreal area and the Montérégie to interview with a recruiter via webcams installed in parked cars. “With the growth of the past few years, we must continually hire new resources, so we decided to go to them,” explained the group’s Vice-President of Human Resources Normand Vachon, on the Infopress portal.
The metro, Laurentian Bank’s future recruiting space
Videotron is recruiting on the street, while Laurentian Bank is targeting metro users. On November 29, the smallest Canadian bank will launch an innovative concept by opening the doors of its new recruiting centre at Montreal’s Berri-UQAM metro station. Christened “Career Station,” the centre will be a permanent installation in the metro. The operation goes hand-in-hand with Laurentian Bank’s development strategy; the bank currently operates 72 ABMs in the Montreal transit network.
Launch of CV.ca
The new bilingual site www.cv.ca, launched by jobWings Careers, aims to guide candidates in writing and improving their resumés. It includes dozens of articles featuring tips from recruiters across the country. “As the leading niche job board in Canada, the mission of the jobWings Careers network is to bring employer needs closer to candidate applications,” JobWings Careers President Manuel Francisci explains. “This is where the creation of comes in, by providing candidates with all the tools they need to better understand what recruiters are looking for in resumés.”
Dismissed for comments made on Facebook
The French legal system has ruled: dissing your boss on a social network can get you fired. It all began in December 2008, when an Alten employee, considering himself in his boss’s sights, posted a comment on his personal Facebook page explaining that he belonged to the “nefarious club.” Two co-workers responded: “Welcome to the club.” Although only available to friends and friends of friends, Alten management eventually got wind of these exchanges. The three critical employees were then dismissed for serious cause. The matter was brought before the employment tribunal because of the supposedly private and therefore unusable nature of the exchanges; however, the court found in favour of the company, deeming that comments made on an open social networking site are not private.
UK: Unemployment benefits only for those who do volunteer work
In order to maintain their social assistance payments, unemployed people in Britain could be forced to perform community work. This measure, presented a few days ago, is the brainchild of Secretary of State for Work and Pensions George Iain Duncan Smith. Along with other proposals compiled in a white paper, it aims to save the British government the equivalent of $189 billion a year.
The measure calls for an obligatory 30 hours of work a week, generally for non-profit organizations, over four weeks. If turned down, social assistance payments could be cut for up to three months. The idea is to get people on social assistance in the habit of working to make them more attractive to employers.
International Labour Organisation (ILO) hit by industrial action!
On Wednesday, November 10, the UN agency in charge of promoting labour rights was hit with industrial action by its own union. “While we, the staff at the ILO research, write and travel the world over promoting a dialogue-driven response to the global financial crisis, here at home our own rights are being eroded,” said the Staff Union of the International Labour Office, which employs 2,800 people.
Staff demonstrated outside ILO headquarters, condemning abuse of recruitment procedures and the growing use of precarious short-term contracts.
Canada-European Union free trade deal could cost up to 150,000 Canadian jobs
Given that Canada is set to reach a free trade agreement with the European Union in 2011, the Canadian Auto Workers' union asked the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives to assess the impact of such an agreement on the country’s economy. Three scenarios were analyzed and in every case, between 28,000 and 150,000 jobs could be lost if customs tariffs were eliminated, especially in manufacturing. Canada’s trade deficit with Europe of some $20 billion would also increase. The Harper government believes, for its part, that the agreement would inject $12 billion into the economy.
Leadership a critical imperative for 69% of CHROs worldwide
According to the 2010 IBM Global CHRO Study of 700 chief human resource officers, 69% rank creative leadership as an essential element in their strategy for recovering from the economic crisis for the next three years. However, only 31% assessed their approach for developing leadership positively. For 78% of them, capitalizing on collective intelligence constitutes another asset, allowing companies to be more responsive and to increase employee creativity. Only 22% of companies considered that they were effective at doing so, however. Finally, knowledge retention was the third area of focus for CHROs, although only 48% of companies use career development and only 50% increase employees’ responsibilities with a view to building loyalty
Syndicruit launches new free Facebook app for recruiters
After the “Work for us” tab—which companies pay for—comes Syndicruit’s free “Facebook Job App,” created by Johnny Oshika and Ryan St. Germaine, founders of BCjobs.ca. The application is currently available as a beta version and lets companies add a recruiting tab to their Facebook Fan page, via which they can post their ads, post them to other mediums and receive job applications directly. This app, whose final version will be available in December, will be the first of a long series. Since Syndicruit’s vocation is to create recruiting applications for the various social networking sites, job boards and metasearch engines, new solutions should see the light of day in the next six months, including apps for Twitter and SimplyHired.
One in five Canadians ready to stretch the facts to land a job
According to a recent poll by ADP Canada, 19% of Canadians would exaggerate previous responsibilities in order to land a job, 27% would inflate their current salary, 15% would gloss over the gaps of time between jobs or the duration of a job, and 10% would lie about skills they don’t have. The survey also revealed that employers are not always diligent in screening or doing background checks on prospective employees, with 59% of respondents saying they had been hired without the employer checking references.
Canada, 7th-most prosperous country in the world
A study by Dubai’s Legatum Institute has found Canada to be the seventh-best place in the world to live. The study, which assesses 110 countries, is based on eight major criteria including lifestyle, governance, entrepreneurship and opportunity, and health. Norway, Denmark and Finland ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively, followed by Australia (4th), New Zealand (5th), and Sweden (6th). The leading global power, the U.S., ranked 10th, far ahead of China (58th), and Japan (18th). European countries accounted for 13 of the top 20 places. Switzerland was 8th, with the U.K. and Germany in 13th and 16th place respectively, ahead of France, in the 19th position.