Ryan St. Germaine, President of BCJobs.ca
Founded in 2001, BCJobs.ca has in five years become the leading regional job board in British Columbia. It has 120,000 unique visitors a month and close to 1,900 active job postings. Over the past year, the site has added two information sections: one for applicants and the other for recruiters.
Ryan St. Germaine, President of BCJobs, revealed the keys to his site’s success and told us more about his upcoming projects and his vision of the B.C. job market.
Tell us how BCJobs.ca came about.
Johnny Oshika, now Director of Technology, founded the site. As a former University of British Columbia student, Johnny realized that there was no dedicated job board in B.C. He therefore launched BCJobs in 2001 to fill the void.
I joined the venture at that time and have served as President since 2003. My background is in online marketing and recruiting solutions, primarily in marketing and project development, with nine years’ experience in the field.
Since its creation, our site has experienced an average annual growth in revenue of over 50%. We currently have 64,000 registered job seekers and 165 employers currently posting jobs.
What are your strengths?
We are at the core of the B.C. community. Our success is based on the solid network we have built with the local economy. We have forged permanent links with companies, associations and teaching institutions in the province.
BCJobs has an arrangement with Simon Fraser University to help students in their job search. We are also partners with CGA-BC and CMABC, British Columbia’s accounting associations.
We are well-known in the accounting sector. We are also involved in information technology, manufacturing and production.
How would you describe the job market in British Columbia?
Right now, the market largely favours job seekers, based on two factors: the retirement of the baby boomers and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010.
Confidence has returned and companies are no longer hesitating to recruit. There are two people who exit the market for each person who enters it. The labour crunch will become a serious issue in the coming years.
Who are your major competitors?
The big national sites: Monster and Workopolis.
Our competitive advantage is to provide job seekers with a greater variety of companies; we work just as well with very small players as with multinationals. This is a major asset in the B.C. market, which is comprised of small to medium-sized businesses, to which we offer the opportunity of as much visibility as the large recruiters.
What’s coming up?
We’re launching cmabcjobs.ca in September. It will be the first accounting job portal in British Columbia.
We will also organize our first job fair, planned for March 2007. It will be devoted to the accounting, IT and marketing sectors.