Established for many years as a human resources and corporate marketing specialist, TMP Worldwide now offers its services to Canadian universities in order to help them enroll students and hire qualified staff. An interview with Wayne Burns, Senior Vice-President, Canadian Region.
How would you describe TMP’s mission?
Our speciality involves building communication and marketing strategies to help companies better define their recruiting needs. We develop tools that help our clients find talented people. We want companies that do business with us to be able to better target their communication and human resource needs. We also offer orientation programs and development training to reach these objectives.
Your new clients now include universities?
Yes, we have a new educational marketing branch. Universities and colleges in Quebec do business with us, and we also have clients in this sector in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. Specifically, we help institutions target their student base and assist them in recruiting personnel.
What do you forecast in terms of the job market for students?
The demographic curve is in favour of young people. Until 2012, the job market will continue to experience upheavals that will benefit jobseekers. Currently, the recession has slowed down the integration of young workers, but this is part of a cycle that will evolve.
How is the recession treating you?
It’s tough, but we have good clients. Our development strategy is aggressive. In my career, I’ve gone through four recessions: it’s difficult, but if you’re good, you make it.
What’s interesting is that this particular crisis arrives at a time of great change. People no longer inform themselves in the same way, and companies are recruiting differently. For TMP, the key is to continue to invest in digital technologies and the development of new tools. By this I mean search engines of all kinds, which are quickly becoming indispensable tools. In our searches, we have a lot of trials, and sometimes mistakes. Nevertheless, it remains a very exciting period with all these technological changes.
How has the Internet changed your way of working?
We chose to go digital as soon as it was possible; as early as 1994, we saw the digital wave, at least in part.
We are now in the era of the instantaneous, with the Web making everything accessible very quickly. We have had to adapt to the rise of social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. These new tools play a non-negligible role for companies. Canadians are the third-largest users of Facebook! We use these networks to help our clients increase their brand power and attract more employees.
What “digital” support do you give your clients?
We bring them into the era of Web 2.0 by integrating them into social networks, and developing interactive ads and online campaigns for them. Our company also helps them promote their strengths and increase their website traffic.
Our clients ask themselves if their recruiting process is still adequate in light of all these new tools. Our job is to assist them in answering this question.
How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?
In past years, there used to be some 20 companies operating in our field in Canada, and we are now only a half dozen. We stand out by making greater use of all the online resources available to us. We have found our business model and are working it to the hilt.