Tech job site targets Canadian talent shortage

Hired.com, an online employment marketplace has launched in Canada, setting its sights on easing Canada’s severe talent shortage. The web-based service has built a marketplace where in-demand candidates control their job search, get upfront transparency around financial details such as salary and equity, and field offers from exciting companies looking to hire.

The platform aims to help fast-growing local companies battle Canada’s severe talent shortage by giving them access to a weekly batch of pre-vetted software engineers, data scientists, product managers and UX/UI designers, and eventually sales professionals as well.

Hired’s entry into Canada comes as the country is experiencing one of the worst talent shortages in recent history. According to Manpower’s Annual Talent Shortage Report, nearly one-third of Canadian employers are experiencing difficulty filling jobs. Ontario in particular is struggling with a deficit, with more than 65,000 positions expected to open in the area served by Hired by 2019. With Hired, these employers have a compelling new option to tap into local talent and quickly make mission-critical hires. In fact, the average time-to-hire for early users of the platform was just 14 days, which is 36% faster than the national average of 22 days.

“The market for top talent in Toronto is hugely competitive and Hired has given us an advantage in finding great people,” said WealthSimple CEO Mike Katchen. “I know every Monday when I check out the latest batch I’m going to find highly qualified local candidates who meet my needs. It’s been a great way to supercharge our recruiting efforts.”

Canada’s four-month beta period was Hired’s most successful to date, with more than 250 companies and nearly 12,000 individuals applying to be a part of the marketplace. This is more than twice as many candidate applicants than in Hired’s previous two US market launches, and nearly twice the number of companies. Some of the country’s fastest-growing companies, including Influitive, Shopify, WealthSimple, Wave, Event Mobi, Joist and Kik, have made more than $60M in job offers, with an average salary of $92,000. The skill sets that saw the greatest demand were HTML/CSS, Python, JS Node, Android and C/C++.

“As a Canadian, I couldn’t be more proud that Hired is becoming a part of the country’s thriving tech scene and will offer an alternative for local companies looking to attract great people,” said Hired co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Matt Mickiewicz. “The incredible traction that we’ve seen during our beta period is evidence that there is plenty of pent-up demand for Hired’s offering. Traditional solutions like job boards and recruiting agencies simply won’t cut it given the incredibly competitive hiring environment Canada is currently experiencing.”

“Having worked with recruitment agencies in the past, I was pleasantly surprised by Hired’s style. Instead of pressure or pushy tactics, I got plenty of unbiased advice,” said Pierre-Olivier Bedard, who recently accepted a job at Wave through Hired. “What’s more, because I just moved to Toronto and have a very limited professional network, the access to local companies was instrumental in helping me find a position I love.”

With this launch, Hired is now available in the Toronto, Ottawa and the Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo metro areas, with Vancouver and Montreal to follow.