Moncton’s Newcomer Employment Fair Attracts 41 Companies And 600 Job Seekers
MONCTON – It was packed at the Avenir Centre’s event room Friday morning. Hundreds of people greeted each other in Spanish, Tagalog, Mandarin, French, English and other languages as they search for work at Greater Moncton’s largest newcomer job fair to date.
The tri-community of Moncton, Riverview and Dieppe has held these job fairs in partnership with the provincial government, colleges, universities, settlement agencies and others since 2015 as part of its immigration strategy. Back then, there was only one newcomer employment fair for the year.
“At that time we were happy to get six employers and 30 newcomers,” said Angelique Reddy-Kalala, the City of Moncton’s immigration strategy officer.
On Friday, there were 41 employers, with another 10 on the waiting list, and around 600 job seekers. The fairs now happen every three months as more people move, or plan to move, to Greater Moncton. The city also takes part in virtual job fairs.
“We’ve been full for about three weeks now, and we have employers on the waiting list, so this is a great sign. We’re seeing employers being certainly very open to hiring newcomers and international students,” said Reddy-Kalala. “There’s a huge need in Greater Moncton in terms of labour force in certain sectors and a lot of those employers are here today.”
Companies and organizations like Shannex, Concentrix, the Canadian Armed Forces, Medavie Blue Cross, YMCA, RBC, TD Bank, Missing Link Technologies, the Francophone school district, and Sparta Manufacturing were there.
The job fairs are open to everyone. But these ones focus on newcomers and international students because, while there are many job fairs held at universities, colleges and companies that are targeted to all residents, newcomers and international students may have additional barriers to finding a job, Reddy-Kalala said.
Newcomers and international students generally don’t have networks in Moncton, their degrees and experience from abroad might not be recognized in Canada, and some may have language barriers.
Reddy-Kalala said conversations with employers highlighted their need for talent, while discussions with settlement agencies shone a light on newcomers who had difficulty finding employment.
“The whole purpose of the fairs is as soon as newcomers and international students arrive in our region, we want to connect them with jobs,” she said.
It’s first-come, first-serve for employers that want to take part. And they have to actually be hiring, Reddy-Kalala said, adding that her team follows up after to see how many positions have been filled and to get employer feedback.
Companies at the fair were looking to fill various roles, from contact centre and hospitality positions, to finance and insurance roles, to IT jobs and engineering roles.
BioScript Solutions, a specialized pharmacy company headquartered in Moncton, is among employers looking for more specialized skills. Out of 35 vacant positions nationally, 10 of them are in Moncton.
“[The fair] allows us to find those specialty type roles where sometimes in our IT team, those strong quality management skill-set or development skill-set in IT is sometimes hard to find. It allows us to be exposed to a larger market of potential candidates,” said the company’s senior talent partner Nellie Rousselle.
“We also are looking for the pharmacy field – some of those pharmacy assistants and registered technicians are also roles that are a bit more challenging here in the Moncton area. So if we do meet some candidates here that might have the skill set, we’d love to talk to them.”
This is the first time at the fair for BioScript, which also partners with universities and colleges to access local talent. Rousselle said some positions are harder to fill than others. For example, some highly-skilled positions require fluency in both English and French.
“That adds a level of challenge to recruitment at times to have that same expertise level but have that language skill set to go with. That would be one of the main challenges that we’re facing,” she added. “We know some newcomers have really strong French background from various countries, so we’re really excited to talk to them today.”
“We’ll be looking at somebody that lives here, are established in their routine, and they feel dedicated that they would want to contribute to the community in Moncton,” Rousselle said.
Mahender Anumandla, onsite lead at HCL Technologies, was also looking for workers at the fair. The multinational technology firm recently opened an office in Moncton.
“We’re looking for C++ Developers and software quality assurance testers, and also we’re looking for technical customer support engineers,” he said.
Anumandla received eight resumes in the first hour and says the job fair “definitely” helps HCL.
“For C++ I didn’t find an exact match, but some technology resources can be trained in a couple of months and can be used for our needs.”
Mario Tejeda, originally from Dominican Republic, was one of the job seekers in the crowd. He moved to Moncton around three months ago with his wife and two-year-old child because, after living around the world, he wanted to try to live in a smaller, peaceful place near the ocean in Canada.
It was the NBCC business analysis student’s first time taking part in such a job fair. He said while he saw many opportunities, and it’s important for newcomers to experience go to such events, employers can make the process more functional.
“Most of the companies have the necessities for a particular job, but they were not able to take resumes so they send you to their web page,” said Tejeda, who has 17 years corporate, IT and sales experience.
Tejeda is open to try entry-level jobs and work his way up. But at the fair, only two of the companies he approached took his information and resume on the spot.
“It should be more to the point. If you’re looking for employees, you should be able to have preliminary interview or gather the resume, just to begin screening. So it’s faster.”
So far, Reddy-Kalala said employers have reported 300 positions filled through the fairs and they’re on track to fill 100 jobs this year, excluding Friday’s fair.
“A lot of that has to do with more interest from employers, more diverse positions and a lot more people moving to our region.”