Skill Shortages Are Here: How Are You Going to Fill the Gap?
An Article by WES Services
Global Context, Local Realities
In a globalized marketplace, demand for skilled workers is already
becoming highly competitive and will only become more intense. Canada
must maximize the talents and innovations of its existing workforce.
The shortage of skilled workers coupled with an aging workforce make
the challenge of meeting labour demands even more pressing. The Conference
Board of Canada predicts 1 million job vacancies in the next 20 years
and the skills shortages will be particularly acute in areas such
as healthcare and teaching. In fact, within the next 5 years, all
of Ontario’s net new labour force growth will come from immigration
and this opportunity needs to be tapped into, if your organization
is to continue growing with the times.
Newcomers to Canada
In 2006, over 138,000 people with post secondary education arrived
in Canada - an annual figure that has remained constant over the
past decade according to Statistics Canada. Indeed, Canadian employers’
access to a robust skilled workforce through immigration is one
competitive advantage over those in other countries. Yet many highly
educated and skilled immigrants face limited employment prospects
after arriving in Canada, partly because employers are stuck trying
to understand foreign credentials in Canadian terms. RBC Financial
Group’s 2005 economic case for diversity reports the cost
of not fully integrating immigrants in the workplace adds up to
billions in lost wages, productivity and output. They estimate that
if foreign trained workers were successfully integrated into the
Canadian workforce, personal incomes would be about $13 billion
higher each year than at present (www.rbc.com/economics).
Is Your Company Ready to Hire Newcomers?
Given today’s global economy, labour shortages, and an aging
workforce, hiring internationally educated applicants makes good
business sense. However, your organization may feel reluctant about
hiring someone whose international credentials and work experience
you are unfamiliar with. Since employers lack the resources and
expertise to assess the foreign qualifications of immigrants, they
need to turn to a source they can rely upon. This is especially
true for small to medium sized businesses who can least afford to
take perceived risks in hiring foreign trained applicants.
Assessing a Candidate’s International Education
When you need to know if an applicant’s overseas university
degree is the same as one earned in Canada, World Education Services
(WES) is your solution. WES is an international not-for-profit organization,
recognized and funded by the Ontario Government to assess educational
qualifications, from high school up to graduate level earned in
all countries outside of Canada.
Get a Quick Preview of their Educational Equivalency
One exciting new service offered by WES is the Preliminary
Online Equivalency (POE) that enables an employer to quickly
preview the credentials of internationally educated applicants and
screen them into the recruitment process if they meet the educational
requirements of the job. The POE service is fast, convenient, and
user-friendly: multiple users at a location can access the service
with one registration, and you can pay as you use the service, or
purchase a subscription for as low as $10 per credential. However,
because the POE is not based on actual documents submitted, it has
no official status and therefore cannot be used as proof of degree
authentication. For that, an official evaluation report must be
obtained from WES. Applicants are encouraged to apply for an official
WES credential evaluation in order to have the authenticity of their
documents attested to. They can direct a second copy of their evaluation
report to you.
How To Preview
Visit www.wes.org/ca/preliminary/index.asp,
enter the post-secondary degree of the applicant and obtain the
Canadian equivalency, in real time, online.
Contact Us
For further information on how to preview international education
or other WES services that will benefit your organization, please
contact Nancy Millward at 416-323-9734/ nmillwar@wes.org
or visit World Education Service’s website at www.wes.org/ca.
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