Focus on Vancouver: Recruiting for the Tech Boom

With offices in Vancouver, Edmonton and Winnipeg, The Headhunters enjoys working with a range of companies in numerous industries. The recruiting trends that occur in each city and province are remarkable at times. That’s why we are embarking on a series of focused reports on the recruiting challenges each city is facing. Working from west to east, let’s start with Vancouver’s distinctive tech sector…

 Incredible growth in the Lower Mainland

The Vancouver tech industry is a roaring success. Need proof? How about social media innovator Hootsuite enjoying 1250 percent revenue growth over five years. Or hardware geniuses Corvus Energy exceeding 16,000 percent revenue growth for the same period. That’s according to Deloitte, who just published their Technology Fast 50™ winners list. Traction on Demand (1,003 percent), Appnovation Technologies (808 percent), Clio (436 percent), QuickMobile (421 percent), Zafin (343 percent), and 37 Aquatic Informatics Inc. (214 percent) also appear in the top 50. And all are based in Vancouver’s Lower Mainland.

What is more, Vancouver is truly Western Canada’s technology hub. More than 75,000 professionals work in the information and communication technology sector in Vancouver. That is around three-quarters of all such employees in British Columbia. And the industry in growing at an average of six percent a year. These figures were surely impacted by the $583m invested in Vancouver tech start-ups in 2014.

With such rampant growth and innovation, you might think that Vancouver is the place to be for ambitious tech sector professionals? But many employers, from start-ups to major corporations, are finding that Vancouver is a victim of its own success when it comes to sourcing talent. There are so many exciting tech companies in Vancouver right now that securing qualified workers is a challenge.

Furthermore, recent legislation that changed Canada’s temporary foreign workers rules has compounded the problem. There are plenty of foreign nationals eager to work in Vancouver’s tech sector but the added red-tape Ottawa imposed has reduced the migration of world-class tech talent to the Canada’s West coast.

 We thrive on providing solutions

We have enjoyed a boost in the number of tech roles we have been asked to fill recently. Thankfully, over recent years, our network of tech talent has grown in tandem with the local market, and our recruiters have enjoyed steady success sourcing talent for highly specialized tech roles. So, if you are an employer seeking talent, or an IT professional looking to move forward in your career, connect with us! Sure, the Vancouver tech sector has its hiring challenges, but The Headhunters is thrilled to be a part of the solution.