Hire Local Ottawa is a new initiative to encourage businesses and other organizations to hire students from local schools to help address their talent shortages.
The Hire Local consortium works to address the industry's largest issue: attracting, hiring, and retaining talent. The program will initially focus on facilitating CO-OP student hires yet will eventually support full-time hires, providing centralized funding information, ease of access to alumni groups and shared talent recruitment events.
The goal is to encourage local employers to hire from area schools, which will benefit the local economy and hopefully keep homegrown talent in Ottawa after graduation.
Key partners include The Kanata-North Business Association (KNBA), The Ottawa Board of Trade, Invest Ottawa, and the City of Ottawa.
“With over 10,000 CO-OP students available from those four post-secondary institutions, hiring local CO-OP students is a great place to build those talent pipelines!” adds Natalie MacArthur, Director of Talent Strategy at Invest Ottawa.
Sueling Ching, President and CEO of the Ottawa Board of Trade, said her members are looking for innovative, sustainable, and radical collaborations to address the talent shortage. “We want the Shop Local approach to be extended further to Shop Local, Hire Local”, she said.
Per Jamie Petten, President and Executive Director of the Kanata North Business Association, “The members of Canada’s largest Technology Park want to build a greater sense of community and culture to attract and retain local talent in the Park”.
The mayor of Ottawa, Mr. Jim Watson, supports this initiative: “The City of Ottawa recognizes the value that hiring local adds to the economic growth and wellbeing of our city. This is why we have committed to increasing our hiring of CO-OP students from our renowned local post-secondary institutions."
Organizations looking to support this movement can contact one of theHire Local ambassadors.
“I think that Hire Local will help me in my job search this summer. I love this city! I study here and I'd love to do my CO-OP here as well,” said Annika Whitwam, member of the University of Ottawa student community.
For more information: [email protected]