Employees exert influence in B.C.'s pandemic-recovery workforce

Chef-in-training Joy Rudder isn’t your typical job seeker — she made a switch after a long career as a journalist, environmental teacher in her native Trinidad and Tobago, and as a chaplain.

In hindsight, however, Rudder feels her decision to follow her lifelong dream of becoming a chef came at a fortuitous time, with labour shortages opening up seemingly endless opportunities.

“To begin with, I was just going with my heart, but I do realize now that there are tons of options because there’s a shortage of people to work in restaurants,” Rudder said earlier this summer.

B.C. restaurants are short some 30,000 to 35,000 workers as they try to come back from the shutdowns that led to mass layoffs at the start of COVID-19, according to the B.C. Restaurant and Food Services Association.

It has been a struggle to recruit, said association CEO Ian Tostenson, because many of those who lost jobs switched careers to more stable occupations.

Hospitality wasn’t the only sector upended by the pandemic.

Tourism, travel, the trades all had COVID-19 interruptions. Now, those sectors are trying to hire. But with unemployment in the province still near record lows — 4.8 for August — recruiting has been a challenge.

For Rudder, it offered her a chance to indulge in that passion, which she has found “tremendously rewarding.”

Only part way to becoming a Red Seal chef, Rudder had already worked on call at the marketing firm Picnic Creative, in the kitchen of a well-known vegetarian restaurant, at a fusion restaurant on Granville Street and at the Salvation Army’s Belkin House.

She also started another part-time job at Indigenous-owned Salmon n’ Bannock Bistro on Broadway, which serves a cuisine that interests her because of her past environmental-conservation work. Rudder is selective though so she can remain focused on her “now or never” chance at her training at Vancouver Community College.

Over the summer, Rudder was travelling home with one of her classmates one day, who was recounting how the hotel she worked at was “desperate for people.” Then it hit her, “I have to actually slow down and think; OK, where do I really want to be?”

More recently, Rudder has turned her attention to a writing project with an end-of-September deadline, because that was always her first love. However, in stepping aside — even temporarily — she realizes “the need is so great.”

Others are also sensing opportunities presented by the labour market.

As of June, B.C. had 178,810 job vacancies, according to Statistics Canada, an overall vacancy rate of 7.1 per cent of all positions in the workforce.

Lucy Griffin, acting dean of VCC’s school of trades, technology and design, said “throughout the pandemic, we have seen a big shift” in students coming back looking for more stable careers than the jobs they held in sectors hit hard during the pandemic, such as tourism and hospitality.

Computer systems, electronics, esthetics occupations and transportation trades are all areas that have had a rising demand for courses.

“We are expanding in all of our transportation and trades areas,” Griffin said. In the past six to 10 years, she said domestic student numbers have been decreasing nationally. Now they are sharply up.

The B.C. Institute of Technology has had a similar experience, according to Jennifer Figner, vice-president of academic operations.

“It has kind of happened in waves,” Figner said. “In the fall 2020, spring of 2021, we saw a huge influx of people transitioning from careers in tourism into something else.”

That wave waned, but is being replaced by a new influx of students looking for short-term programs and specific credentials they need to upgrade job prospects to gain a bigger advantage in the hot job market.

“We’re seeing a lot of people who are wanting to move up into management roles,” Figner said. “So, if we can offer degree-completion tracks, we’re seeing a lot of people wanting to add ‘soft skills’ or perhaps finish a bachelor’s level degree.”

Figner said BCIT is also hearing from employers that want to offer upgrading as a perk to their existing employees to “fight the great resignation” by providing opportunities to advance within their companies.

From a recruiting perspective, shortages have made the labour market “a candidate’s market, in our lingo,” said Cheryl Nakamoto, partner in the agency McNeil Nakamoto Recruitment Group.

“Because of the pandemic, I find they’re cautious, but, for sure, they (workers) are feeling more comfortable and searching more,” Nakamoto said. “Definitely active and looking but not just jumping for any opportunity.”

And the notion of “trading up” to better jobs depends on what individual candidates are looking for, Nakamoto added. Better pay, improved benefits and vacation are always on the table, but she said flexibility also plays a considerable role.

Workers who proved during the pandemic that they can work productively from remote locations are often willing to switch jobs to hold on to that option.

“The common themes are better compensation, hybrid/remote versus commuting in every day,” Nakamoto said.

Recruiters have also seen clients using their services to fill positions companies can typically find through their own advertising, said Genevieve Miller, director of client relations for the agency Swim Recruiting.

Many ask Swim to search for in-house recruiters, known in human-resources jargon as “talent acquisition,” Miller said, “which is always a barometer, if recruiters are being asked to recruit recruiters.”

Setting up for career-change success

Now a Vancouver-based web developer, Meghan Hein was already casting about for a more stable occupation in March of 2020 when the two restaurant jobs she was working in Toronto evaporated into the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was kind of juggling my schedule, doing both those jobs and just paying high rent in Toronto (asking myself), ‘Is this sustainable?’ ” Hein said. “I’m in my 30s now, like, I need a better career or something with benefits that I can really fall back on.”

She leapt at the chance to take a coding boot camp at training firm Lighthouse Labs, which she completed in August of 2020 to become a “full-stack” web developer, just in time to take part in the boom in business needing an online presence after moving to Vancouver.

“A lot of brick-and-mortar places needed something on the internet because everything moved online,” said Hein, who now works full time at the web-development firm Autotelic, which has more than doubled in size since she started.

“So it’s been a really great transition for me,” Hein said.

New country, new career for recently minted IT expert

Mikhail Kashkov took just two weeks from finishing Vancouver Community College’s computer-systems technology program this April to his first contract helping to develop an application that allows cryptocurrency investors keep track of fluctuations in currency values.

And he doesn’t worry about his prospects for finding work once that contract is complete because “there is huge demand” for systems administrators or computer programming, which are a couple of the skills he picked up during the two-year program.

Kashkov worked as a salesperson and sales trainer in telecommunications in Russia before moving to Canada in 2018, but was looking for a career that paid well and was satisfying, but had fewer ups and downs than sales.

“Yeah, it’s working out for sure,” he said of the switch.

depenner@postmedia.com

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