Red Seal links workers and jobs
by Darron Kloster
If you can handle a nail gun, wire a house or sling chain on an oil platform, Kael Campbell wants to find you a job.
has opened a skilled trades recruiting and consulting company in Victoria that he hopes will help alleviate some of the desperate shortages on job sites around the city and province.
Carpenters, concrete and steel workers, plumbers, electricians, millrights, welders and other skilled trades have been in sparse supply over the last two years.
Projects have been delayed — some even rejected — because cobbling crews together is proving difficult during a sustained building boom that some economists say will stretch past the 2010 Olympics.
B.C.’s unemployment rate reached 5.1 per cent in October, the lowest level in 30 years, while Victoria slipped to 4.4 per cent, second only to Calgary among major cities surveyed by Statistics Canada.
The federal agency releases November employment data this Friday but nothing on the construction landscape is expected to improve.
Campbell’s Red Seal Recruiting caters to tradespeople looking for a job or interested in moving to improve skills and prospects, as well as to employers who need specific skills for the projects they’re working on.
“My focus on hiring ensures that companies get the people they need as competition [for hires] continues to increase,” says Campbell.
“Thousands more are going to be needed for the [2010 Winter] Olympics, as mineral and oil projects start up again and for the oilsands projects in Alberta.”
Campbell and Chris Mutadi, Red Seal’s head of marketing, are using research and networking with small to industrial-sized employers to build an employment data base.
They also interview and referencecheck potential candidates for employers.
Campbell said many of the workers they’re attracting aren’t looking through classified ads, but are already employed and “interested in new opportunities.”
“Wages are important but it’s not always the reason people move,” said Campbell.
“We’ve found that many tradespeople were interested in more permanent positions where they could learn or expand their skills. That is why we target established employers like pulp mills, mines and construction firms.”
A recent Conference Board of Canada survey noted that 67 per cent of employers interviewed say recruiting and retaining their workforce is the greatest challenge.
“Having a recruiter to market to employed candidates and sell them the benefits of working for a company is key to attracting the best employees when everyone else is employed,” says Campbell.
Victoria is currently at an advantage to fill some of the void.
“It’s the weather,” says Campbell.
“We’ve had calls from an electrician in Edmonton and a carpenter in Dawson Creek this week. The snow is started and they know how cold it will get this winter.”
Campbell previously worked two years for the provincial government’s Employment Standards office and another two years as trades recruiter for Western Pulp, one of the forestry units of the former Doman Industries.
Check the site www.rsrecruiting.com or call 686-4305.
If you’re heading to Butchart Gardens this holiday season, pack your skates. The 101-year-old tourist attraction has installed what it believes to be the only outdoor artificial ice surface on the south Island and will introduce skating with its annual 12 Days of Christmas promotion starting today.
Graham Bell, promotions co-ordinator at the Gardens, said the 3,300-squarefoot ice surface is laid out in Waterwheel Square, the area just outside the gift shop and visitor services offices inside the gate.
He said the ice — with Butchart’s trademark rose logos at each corner — will stay in until Jan. 8. Skate rentals are available and admission is being charged above the gate price. The cost of the system was not revealed but Bell said it was purchased from a Burlington, Ont., company and installed over several weeks. Planters had to be uprooted and inlaid bricks removed to prepare the ice site. A thermal blanket will cover the surface when ice isn’t being used. Staff and families tested the surface Tuesday night and gave it hearty thumbs up, said Bell. Several Island skating clubs have been booked for shows throughout the holiday season.
Nancy Kidd has been appointed financial planner at BMO Bank of Montreal in James Bay — a first for the branch at 230 Menzies St. Kidd had been a personal bank representative at BMO’s Oak Bay branch for the past 15 years. She can be reached at 405-2163...
Frank O’Dea, chairman of the Royal Roads University Foundation, has named three directors for the inaugural board — Jack Stepler, retired founder and president of TelCom Training Corp., a Victoria-based company with offices in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa; Scott Clements, president Leadership Works Canada; and Melanie Clarance, who serves on the RRU board of governors and is a director of the International Financial Centre of B.C. The foundation is meeting for the first time Friday and Saturday to create a strategic plan for the organization, which is being established to raise funds for scholarships, capital campaigns and to feed the university’s Heritage Fund. O’Dea, founder of the Second Cup coffee chain and ProShred document security franchise, was named chairman in September.
