In Kim Peters’ estimation, a new partnership between Workopolis and CATAAlliance is a perfect marriage.
“We have lots of people and they have a need to hire them,” said Peters, president of online job resource centre Workopolis.com.
By the end of next week, Ottawa’s Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATAAlliance) will add Workopolis to its database TechnoSkill.com. The Alliance has similar relationships in place with Talentmap.com, an employee retention tool; Workinsight.com, a high-tech newsgroup and job search engine; and Experiencenet.com, a database of independent contractors.
Through Workopolis, CATA gains a sizeable job search tool and other benefits that made the deal attractive to CATA president John Reid. “There’s a lot of job boards out there, but they have really created a software package that I think is really leading edge,” he said. Technology companies “look for the software that can help them establish their own utilities or in this case their own job boards. It’s a smart use of technology that plugs back into a company’s HR activities.”
Workopolis also has agreements in place with a number of media outlets such as the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, which sweetened the deal for CATA. “We’re looking at some reciprocal news content. As an organization, we’re quite interested in branding and visibility,” said Reid.
Workopolis announced a partnership similar to the CATA arrangement last week with the Canadian Professional Sales Association. Last year, there was another with the Ontario Hospital Association.
“It simply makes sense to be able to extend our audience from the people who may not have heard about Workopolis, but may be members the CATA Alliance,” said Peters. CATA members will receive a special price on the site’s products and services, she added.
The number of overall jobs available in the high-tech sector may have dropped in the last year, but not significantly more than any other field across the employment landscape, said Peters. There’s perhaps a “teeny decline” in high-tech posts on Workopolis, she said, but “the total number of jobs on the site, period, has declined across the board. I don’t think technology is any different than sales or marketing, for example.”
The corollary for Reid is an increase in the number of résumés on TechnoSkill. But, as he explains, “these things work in cycles. I think you never lose the priority of attracting the best talent to your company. . . . More and more recruitment is done through online vehicles.”