Most employers who ask us that question are picturing a job fair. A convention hall, and a stack of resumes that goes into a drawer and gets opened three weeks later, by which point half those people have taken other jobs.
A hiring event is a smaller room, a shorter distance between meeting someone and hiring them, and a candidate list that existed before you called us. We’ve run a lot of these over the years, and we can put one together on a short timeline when an employer needs people quickly.
Where the candidates come from
We keep in touch with the workers who’ve come through our training programs, in different parts of Toronto and across the GTA. When you tell us what you’re hiring for, that list is the first place we go. We know what those people have done because we trained them, we know which neighbourhoods they can actually get to work from, and most of them already hold the certifications your roles ask for.
If our own list doesn’t cover everything you need, we go out through our partner agencies and community networks. Those candidates get screened before they come anywhere near your table. We go through the resumes and we get people on the phone, so the awkward questions about whether the fit is real get asked before the event instead of at your table.
How the day works
You tell us what you’re hiring for and when you need people to start, and we work backwards from there. We set a date and a time that suits your operation and bring the candidates in.
You interview on the spot, fifteen or twenty minutes each, back to back. Some employers make offers in the room and others follow up the next day, but either way you leave with names.
Who’s actually in the room
The candidates come through our Service Workers’ POWER Centre and our training programs. They’re hospitality and service sector workers who’ve been laid off, had their hours cut back, or been told their job is ending, and plenty of them have ten or fifteen years behind a bar, on a floor, in a kitchen or in housekeeping.
A lot of them also turn up having done work most applicants haven’t, including one on one coaching and a written plan that covers the things that quietly sink a new hire in month two, like transit costs and childcare. Someone who has already worked out the commute and the schedule before they meet you is a different proposition from someone who works it out in week three and disappears. That matters more than it used to, because replacing a line cook you trained for six weeks costs real money in a year when 41 per cent of Ontario operators are running at or below break even.
What it costs you
Nothing to attend. There’s no booth fee and no table fee, so what it actually costs is a few hours of a hiring manager’s time and enough notice for us to get the word out to our list.
Where it fits with your other hiring
You’ve got your own job postings and your own staff referrals, and none of that goes away. A hiring event does the one thing those can’t, which is put a room of people we’ve already screened in front of you on a date you choose.
These events are closed door. We don’t post them publicly and we don’t list them anywhere. We market them ourselves, to our own people, which is why the room isn’t full of walk-ins who saw a sign. It works best when you have several openings at once, a firm start date, or a new site, and it’s worth less if you’re hiring one specialist, in which case call us anyway and we’ll tell you straight whether it’s worth setting one up.
If you want to know more, email info@hwtc.ca or give us a call
