International Organization for Migration (IOM)

Sharpe and Qiao (2006) also found that user awareness and participation is critical
to the successful delivery of LMI, which means that pre-screening services that
are viewed skeptically by businesses are unlikely to lead to better labour market
outcomes. The solution is to facilitate a higher degree of employer-led job search
supports designed specifically to meet business needs, which a national single point
of contact would achieve. This concern has been partly addressed by some of the
programmes discussed in the previous section, such as Skills International, CIIP,
Career Bridge, Mentoring Partnership, and which employers can participate in and
gain first-hand knowledge of the quality of the foreign workforce.
The second issue, a lack of awareness on the part of businesses of the opportunities
they have to recruit foreign-born workers, has been addressed in part by the efforts of
TRIEC, ALLIES, and other SPOs and industry groups to make aware to businesses
that immigrants are a powerful and large recruiting channel. The awareness
campaigns by government agencies, local immigration employment councils, and
SPOs should be mitigating lack of awareness on the part of businesses. As in the
case of the above, continued increased awareness from businesses about Canada’s
immigration policies should also help diminish this difficulty. Policies to support
business involvement or reduce the cost to businesses of recruiting immigrants would
also support the efforts of businesses to recruit immigrants.
The third and final issue, that application backlogs discourage businesses from
hiring workers from abroad, remains a challenge but is being addressed through the
introduction of a series of policies that aim to give employers access to expedited and
priority processing when they make a job offer to an immigrant and the development
of a national framework for credential assessment. Immigrants who received an
AEO, for example, immigrated on average within seven months, compared to one to
two years for those who did not (CIC, 2010b). The Manitoba PNP also found ways
to allow those with job offers to be approve permanent residents to enter the country
and begin working much more quickly than under the FSWP (Carter et al., 2010).
Foreign recruiting of immigrants and temporary workers
Informational barriers faced by employers vary based on whether immigrants are
located abroad or have already obtained permanent residence status (Mah, 2012).
Among the unique barriers to recruiting from abroad is knowledge of how long the
application process takes – this is related to application backlogs, which have varied
around 800,000. This has translated into delays of one to two years in the time it
takes to immigrate through the FSWP (CIC, 2010b). Several policy responses have
been implemented or are being explored, including accelerated processes for offers
of employment for highly skilled occupations, so that employers are able to hire
economic immigrants within six months to one year of applying, although this does
not expedite the process at all for those immigrating without job offers.
For multinational companies, there are limited differences in recruiting foreign
workers living in or outside of Canada. For SMEs, the difference in difficulty
becomes one of degree, not kind; the key problem is still that businesses have
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