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For the past 20 years, Branham has tracked the Canadian ICT Industry and the leading companies that comprise it. As part of Branham’s ongoing efforts, we speak with leading executives from across Canada to gather first-hand insight on current trends and recent developments within the Canadian ICT Industry. 

Recently, Branham sat down with Mike Winterfield, President at Randstad Professionals. The following statements summarize some of the key points that Mr. Winterfield would like to pass along to the Branham300 community. Alternatively, listen in on the conversation between Branham and Mr. Winterfield in its entirety here. 

Rising through the Ranks with an ICT Staffing Leader…

I have worked my way from the ground-up to where I am today. I started out as a summer intern about sixteen years ago and since then I have worked in a variety of roles within the company. This has provided me with some very good perspective on what different people in the company are doing and the importance of all of the different types of roles within the company. 

About three years ago, I moved over to run the Randstad Engineering division. I did that for about two years, and then about six months ago I assumed the lead role of the Randstad Professionals brand, which encompasses the engineering division, the technologies division, along with a variety of other areas.

Evolution of Randstad in Canada…

When I joined the company sixteen years ago, it was owned by the original founder. Since then, I have experienced five different ownership structures. The first two buyers, after the company was sold by the original founder, purchased the company for financial reasons. The two most recent purchasers acquired the company with strategic motives. Randstad Holdings is the current ownership group, and they definitely approached the acquisition of the business from a strategic point of view, looking to expand their presence in Canada and abroad. 

I think the biggest difference with having a strategic owner like Randstad is that the team here has been able to go back to focusing on learning again. We have also been able to leverage the brand and leverage the best-practices that Randstad brings to the table. For people that have been in the industry for a long time, that’s an exciting opportunity. We have been able to revisit and challenge the thoughts and ideas we’ve had for years.

The team at Randstad Canada is really lucky because the revenue and profit generated here is valued and appreciated by Randstad Holdings. I definitely feel like we’re given a lot of leeway to run the Canadian operations as we see fit, and the parent company provides us the flexibility to create Canadian specific strategies. When I look at Randstad Holding, I view them more as being there to give us support and give us guidance when we do need it. 

Impact of the SFN Acquisition…

We are really excited about the acquisition of SFN and the positive impact it’s going to have on our North American operations. After all of our investigations into SFN, it was pretty clear that they seemed to share many of the same values and visions that we do, so there was great alignment in the deal. In Canada, we were already the largest HR services provider, and the SFN acquisition helped to cement that. In the US, it had a huge impact bringing us up to be the third largest HR service provider. From an ICT perspective in Canada, the impact of SFN is actually a little bit smaller than some of the other industries in terms of the staff that were focused on that industry, but SFN brings with them a very loyal and strong client-base and we should be able to leverage many of those client relationships moving forward.

Randstad’s Corporate Culture…

There are two main things that we tend to talk about, when we talk about culture at Randstad. The first is an expression we’ve coined - “good to know you”. When we talk about “good to know you” it really involves everybody. It’s getting to know our candidates, getting to know our clients, getting to know our co-workers and building a good relationship with them. By having that strong relationship, we believe that better enables us to make an ideal match between candidates and employers, and not only meet their needs but exceed their expectations. 

The other focus for Randstad in terms of culture is on people being our most important asset. I think a lot of companies say that they care about their team, but unfortunately a lot of them only pay lip service to it. We’re one of the world’s biggest employers, so we understand that success is driven by people. So what we try to do is ensure that people are given the best work environment – training, opportunities, and support – so they can develop into their full potential.

Randstad’s Outlook for 2011 and into 2012…

I think that while it’s difficult, it’s very important to try and not forecast and run our business based on what we hear in the media. We have some very well-known, tried, tested and true indicators that tell us how our business is doing. We compare these metrics month over month, quarter over quarter, and year-over-year and most of them are quite strong. In fact, our data shows that the ICT Sector has remained very strong throughout the course of 2011. In fact, permanent job orders are higher in 2011 than they were 2010 year-to-date, as are contract placements. This shows us that despite what the media reports say, the ICT sector in Canada is definitely hiring. 

The markets that we’ve seen the most upswing in recently are the financial services and banking sector, as well as government. In terms of the types of roles that are in high-demand right now, we have seen a notable increase in companies looking to hire business analysts, web developers, and different infrastructure support type roles.

Hiring Trends that need to Change…

We tend to see two things happen when employers are coming out of a soft market. One is that they will tend to slow down the hiring process and two is that they will sell less to the candidate. Employers need to change both of these things. In today’s market, we are seeing situations where candidates are receiving multiple offers and what often happens is companies take too long to make a hiring decision. After all of that work to eliminate it down to the person they would like to bring on board, they are actually too late and the candidate that they have extended an offer to has already accepted an offer from another firm, and sometimes it’s a competitor. 

Right now there are some very talented, highly educated people out there that are being dismissed a little bit too early in the hiring process in my opinion. One of the things employers can do is partner with an agency like ours to get some help in going beyond the resume, in order to identify the right candidate that may be short on experience but certainly has the capabilities to do the job. There are also a lot of candidates out there that have recently switched fields. This type of candidate may have some very strong ICT experience that was developed in a different field, but some employers aren’t as open to making the investment to channel this experience to their hiring needs. With labour shortages in ICT on the horizon, this approach to hiring needs to change. 

Leveraging Canada’s National Brand to Attract Talent…

The famous brain-drain trend that is often talked about, with Canadians moving down to the US because there is more money to be made, has actually reversed in the past two years. There are some pretty interesting studies on this, but the net-effect is that we are seeing more Americans applying in Canada than the reverse. 

Recently, we also commissioned a study that revealed some pretty interesting data indicating that Canada is actually the second highest rated nation in the world in terms of people feeling good about the current economic situation here. What this means is that we can really leverage the national brand when trying to get people from other countries to immigrate to Canada and take on some of the jobs that we have here. There are a lot of projects out there that other countries have tried to staff, and they are now staffing them in Canada, because the process is faster, there is a higher availability of talent, and the cost of conducting the projects here is quite reasonable.

ICT Staffing and the Government…

I don’t think the government’s desire to spend less is the problem. We’re all facing that problem. With what has been going on in the economy, companies and government are trying to get good value for their money. However, I do think the public sector would be better served if they utilized more private sector practices and processes. An example of this would be how they qualify candidates. The most common private sector practice would be to qualify top vendors and then allow them to compete on price and quality. Comparatively, most government agencies require a new RFP for every single job, which really increases costs. You really end up limiting your talent pool with these practices, because there is only a certain number of vendors that are will to go through this process over-and-over due to the length of time and level cost to complete it. So I think it’s more the systems and processes in place that are the problem, and not the government’s pressure on vendors to reduce price.

Parting Advice for the ICT Job Market…

For new grads or for ICT jobs seekers, we really believe that ICT is a great industry to be in. It’s an exciting industry, it’s fast moving, it’s growing and it’s going to continue to provide the tools that we need to live our lives. Stick with this industry. If you don’t have the experience to land that first job, find either traditional or non-traditional ways to get that first bit under your belt and build from there. 

For companies, whether you are hiring right now or will be hiring in the future, you really need to plan ahead and you need to find your partners in advance. You need to get creative in how to staff your teams so that you don’t get stuck looking for the same person that everybody else is looking for at the same time everybody else is looking for them.