Workers of the world are at our doorstep
In what the U.K. Financial Times describes as "the world’s most culturally diverse city," with about 115,000 new immigrants arriving in Toronto each year, too many prospective employers are still reluctant to hire qualified job applicants with unfamiliar credentials.
And the Ontario government’s requirement that the province’s professional bodies regulating lawyers, doctors, accountants and architects streamline their membership applications has brought little progress, one suspects because the bodies are effectively guilds determined to protect their existing members from a supply glut and resulting fee-cutting.
Two promising initiatives have emerged from the non-profit sector, specifically the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC). With funding from Ontario, Toronto Dominion Bank, Manulife Financial Corp. and a private foundation, TRIEC has launched an internship program, 85 per cent of whose 600 interns placed so far have found work in or related to their vocational specialties. TRIEC also runs a mentoring program in which volunteer mentors help newcomers learn the ropes, including career networking and Toronto workplace culture.
Given that "all the labour force growth is coming from immigration," says David Pecaut, head of Boston Consulting’s Canadian practice, employers need to do more to review their hiring practices, inform immigrants of job fairs and get the message across to their own businesses about the value of workplace diversity and contacts immigrants offer to the world’s most dynamic industrializing economies.
Speaking protectionism
"As a Canadian who has lived in the U.S., I am saddened to see the growth of protectionist ideas ("Make the World Go Away, Feb. 4). America has always been willing to move forward through innovation and creativity. It isn’t held back by centuries of tradition, and that is its best competitive advantage. If government policy focuses on what America used to have, it will blunt the nation’s greatest recession-fighting tool: adaptability to change."
–Jerry Pratt, manager of human resources and marketing, Crossroads Credit Union, Canora, Sask., letter to the editor, Fortune, March 3.
Signs of the times
Ahead of a meeting with the press by Dai Xianglong, former governor of the People’s Bank of China, the nation’s central bank, and new head of a Chinese sovereign wealth fund that is Hong Kong’s largest institutional investor, aides to the ostensible money maven tell reporters to avoid questioning Xianglong about the capital markets because "he doesn’t know much about them." Neither, it turns out, did the CEOs of Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. ousted in the wake of the subprime-mortgage debacle payday advance online. . . Oh dear, PepsiCo Inc. CEO Indra Nooyi has just made the cover of Fortune. Sally Krawchek, brought into Citigroup Inc. to clean up its suspect "research" after the dot-com bust and an obvious candidate for the top job, has been languishing at Citi ever since her Fortune-cover star turn. Carly Fiorina was dumped as CEO of telecom giant Lucent Technologies Inc. not long after a similar appearance. Shares in high-flying Cisco Systems Inc. tanked soon after CEO John Chambers was described in a Fortune cover story as possibly the smartest CEO alive. (Chambers is smart, and still CEO of Cisco, the lone robust survivor of the telecom crash early this decade, but not smart enough to maintain a peak market cap of $555 billion U.S.) And Mickey Drexler got the heave at Gap Inc., which he transformed into a global chain and apparel icon, after Fortune bestowed similar glowing accolades on him. (Drexler has since regained his magic touch in spotting fashion trends as CEO of J. Crew Group Inc.) Come to think of it, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show was unable to replicate its singles success with albums after Rolling Stone magazine obliged the band by giving it the cover treatment it pined for in a 1972 hit song.
Jargon watch
white-space idea, n. Anticipated but unidentifiable business opportunities inspired by current breakthroughs, as primitive Internet chat rooms ultimately begat the social-networking phenomenon. "We go for the obvious ways of making progress, like making our aircraft engines more energy efficient, knowing our progress will spawn white-space lines of business none of us dreamed of," said Lorraine Bolsinger, vice-president of General Electric Co.’s $14 billion portfolio of environmentally engineered "ecoimagination" products, in a presentation to Mississauga business leaders earlier this month.
This day in history
Born this date in 1947, this politician was Canadian prime minister for just four months.
(Answer, reverse:
Llebpmac Mik.)
Quotable tycoon
"It doesn’t bring you any new friends, it only brings you a better class of enemies."
– Israel "Izzy" Asper, founder of CanWest Global Communications Corp., on becoming a media baron, in a 2002 interview.
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