An employment placement specialist on the Sunshine Coast says selective hiring is severely affecting the youth of today.
Nancy Martin works at a WorkBC Centre, one of many across the Island and Coast. WorkBC aims to help people find jobs through career tools, blogs, interactive maps, and live chats with employment specialists.
As more young people struggle to find work across Canada, Martin says the labour market has changed drastically in the past few years.
“Coming out of COVID employers were really struggling to find workers and there were tons of positions available and there wasn’t enough people to fill those jobs,” said Martin. “While there still seems to be a lot of positions available, employers have become more and more selective in their hiring process.”
She says it has to do with finding the right candidate for the position, who has the right amount of training, experience or education so they require the least amount of on-the-job training to get into the position.
Along with lack of training and previous experience, Martin says other issues for employment include wage expectations and schedules.
Healthcare and sales and service are the sectors most in need of new workers.
“With the Sunshine Coast, we are a bit more tourism-driven and we do have our busy seasons so our restaurants and retail are always looking for more people as we approach the summer season,” said Martin. “After coming out of the pandemic, healthcare truly needs a lot of new staffing and we see a ton of job postings for healthcare but unfortunately the youth are unable to apply because they are lacking that specific educational requirement.”
She adds for students with not a lot of experience, they can access WorkBC for support and to get the certificates required when they apply for future jobs.
