By Marianne Fonseca
Centretown businesses, large and small, can profit in many ways from a new alternative to traditional employment agencies.
World Skills Staffing Service is a non-profit organization that matches prospective employers with people who are new to Canada and in need of employment.
The LeClercs, for example, needed someone to do landscaping work for them. They called the Catholic Immigration Centre, one of the local agencies serving immigrants who manages World Skills. According to Clemence LeClerc, when she and her husband called looking for help the project staff arranged for Rouslin Boukine to work the next day and he began work the morning after.
“We are very pleased with him,” said LeClerc.
Boukine is a newcomer from Russia who came to Ottawa with his family about one year ago. He found employment quickly through the World Skills program, and now he has another job as a second-cook. He said he found the program “very helpful and a very good idea.”
Mona Forrest is the executive director of the Center for Canadian Language Benchmarks. She chose World Skills when she was recruiting for a job preparation training program. She took on two people from World Skills whom she describes as very responsible,flexible, with a drive to advance.
World Skills is in the business of “promoting the skills and talents of immigrants to employers,”explained Mengistab Tsegay, the project manager.
Since it began in the spring of 1997, World Skills has made over 133 job placements through job orders from employers, tipping newcomers to advertised opportunities that matched their skills and by teaching them how to compete for an opportunity they located themselves.
The funding for the program comes primarily from the Trillium Foundation, a provincial government agency, as well as the United Way, Community Foundation and Heritage Canada.
“Basically we provide professional staffing services to the employers within the region, but with a twist, because we don’t charge(clients)…and because it’s funded by Trillium we don’t have to charge the employers,” said Jennifer Litgus, project co-ordinator.
World Skills specializes in immigrants who are seeking jobs. Weekly workshops in English and biweekly workshops in French are offered free of charge to newcomers to teach them how to find employment in their fields and describe their skills to potential employers.
“Everything is new,” says Litgus. “When you’re job hunting it’s stressful enough, but if you move to a new geographical area you probably have a new language to learn, you probably have no network of people,and the whole style of job hunting may be completely different than what you are used to.”
World Skills workshops take job seekers through the entire process from writing resumes to finding employers that are hiring, to interviewing and tips about the Canadian workforce.
“I found them very, very useful,” said Nicolina Kovacina, who immigrated from Yugoslavia one year ago. She said she appreciated the use of a computer and the Internet in her job search, and the support of the staff. “You can count on someone if you don’t know anyone here.”
At a recent workshop, job-seekers professed engineering degrees, degrees in education, Masters degrees, and other experience that could benefit employers.
“Our candidates are from different sectors,” said Litgus. “One of the concerns for immigrants is that they’re often under-employed and so we’re trying to alleviate that problem by finding jobs that match peoples’ skills and interests.”