The IT Nerd

With the world of work being reshaped, employers are now rethinking everything including what they look for in candidates, where they find them, and how they attract and retain them. Now more than ever companies need more guidance. 

LinkedIn recently released a data report sharing 17 predictions for the future of recruiting, based on dozens of interviews with global talent leaders, surveys of thousands of recruiting pros, and analysis of billions of data points generated on LinkedIn.  

The data and insights center around five key themes ranging from internal mobility to skills-first hiring to employers remaining committed to DEI despite the current economic uncertainty. 

Key Global Findings Include: 

• Three-out-of-four of recruiter respondents are saying that DEI hiring is being prioritized. 
• Recruiters are 25% more likely to search for candidates based on skills than they were just three years ago. And more than 50% of recruiters are more likely to search for skills than by years of experience. 
• Employees who work at companies with a high internal mobility tend to stay 60% longer than those at companies with a lower internal mobility. 

The full report can be viewed here.

As the 2023 workforce rapidly evolves, conversations around ‘recession’ are up nearly 900% since last year and topics like layoffs are trending on LinkedIn. However, today’s professionals are finding confidence in their skills, allowing them to bounce back and move forward when facing job change – planned or not.

A complement to this year’s Jobs on the Rise list, which identified the 25 jobs which have grown most over the past five years, the Most In-Demand Skillslist offers an insider look at the skills companies need most right now and free LinkedIn Learning courses to learn these skills.

The 2023 top 10 most in-demand skills in Canada include:

1. Management – Be The Manager People Won’t Leave
2. Communication – Communication Foundations
3. Customer Service – Customer Service Foundations
4. Leadership – Human Leadership
5. Microsoft Office – Excel Essential Training (Office 365)
6. Sales – Sales Foundations
7. Project Management – Project Management Foundations
8. Teamwork – Being an Effective Team Member
9. Research – Market Research Foundations
10. Analytical Skills – Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

For the full list of the Most In-Demand Skills, and their corresponding LinkedIn Learning courses, visit here.

Despite economic uncertainty and global hiring slowing down, a recent global survey from LinkedIn reveals that 60% of professionals are considering a new job this year – driven by the desire for bigger salaries as the cost-of-living increases. The survey found that 38% desire higher pay while also revealing that 30% are looking to pursue a better work-life balance.  

To provide insight on these trends, LinkedIn’s 2023 Jobs on the Rise list shows the 20 fastest-growing jobs in Canada, offering insights into where job seekers can find opportunity and stability as they search for their next role. The report features links to open positions, average salaries, remote work availability, the top skills for each role along with free LinkedIn Learning courses.  

The top 5 roles in Canada include:  

1. Growth Marketing Manager – including work in sales, marketing, and communications, and using data to develop and communicate strategies and processes to increase business revenue. 
2. Product Operations Manager – usually have a cross-functional role, working with management and companies’ various teams to build and oversee the effectiveness of business processes, operations, products and/or services. 
3. Dispensary Technician – typically involves taking and filing out orders at cannabis dispensaries. 
4. Technical Program Manager – work involves developing and managing organizations’ various technical projects and programs. 
5. Sustainability Manager – works to balance an organizations’ needs with its capacity for sustained profitability, involving the monitoring and forecasting of its impact on the surrounding environment.    

The full list, including industry, region, and salary insights for each role can be found here.

Methodology 

LinkedIn Economic Graph researchers examined millions of jobs started by LinkedIn members from January 1, 2018 to July 31, 2022 to calculate a growth rate for each job title. To be ranked, a job title needed to see consistent growth across our membership base, as well as have grown to a meaningful size by 2022. Identical job titles across different seniority levels were grouped and ranked together. Internships, volunteer positions, interim roles and student roles were excluded, and jobs where hiring was dominated by a small handful of companies in each country were also excluded. Additional data points for each of the job titles are based on LinkedIn profiles of members holding the title and/or open jobs for that title in the country. 

According to the latest Statistics Canada data, job vacancies are on the rise estimating that in August 2022, there were nearly a million unfilled positions. These vacancies coupled with the threat of recession, talent reshuffle and layoffs across sectors have young professionals examining how they can better prepare for next wave of economic uncertainty. 

In response to potential economic downturn, LinkedIn is starting to see people, “Career Cushioning”, meaning they are taking actions to keep their options open and cushioning for whatever comes next in the economy and job market. 

LinkedIn offers support in helping young professionals feel more secure about their job experience and offers ways to upskill. Below are some of the specific ways to begin “Career Cushioning” using LinkedIn as a resource.

• Tend to Your Network: A recent global survey from LinkedIn found that almost half of people (48%) use their professional network to get job advice or referrals.  
• Skills Matters: More than 40% of hirers on LinkedIn explicitly use skills data to fill their roles, up over 30% year-over-year. 
• Start to put feelers out there for new roles: Turning on Open to Work on your LinkedIn profile increases your likelihood of getting a recruiter message by 2X. 

This article on LinkedIn offers additional tips.

LinkedIn is releasing the Canadian edition of the 2022 Top Startups List featuring the companies attracting attention and top talent in 2022. 

Grounded in unique LinkedIn data, Top Startups is an annual ranking of the young, emerging companies attracting professionals who want to work there. The list reveals the companies that are forward-thinking and innovative around the future of work. These growing startups are successfully navigating through the current world of work at a time where there is economic uncertainty. 

LinkedIn’s methodology is based on growth and demand. The data to rank startups on the list is based on four pillars that are synonymous with successful startups: employment growth, engagement, job interest and attraction of top talent.  

2022 Top Startups Canada List

1. Neo Financial 
2. Ada 
3. Fable 
4. Shakepay 
5. ApplyBoard 
6. BenchSci 
7. Cohere 
8. Certn 
9. Drop 
10. Dapper Labs 
11. Snapcommerce 
12. Manifest Climate 
13. Irwin 
14. TealBook 
15. Klue 

Methodology 

LinkedIn measures startups based on four pillars: employment growth, engagement, job interest and attraction of top talent. Employment growth is measured as percentage headcount increase over methodology time frame, which must be a minimum of 10%. Engagement looks at non-employee views and follows of the company’s LinkedIn page, as well as how many non-employees are viewing employees at that startup. Job interest counts rate at which people are viewing and applying to jobs at the company, including both paid and unpaid postings. Attraction of top talent measures how many employees the startup has recruited away from any global LinkedIn Top Company, as a percentage of the startup’s total workforce. Data is normalized across all eligible startups. The methodology time frame is July, 1 2021 through June 30, 2022.  

To be eligible, companies must be fully independent, privately held, have 50 or more full-time employees, be 7 years old or younger and be headquartered in the country on whose list they appear. We exclude all staffing firms, think tanks, venture capital firms, law firms, management and IT consulting firms, nonprofits and philanthropy, accelerators and government-owned entities. Startups who have laid off 20% or more of their workforce within the methodology time frame are also ineligible.  

About company insights 

*Company insights were sourced from LinkedIn Talent Insights. Data reflects aggregated public member data from active LinkedIn profiles in the relevant country and includes full-time employee profiles associated with the company on LinkedIn. All data points are measured among hires in the last year. We exclude members who identify as part-time or contractors. Headcounts are provided by the companies directly, unless otherwise noted with an asterisk. Those headcounts are based on LinkedIn data. The insights reflect data as of July 2022. Skills data was derived from measuring the most frequent skills among a company’s employees. Most common job titles represent the occupations that are most common within each company. Largest job function measures the function area most prevalent within each company.

As the job market continues to shift, it’s important for workers to adapt, keep their skills sharp and stay connected to their professional network. New data from LinkedIn shows necessary skills for today’s jobs have changed by 25% since 2015 and that number is expected to double by 2027.

With that in mind, LinkedIn identified the top 20 skills in demand today. These skills were featured in more than three-quarters of paid jobs posted globally over the last three months on the platform. To help job seekers future-proof their careers, LinkedIn Learning is offering FREE courses for the month of September in these growing areas. Here’s a preview of the top five skills on the list.

1. Customer Service – Serving Customers in a Continuously Changing World
2. Sales – Asking Great Sales Questions
3. Accounting – Lean Accounting Foundations
4. Business Development – Business Development: Strategic Planning
5. Marketing – Marketing Foundations: The Marketing Funnel 

For job seekers, LinkedIn also recognizes the power of turning to your professional connections for help. You can also now see who’s hiring in your network when you visit the Jobs home page. And you’ll be notified of relevant jobs when people in your first- or second-degree network are hiring, plus you can also see members of the hiring team in job descriptions, making it easy for you to reach out directly. 

In addition, LinkedIn will host a series of virtual events from September 12-16 where you can engage with expert instructors and discover tactical tips on how to support your career.  

For the full list of the top 20 skills in demand today, and their corresponding LinkedIn Learning courses, visit here.

Canada’s bustling tech sector has attracted national and international headlines in recent weeks, as an influx of investment into the nation’s talent pipeline helps it earn a reputation as a major hub for the industry.

The latest edition of LinkedIn’s Workforce Report for Canada reveals where the tech workforce has expanded the fastest over the past year, as well the roles, skills and cities driving growth. Here are some of the key findings:

• Growth in Canada’s tech talent workforce outpaced the U.S. over the past 12 months (1.6% growth rate in Canada compared to 1.1% in the U.S.)
• Calgary enjoys the fastest pace of tech workforce growth at 2.2% over the past 12 months (Vancouver and Toronto are close behind at 2.1% and 2% growth, respectively)
• Data Engineer (19.7%) and Back End Developer (14.1%) are the fastest-growing tech jobs in Canada over the past 12 months
• The fastest-growing skills relate to cloud-computing, such as Microsoft Azure (which was up 36% over a year), user interface library React.js (up 33%) and Amazon Web Services (up 26%)

The full report findings can be found here.

Methodology

This body of work represents the world seen through the lens of LinkedIn data, drawn from the anonymized and aggregated profile information of LinkedIn’s 810 million members around the world. As such, it is influenced by how members choose to use the platform, which can vary based on professional, social and regional culture, as well as overall site availability and accessibility.

To map “tech talent,” LinkedIn determines members’ job functions from their job titles as listed on their profiles. For this report, a member is considered to be “tech talent” if their current job function is in “Information Technology” or “Engineering.” All positions, including full-time, intern, student, contract, part-time and self-employed roles are included in this analysis.

Top educational institutions are based on the institutions listed in the education section of LinkedIn profiles. The rank for top tech schools is based on the number of “tech talent” workers who attended a given school.

The tech talent growth rate reflects the percentage change in the number of tech professionals in a given location, compared with the same location a year earlier. Named cities include wider metropolitan areas. Fastest-growing jobs reflect the percentage change in the number of professionals who list a job title as an active position on their LinkedIn profile, compared with the same title a year earlier.

LinkedIn released the Canadian edition of the 2022 Top Companies list, which features the best workplaces for Canadians.

As companies continue to navigate the workplace in a post-pandemic world, the competitive market has put employees in the driver’s seat. Each year, the Top Companies list identifies the best workplaces Canadians can grow their career and shares the insights they need to navigate their professional journey.

LinkedIn uses its data to rank companies on the list based on seven pillars that have been shown to lead to career progression: ability to advance; skills growth; company stability; external opportunity; company affinity; gender diversity and educational backgrounds.

Here is what the highest ranked LinkedIn Top Companies are doing to attract and keep talent:

1. RBC – RBC recently launched an Innovation Hub in Calgary, where it plans to make hundreds of tech hires over three years.

2. TD – TD Bank announced plans to hire more than 2,000 people this year for new tech jobs as it expands into areas such as artificial intelligence and cloud-based operations.

3. Alphabet – Google employees are allowed to work from a location other than their main office for up to four weeks per year.

4. SAP – SAP Canada is piloting future of work ideas at its newly opened Montreal facility, including an app that lets employees see who else will be in the office on a given day.

5. Scotiabank – Scotiabank removed resume requirements for Canadians applying for internships, co-op placements and graduate positions and has begun using assessments from Plum to help find untapped talent and ease barriers to employment.

Are you able to cover LinkedIn’s 2022 Top Companies in Canada list? The full 2022 Top Companies in Canada list is linked here.

Methodology

Our methodology uses LinkedIn data to rank companies based on seven pillars that have been shown to lead to career progression: ability to advance; skills growth; company stability; external opportunity; company affinity; gender diversity and educational background. Ability to advance tracks employee promotions within a company and when they move to a new company, based on standardized job titles. Skills growth looks at how employees across the company are gaining skills while employed at the company, using standardized LinkedIn skills. Company stability tracks attrition over the past year, as well as the percentage of employees that stay at the company at least three years. External opportunity looks at Recruiter outreach across employees at the company, signaling demand for workers coming from these companies. Company affinity, which seeks to measure how supportive a company’s culture is, looks at connection volume on LinkedIn among employees, controlled for company size. Gender diversity measures gender parity within a company and its subsidiaries. Finally, educational background examines the variety of educational attainment among employees, from no degree up to Ph.D. levels, reflecting a commitment to recruiting a wide range of professionals.

To be eligible, companies must have had at least 500 employees as of Dec. 31, 2021, in the country and attrition can be no higher than 10% over the methodology time period, based on LinkedIn data. Similarly, companies with layoffs during that time that amount to more than 10% of their workforce, based on public announcements, are also ineligible. Only parent companies rank on the list; majority-owned subsidiaries and data about those subsidiaries are incorporated into the parent company score. All data counts are normalized based on company size across the pool of companies eligible for the list. The methodology time frame is Jan. 1, 2021, through Dec. 31, 2021. All of the data used is aggregated and/or de-identified.

We exclude all staffing and recruiting firms, educational institutions and government agencies. We also exclude LinkedIn, its parent company Microsoft and Microsoft subsidiaries.

In the era of the Great Reshuffle, retaining employees has arguably never been more important. When employees feel like their skills aren’t being put to use, they are 10x more likely to leave a job, making opportunities for career development and growth at a company that much more critical. 

To further help businesses retain their talent, LinkedIn is announcing that members of the Paddle HR team, including CEO, Pat Whelan and CTO, Sid Bhargava, will be joining LinkedIn.

The team at Paddle HR have deep domain expertise building internal talent mobility and career development solutions that are AI-driven, and they share a similar vision – to make skills the currency of the talent ecosystem.

By bringing the team onboard, LinkedIn can accelerate the work they’re doing to build career development and internal mobility capability within LinkedIn Learning Hub – a skill-building platform – to empower employees to accelerate their careers and help employers better retain their talent.

You can read the full announcement here.

The pandemic has caused many to take a break in their career. Whether forced or by choice, it’s become increasingly common for people around the world to have taken time away from work. While 57% of Canadians believe there’s a stigma attached to taking a career break, 61% wish there was a way to positively represent career breaks to recruiters and hiring managers.

This month, LinkedIn launched a new Profile tool specifically aimed at normalizing career breaks. Career Breaks is a new, optional entry in the Experience section of a person’s LinkedIn profile, with a unique appearance that makes it clear that a career break was not just another job.

People are able to choose from a range of options to show what type of career break they had, including important life events such as, full-time parenting, caregiving, career transitions and others.

New research from LinkedIn’s recent global survey of 22,995 respondents (including 1,000+ Canadians), as well as platform data on career breaks and flexibility found:

• Having a career break is becoming more common.

• 42% of Canadians have taken a career break by choice.
• Career breaks can be valuable in assessing priorities.
  • 65% of Canadians say taking a career break helped them to gain perspective and figure out what they really want from life, and 52% would encourage others to take a career break if they could.
• Yet there’s still a stigma associated with career breaks.
  • 57% of Canadians believe there’s a stigma associated with having a career break, and 53% believe having a career break on your resume makes you a less attractive job candidate.
• But there is good news – sentiment around career breaks is changing for the better, and sharing details can shine a light on invaluable skills learned during time away from work.
  • 50% of hiring managers globally believe career breaks are becoming more common and 46% believe candidates with career breaks are an untapped talent pool.
    • 44% of hirers globally want to know the reason a candidate took a career break and 51% say they’re more likely to contact an applicant that provided context. 

Methodology:

According to a January 2022 global survey of 22,995 workers and 4,017 hiring managers (including 1,009 respondents in Canada) conducted by Censuswide on behalf of LinkedIn.