The IT Nerd

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.

If you’re sick of looking at politics in your LinkedIn feed because political discourse these days is so toxic, LinkedIn can help you with that. LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky recently spoke to the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern in a video interview, which you can watch here.

Part way through the interview, Stern details how you can find the “allow political content” button.

• Go to account preferences
• Feed preferences

If you’re lucky there will be a button that will allow you to turn on and off political content. I say lucky because LinkedIn is still testing this. And you may not be one of the ones chosen to get this feature. And I should also point out that it is only available in the English language in the US. However Roslansky reiterated that the feature could become widespread if it proves popular and useful enough amongst the current pool of LinkedIn users giving it a test drive. At this point, I’d like to give a shoutout to the LinkedIn users who helped me to confirm the existence of this feature.

I wish more social media companies would come up with a feature like this as like I said, political discourse right now is so toxic.

Today, LinkedIn shared its latest Workforce Confidence Index findings that captures a new trend in how Canadians are navigating the Great Reshuffle. As many Canadians take on new roles, there is a small majority of Canadians who are open to doing so in industries entirely new to them.

In this edition of the Workforce Confidence Index, LinkedIn looked at how open Canadians are to switching industries and the reasons for doing so, finding that better compensation was among the top reasons Canadian’s are making the switch.

• 57% of those who are open to new jobs said they were either currently considering changing industries (42%) or were either actively looking to do so or had changed industries in the last year (15%).
• Other top drivers of industry change included flexible work hours, better benefits, and greater job stability.
• For those who wouldn’t consider a change in industry, 68% said they enjoy the nature of their job, 42% wanted to build more expertise in their industry, with 30% saying they wanted to strengthen their relationships in their industry.

For the full results, including gender and COVID-related viewpoints, visit here. 

Methodology

LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index is based on a quantitative online survey that is distributed to members via email every two weeks. Roughly 16,000+ members respond each wave, based in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, India, & Australia. Members are randomly sampled and must be opted into research to participate. Students, stay-at-home partners & retirees are excluded from analysis so we’re able to get an accurate representation of those currently active in the workforce. We analyze data in aggregate and will always respect member privacy.

Data is weighted by engagement level, to ensure fair representation of various activity levels on the platform. The results represent the world as seen through the lens of LinkedIn’s membership; variances between LinkedIn’s membership & overall market population are not accounted for.

From digitization to hybrid offices, the workplace is changing at a rapid pace. Industries have been upended, while at the same time, many workers have left their jobs in search of something new. These shifts are leaving professionals wondering where the workplace is headed and what role they want to play in it.

To provide insight on the topic, LinkedIn published the 2022 LinkedIn Jobs on the Rise list. It reveals the 20 fastest-growing job titles over the past five years and the key trends defining the future world of work. Here’s a peek at the top five roles in Canada:

1. Vaccine Specialist – including work in the research, development, production or distribution of vaccines, though most of the jobs are found in medical sales.
2. Diversity and Inclusion Manager – usually leads a team of people supporting initiatives related to fostering diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging within an organization.
3. Public Health Nurse – work in diverse settings such as schools, workplaces and community facilities to protect the health of individuals and populations.
4. Public Health Specialist – work with local authorities and communities to provide advice on epidemic prevention control, research diseases and illnesses, find methods of reducing health disparities and promote healthier lifestyles.
5. Site Reliability Engineer – create and implement automated software tools to maximize a system’s reliability and efficiency, working closely with software development and IT-operations.

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

List Methodology

LinkedIn Economic Graph researchers examined millions of jobs started by LinkedIn members from Jan 1, 2017 to July 31, 2021 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 2021. 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. 

Job Insights

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.

Remote job postings are based on jobs posted from October 2020 to October 2021 flagged as “remote” by the poster or containing similar keywords. Salary data is calculated using the median yearly salary in the local currency of the country from all past anonymous LinkedIn member submissions and third-party sources. Skills data was derived from the top skills most unique to each title among members who have ever held that title on LinkedIn. Years of experience was calculated using the median years of work experience held prior to starting in the featured title for members hired within the methodology time frame. Education distribution results were derived by analyzing the highest degree attained by members with the featured title, then calculating the number of members with each degree as a share of total degree holders for each title. Top industries are based on the industry of the companies that hired the highest number of members for each job from January 1, 2021 to July 31, 2021. Gender breakdown was calculated by measuring the number of members by identified gender currently in each job (provided there was meaningful gender data) as a percentage of the total members with known gender per job. Top locations hiring were categorized as the regions or cities that employed the largest percentage of each job title in 2021. Most common transitions were identified by the share of transitions from another occupation into the featured job. 

Internships, volunteer positions, interim roles and student roles were excluded, and identical job titles across seniority levels were grouped together. 

In the last two years, an oversupplied global oil market and a demand shock from the COVID-19 pandemic hit an industry already in transition.

So, how have workers in the energy and mining industry responded? In the latest edition of LinkedIn’s Workforce Report for Canada, new data reveals where this workforce is finding new opportunities.

Here are the top five industries energy and mining workers have been moving to since 2019:

1. Manufacturing
2. Construction
3. Software & IT Services
4. Corporate Services
5. Finance

These are just some of the many new workforce trends to emerge in Canada. 2021 is the year our relationship with work changed forever. LinkedIn data shows the future of work will continue to evolve across the globe next year.

As we look ahead into 2022, here are some trends LinkedIn expects to see:

1. More people will change jobs and careers
2. The new employee/employer contract will be shaped by employees
3. The relationship between buyer and seller will change

The full workforce report findings can be found here. Full 2022 predictions are available here. 

Methodology

The hiring rate is the percentage of LinkedIn members who added a new employer to their profile in the same month the new job began, divided by the total number of LinkedIn members in Canada.

The share of job transitions to another industry is measured by comparing job transitions out of a member’s industry divided by all job transitions by members in the industry or country for a given month. Job transitions are calculated from updates to LinkedIn profiles in line with the LinkedIn Hiring Rate methodology.

Provincial figures reflect a smoothed 30-day moving average of LinkedIn’s daily hiring rate in each province, the data is not seasonally adjusted, and it is indexed to the 2019 (pre-pandemic) baseline.

The share of applications to jobs in a different industry is equal to the applications to job postings in an industry different than the one the member is currently working in divided by total applications. Only LinkedIn premium job postings are considered.

Can the role a person holds influence their odds of getting a promotion? How about their industry or their address? It turns out all these factors can influence how likely Canadians are to be promoted, according to new data from LinkedIn’s latest Get Ahead Special Report.

LinkedIn investigated internal promotion rates compared to the national average over the past 12 months. Here are the key findings:

• Top 3 roles where Canadians were most likely to be promoted:
  1. Product managers, internal promotion rate 120% higher than the national average
  2. Marketers, internal promotion rate 68% higher
  3. Accountants, internal promotion rate 51% higher
• Top 3 industries where Canadians were most likely to be promoted:
  1. Finance, internal promotion rate 46% higher than the national average
  2. Media & Communications, internal promotion rate 39% higher
  3. Software & IT Services, internal promotion rate 39% higher
• Top 3 locations where Canadians were most likely to be promoted:
  1. Greater Toronto Area, internal promotion rate 27% larger than the national average
  2. Greater Vancouver Metropolitan Area, internal promotion rate 11% higher
  3. Greater Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo Metropolitan Area, internal promotion rate 4% higher

The full report findings can be found here. Research methodology is shared below: 

For this report, LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team analyzed Canadian internal promotion data at companies with more than 10 employees between November 2020 and October 2021. We excluded internal promotions from internship positions and promotions from C-Suite roles to partner or owner roles from this analysis. The internal promotion rate reflects the number of LinkedIn members who added a new, higher seniority position at the same employer to their profile in a job function divided by the total number of members with an active position in that job function. Top regions are metropolitan areas with the higher promotion rates for that particular job function between the November 2020 to October 2021 period. Top skills are a selection of the most commonly listed skills on profiles of members who received internal promotions during the November 2020 to October 2021 period.

In a sign that perhaps American companies are getting fed up with having to deal with China and their unique requirements, LinkedIn is shutting down operations in China. Here’s why:

While we’ve found success in helping Chinese members find jobs and economic opportunity, we have not found that same level of success in the more social aspects of sharing and staying informed. We’re also facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China. Given this, we’ve made the decision to sunset the current localized version of LinkedIn, which is how people in China access LinkedIn’s global social media platform, later this year.

Instead, LinkedIn will do this:

Later this year, we will launch InJobs, a new, standalone jobs application for China. InJobs will not include a social feed or the ability to share posts or articles. We will also continue to work with Chinese businesses to help them create economic opportunity. 

I guess that this is the only way that LinkedIn could operate in the country. I wonder if LinkedIn is going to be the first of many companies to start to back away from China in whole or in part, or is this a unique event?