By Jayne Barron, CHRP

When the Canadian Express Entry immigration program launches on Jan. 1, 2015, Canadian employers will never hire professional talent the same way again.

Under Express Entry, skilled professionals anywhere in the world who receive a job offer from a Canadian firm are practically guaranteed a permanent residency visa and can be on the job in as little as a few months.

TFW Concerns and HR Realities
Concerned about foreign workers taking jobs from qualified Canadians? No worries. Under Express Entry, no employer who has a job opening can hire any offshore talent until a job posting has gone unfilled for at least four weeks. That’s plenty of time to fill any opening with a qualified Canadian professional—if one can be found.

However, as most of us in HR know, we can’t find enough qualified local talent to fill many job openings. Last year more than half a million jobs went unfilled. With six million older workers set to retire over the next five years, the talent gap will grow even wider.

Driving a Paradigm Shift in Policy
That’s exactly why the government collaborated with business on Express Entry: To create an “express superhighway” for Canadian employers to hire the world’s best talent to drive our economic engine for years to come.

The paradigm shift from the current immigration policy to Express Entry couldn’t be more dramatic. For decades, thousands of foreign qualified professionals came to Canada with a permanent residency visa and no job. Unable to find professional-level jobs fast enough, many resorted to taking low-wage, low-skill jobs to make ends meet.

Having a professional-level job offer from a Canadian company first changes everything for incoming immigrants. Under Express Entry, Canadian employers can actually help foreign qualified professionals get permanent residency visas by offering them full-time jobs. Immigrants who accept those job offers will land in Canada with a permanent residency visa, start working immediately and draw their first paycheques (and begin paying taxes) within a couple of weeks.

Express Entry Database to Attract Talent
For companies wanting to take advantage of Express Entry, the only challenge will be finding, vetting and interviewing the best professional candidates from among the millions of applicants who are expected to begin flooding the newly created Express Entry database in 2015.

Fortunately, there’s help. The Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) Office has an Express Entry team whose members speak to employer groups across Canada and hold web conferences to educate employers about how the new program works.

CIIP Partners for Economic Integration
Another great resource, the Canadian Immigrant Integration Program (CIIP) prepares newcomers for economic integration while still in their country of origin.

CIIP works with several Focal Point Partners including Career Bridge and Skills International. Certain CIIP clients may receive direct referrals to these organizations for contact with employers across Canada looking to fill certain employment vacancies.

Career Bridge helps connect qualified professionals to paid internships while Skills International helps match experienced professionals to open full-time positions through a career management model. The goal is to help make the process easier for employers by pre-screening and preparing candidates to be “ready for employment” to lower the risk of a bad hire.

Global Talent Ready for Express Entry
The good news is there are literally hundreds of thousands of highly competent and skilled professionals from around the world who are eager to fill Canadian job vacancies and start a new life in Canada when Express Entry opens on January 1, 2015.

Their resumes read like a “Who’s Who” of world-class talent and include professionals with various levels of experience from the IT, oil, gas, energy, utilities, financial services, telecom, medical, and hospitality industries, as well as many others.

The Bottom Line: Be Ready
Whether you are a multinational firm with thousands of employees around the world, a medium-sized regional firm or a “mom-and-pop” business with 20 employees, you cannot afford to pass up the opportunity to hire some top professional talent under Express Entry.

Immigrants have long played an important role in our culture and society, contributing greatly to our stable economic growth, diversity and lifestyle that caused the United Nations to rank us as “one of the best places to live” in the entire world. Now, Express Entry will help us replace the talent that’s about to retire in the coming years with professionals who will help us continue our legacy.

As an employer, will you be prepared? Or will you be left behind as your competitors “out-recruit” you on the Express Entry talent superhighway?

Want to learn more about this topic? Register for the Express Entry: Temporary & Permanent LMIAs webinar on February 18. For more information on this and other professional development opportunities, please visit hrma.ca.

Jayne Barron is a multi-faceted career counsellor, speaker, leadership expert and training developer. Based near Vancouver, she is a Certified Career Development Practitioner and was awarded Practitioner of the Year in 2012. She is also on the Advisory Council for the Human Resources Association in British Columbia and is a Certified Human Resources Professional (CHRP). Jayne has nearly 20 years of HR and career development experience and is an independent professional working as a career counsellor with Skills International.