If the Kinaxis career fair Wednesday was any indication, employers in the city “need to be on top of their games” in order to attract and keep talent, the company’s vice-president of human resources said Thursday.
Megan Paterson said Kinaxis was expecting about 200 job-seekers at Wednesday’s event at the Kanata Holiday Inn & Suites.
Instead, she said, at least 300 people showed up.
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“It was crazy, it was great,” she said, adding that the majority were people who already had jobs but were looking for something better.
Ms. Paterson said the ultimate test of the quality of candidates is how many of the 22 current vacancies the company ends up filling from the fair. She said some of her recruiters are already setting up interviews with job-seekers they met on Wednesday.
“I’d say the quality was quite good,” she said.
Ms. Paterson said while the company is still advertising on job boards, LinkedIn and the company website, the career fair was an opportunity to show off the company’s culture to potential employees. The event featured a good mix of managers and employees, longtime Kinaxis workers and newer hires, she said.
“We did a few different things last night,” she said. “We had a DJ, for example. I’d never been to a career fair that had a DJ. We had an open bar. Everybody was very responsible. We had servers walking around with appetizers.”
That’s all part of the process of showing the company off as a good – and fun – place to work, said Ms. Paterson.
“If you can hire one person from a career fair, then it pays for itself. I’m hoping to obviously hire much more than one. It was great, I was pleased,” she said.
