hi um my name is frau swisso i am the senior manager of marketing and communications for magnet um before we start the session i'd really like to start with a land acknowledgement um so i would like to to begin by acknowledging the indigenous peoples of all the lands that we are on today while we meet today on a virtual platform i would like to take a moment to acknowledge the importance of the lands which we each call home we do this to reaffirm our commitment and responsibility in improving re
lationships between nations and to improving our own understanding of local indigenous peoples and their cultures from coast to coast to coast we acknowledge the ancestral and unseated territory of all the inuit metis and first nations people that call this land home please join me in a moment of reflection to acknowledge the harms and mistakes of the past and to consider how we are and can each in our way own way try to move forward in a spirit of reconciliation and collaboration thank you so w
e come together today for the purpose of these the building future ready communities uh series and really the purpose of this series is to create opportunities for cross-sectoral dialogue between a community based employment agencies post-secondary institutions and employers across canada on issues related to the future of work magnus has worked with endpoint to drive the series and endpoints mission is to support 1 million people to make that right connections so for today's session we are spea
king on ai and i'm extremely excited to talk about this so i will pass it over to chantal to continue thank you thank you florence and thank you for all of those of you who are joining us live today and for those of you that are going to watch this and or listen in your own time uh my name is chantel o'brien i'm the ceo and founder of onpoint where as florence mentioned we're on a mission to help people build careers doing work that they love in today's context that's an ongoing conversation and
so i am so thrilled to have amazing and esteemed panelists with us today virtually where we're gonna talk everything to do with technology disruption in 2021 and beyond we're going to talk about everything from artificial intelligence to machine learning to big data and technology as it relates to things like what we're able to do right now working remote building culture and remote and technology advancement across all industries so really big broad conversation today i'm excited to dive in wi
th our panelists before we do that though i am going to give you a little bit of context in terms of who they are and what perspective they're going to be able to bring to today's conversation i'm not going to read line for line panelists or bios i promise i won't sneak anything in there that's untoward um but just to give our audience a little bit of perspective and some context for what they could expect for those of you joining us live today please feel free to pop your questions into the cha
t and or the q a at any point during the session we will make time towards the back end to um allow for audience participation and get those questions answered if there is any if not you're just in the mood to sit back listen and kind of be inspired and take some things away by all means we encourage whatever mode of participation you are most comfortable with and able to do today if you have any questions again pop them into the chat you will see if you've got any technical challenges as well w
e've got someone there in the events management support role she can help you troubleshoot as well if there's anything um that you aren't already a zoom expert in in this 19 plus months of using zoom and many video technologies for us to do this so again i'm going to give a little bit of background on a panelist and then we're going to dive in to the conversation and i'm so excited um and it's very cool for us to do this at one point i was remarking to some of the panelists as we were doing our
pre-conversations for this you know in the work that we do at on point where we get to work with a number of different kinds of institutions and organizations we work with post-secondary we do some work with not-for-profit and we work with employers and when we can bring those three kind of big groups together in support of their employees their future employees the talent pools that exist now that we want to cultivate and ultimately the bigger broader communities that we all have a role to play
and support really that's the intersection that we love to be in and so for us it's a great opportunity to kind of bring those different perspectives together underneath this big broad conversation of building future ready communities with again that focus around what does technology disruption really mean to each of us in our roles so in no particular order i'm going to introduce we've got leslie galgae our success manager of diversity at the genesis center leslie movie give a wave right now l
eslie is currently at the genesis center and responsible for portfolio success management she supports high growth potential technology startups across the financial strategic and mentorship needs that they have to scale their ventures well folks at onpoint we're big fans in mentorship so we love whenever that comes up in conversation in leslie's past experience which is very diverse she's worked in finance business development and innovation management across a variety of sectors currently and
leslie you're going to have to i think explain this in some point our conversation today she enjoys her slash career focusing on technology founder success consulting for high potential women entrepreneurs and teaching in the areas of diversity equity inclusion and belonging lots of things i think to add some great context to the conversation today so thank you for joining us leslie our next amazing panelist is andrew sinclair andrew is the founder and ceo of two companies at least that he share
d to date total iq and trajectory total iq is a newfoundland-based software company helping engineering companies maximize the value of their expertise and trajectory is an engineering company focused on digitization in the industrial sector so you can see what we thought andrew would have some interesting perspectives to share on today's topic thanks for giving away there andrew previous to creating these companies andrew spent a decade plus working in a large mining company in a series of role
s from indus industrial automation to project management engineering and the deployment of business systems at the business unit level he's an electrical engineer holds an mba a masters in project management is a licensed professional engineer a pmp and a dedicated volunteer so again thanks for joining us andrew last but not least by any stretch of the imagination we have paul preston paul is currently the ceo of tech nl and for some of you who have been in the industry for a long time you may r
emember that it was called notty before that and where he and his team work to develop and grow the province's technology and innovation sector paul was previously the director of science technology and innovation at the conference board of canada where he led a team that delivered advice to industry academia and governments on innovation strategy again some really good connections between those groups that we like to break down silos on on these conversations in addition qual has traveled exten
sively to understand how different jurisdictions drive their innovation systems in places such as israel silicon valley new york and boston also really cool it's been called as an expert witness to the parliamentary standing committee on industry science and technology he was previously also the director of business development with the plato group slash camouflage software in both st john's and ottawa and in his volunteer time which i'm not sure paul how you have any volunteers as a hockey coac
h so welcome paul thank you panelists i again i'm so excited to just dive in and leslie you were first on our bios i'm going to pass the first question to you as well and we are going to start uh folks big and broad and the whole focus of this theory of this series is building future ready communities so leslie from your perspective and all of that that that comes with that when you think about the theme of this particular conversation as it relates to building future ready communities just talk
to us about what comes to mind for you thanks chantal and i'll get into the slash career bit a little bit later because i think it actually does tie into the future of work and future communities but i guess for me uh building future communities or those that are kind of oriented and ready for the future really have a deep appreciation for an understanding of the cognitive skills that are required for success in the future and that's of course not kind of undermining but also not focusing solel
y on the technical skills that are required because in my opinion the technical competencies will change and we have to be ready for that change the cognitive skills are what will help us adapt to that level of change and so i mean we've been having a conversation about digital literacy and technical skills development for quite some time now we've seen some progress at grade school level higher education level we've seen you know advancements in programs in computer science and stem and that's
definitely not to say that we're there yet in terms of kind of adaptation and equity but we're definitely beyond the what i'll say the awareness stage of the change management paradigm but on this on the cognitive skills side so you know skills like critical thinking adaptability growth mindset uh self-leadership that's where we're seeing the conversation moving and that's what i think a lot about um i think the pandemic has really accentuated the need for development in this area i mean we've s
een business models just being turned on their heads and um you know there's really few that were really prepared for that so that highlights how those that are agile creative growth minded are the most resilient and adaptable for that change so i think the key really to building future ready communities is the ability to adapt to a new pace of change change will be the only constant oh some amazing nuggets that i'm excited to to pull on some threads there but before we dive in there i'm gonna p
ass it over to uh to andrew paul to chime in with your perspective and whoever goes off me at first you win looks like i won the face-off paul actually and that's a you know leslie your sort of summary point was was a good transition because you know that's where i i start my thought process on this with from a business perspective for each individual business having an understanding of how technology is going to impact your business model whether it's your revenue streams or your relationships
with with your customers or you know internal productivity um i think a lot of businesses are struggling with that particularly you know it's one thing to be a tech startup and you know that's sort of the mindset from the beginning but it's as as existing mature businesses figure out what that means for them um i think that's sort of a prerequisite step to to being able to figure out what are the skills that are required from you know in in the you know from employees and and uh the labor force
to meet those needs and and i realize that's gonna be sort of a micro exercise and everyone's figuring that out separately i think leslie you did a great job of summarizing at a high level these are the themes that need to be to be dealt with but i i think to really be able to thrive in a you know if we define a future community as one that's embraced technology um i think a lot of businesses need to figure that out for themselves in terms of how that can impact their business model and then in
addition in addition to that excuse me um you know what does this one of the things that intrigue intrigues me and we spend a bunch of time on internally is what is our what is the the the future hybrid state of work look like you know because we're you know as you can may be able to tell from my blurred background we're we're working remotely and but we're taking like a new office space and designing that with a hybrid work model uh from the ground up from first principles uh and just i was at
a workshop yesterday with some other um business leaders and you know there are still a lot of organizations that are figuring out based on our business model and how we generate revenue how much do people have to come back into the office how much can we work remotely and and so on and that's a real a real struggle so i think businesses figuring out how does technology impact their business model coupled with what is the workplace norms and culture and how does technology play into that i think
a lot of businesses have got a lot of figuring out to do and are working through that um and so it's great that uh you know um organizations such as tech nl are out there to help them with that i don't know if i could serve up a better uh transition for you there paul but i'll stop talking here now thanks andrew i guess i owe you one when i see you on the soccer field or something um yeah i think both both leslie and andrew make great points and ultimately as much as we talk about technology di
sruption and transformation it's all about the people and the impact it's going to have on people and our ability to adapt and really transform over time i think simple changes are key if you look at the google model of innovation it's everything is innovate and iterate so take a step you learn something new you might not have it perfectly figured out out of the gate but you learn something you iterate you try it again gmail was in beta for two or three years and most people didn't know that but
um they were tweaking that thing from the day they launched it so that sense about experimentation and trying things you got to start down the pathway when we talk about digital transformation in communities and we talk about the fact that every company is becoming a tech company and for those that are naysayers that still think well you know my industry is sort of immune and the biggest company in canada by market cap is shopify they've surpassed rbc in the u.s for the top five companies are a
ll tech companies in the world out of the top seven companies um again by market cap six or seven are tech companies so there's the tech sector but it's also how every other sector is understanding and figuring out how to to apply disruption and different tech um capabilities to their businesses so i think you need to start simple andrew referenced some of the work we've done this pat during the pandemic we had supports to help we helped 384 businesses in our province uh by giving them a leg up
fifteen thousand dollars each just to transform their business model to go digital whether that's e-commerce platforms connecting with customers uh sas channel different things that they had to do to transform their companies to stay number one liquid and to stay afloat turn a pandemic we gave them supports to do that and we learned tremendous things but the most uh obvious being you got to start somewhere start simple start the journey and iterate from there again i think it's both it's interes
ting for me in this particular discussion as as um as a company by all means on point we we technically are also a technology startup so i've kind of got multiple hats going as i'm listening to the feedback here um and i love and paul i'm going to stick with you if you don't mind because i think it was a great segue um when we talk around success stories so from and it could be one of those 380 plus companies that something sticks for you as a shining example or perhaps something else um when yo
u know you think about most memorable or something that just like you went ah that's what we need more of when you think about a success story you've experienced or witnessed as it relates to technology adoption and future ready communities is there something in particular that you would that comes to mind when you think about that as a shining example of either what to do or maybe the inverse is something where we go we can also learn from failures what not to do yeah we we certainly learned a
lot from the uh the 384 companies we helped um oddly enough you know being on a vacation around a campfire meeting a couple i'd never met before she found out that i worked at tecanel and said oh i got money from your organization it's totally transformed my business and the next day she went and bought marshmallow um sticks for my kids at the dollar store so they could roast marshmallows on the fire very simple gesture on her part but she was she was almost tearing up talking about the impact t
hat our little bit of support had for her and her business uh through the pandemic so i think for us it was again the realization that just starting the journey giving people a leg up helping them with skills acquisition helping them start their journey there's a lot of lessons there one of the things we also did this past summer we we have a big focus here on the talent pipeline to fuel growth for our tech companies there's a big talent camp across the world frankly and in canada and it's the s
ame thing here in our province and we really want to build that talent pipeline one of the things we've done out of many is a high school internship program so between us at technell and our friends at barafin a big tech company here we placed over 120 high school kids in tech companies for internships this summer and a whole bunch of our tech members took high school kids to help them really just get exposure and this was about our tech sector giving back to help them realize what a what a care
er in tech looks like what it feels like to work on a company like ours the culture that goes with that and they will go back and tell their peers and their friends so sometimes it's about putting your money where your mouth is and giving back to the community and i really think that's one of the biggest learnings i've had is sometimes those simple things you can do just to get momentum flowing i love that and definitely something i think we'll come back to when we talk around skill acquisition
and building talent pipeline early and consistently i think it's something definitely that factors into the conversation right companies and communities need people that's all people as you said earlier so so thank you for that definitely putting a pin in it um andrew leslie will pass it to you in terms of um success story something to brag and share with our audience so they can be inspired and learn from what you've witnessed or experienced yourself and i'll toss it to either one of you whoeve
r wants to go first yeah i'll simon i definitely want to build on kind of paul's points around pipeline and community and role models and all of those great things that are definitely kind of you know really paramount they're pillars in future ready communities so communities of the future however we're going to define that i mean they're inevitably going to be more diverse and technology is accelerating and accentuating that for sure so we have you know acceleration and remote work and what tha
t's doing is that it's making workforces become more global we can access skills from from anywhere and we have advancement and online learning and virtual access to you know a whole kind of litany of industry and community groups and that's really breaking down geographic borders so i think regardless the communities of the future have to be ready to embrace diversity and at genesis i'm really proud of the work that we've done we're really committed to advancing the conversation on equity diver
sity inclusion and belonging and we've put considerable attention around our programming so our startup visa program as an example you know we use that to attract high growth potential startups from all around the globe to come to newfoundland and labrador and launch and grow their businesses we've also put a lot of attention around our women in technology strategy and retention groups and what we've seen from that is that representation for women founders for example is now at just above 30 and
that's up from zero percent just over three years ago and we've seen uh you know our portfolio clients that came through the startup visa program they're just meeting and exceeding genesis milestones in terms of revenue generation and job creation so we're really nurturing role models that are setting that example and that's really fantastic to see uh just say thanks because as a father of of two daughters who uh i would love to see you know try out their entrepreneurial chops it's great that w
e've got role models being fostered in the community here um you know in terms of building on the theme of pride for this i'm gonna i'm gonna give a shout out to our team who i think did a great job of navigating and you know when i think about moving to this this it's not even hybrid the the remote working environment i'm a really big culture person and uh i really was concerned about not only how that would impact you know relationships between employees um productivity and and whatnot and our
ability quite frankly um to sell because it's infinitely easier to build new relationships with customers when you can get on a plane and go sit in their office and whatnot um however you can certainly one thing we learned is you can achieve higher volume of connections uh if you don't have to spend all the time to get on a plane and whatnot but you know i really feel like the the forced transition into perhaps uh you know i before starting uh the business i was in a very structured environment
and probably resisted structure a little too much at the beginning um but it forces into the right amount of structure in our routines and the use of productivity tools and whatnot to the point where uh i really feel like we're thriving from a performance perspective now than than we were compared to 18 months ago so for us it's been a really great transition and and you know in terms of um non-internal shout outs i mean there's a our customers who are um you know using our system to maintain i
t to gain visibility into who knows what and and sharing that knowledge across locations particularly you know we we always sort of joke if you were 100 people working out of two offices and you're working remotely and and whatnot well you're technically 100 people working out of 100 offices now and and whatnot so uh but there you know there's a customer of ours in particular that's a an international they're in the aerospace sector and spread out internationally and they've been trying to get t
heir engineering staff to be able to share best practices and whatnot and they had set up you know routines and and meetings uh but uh since adopting um a really cool expertise management platform have uh but they're they're thriving because they're they're they've moved uh they've adopted you know the technology as a key part of their business process and that's step one you know in that in that journey to thrive so um i think there's a lot of great examples of how um different companies in dif
ferent contexts have you know been able to not only sort of survive but thrive coming coming out of uh whatever we want to call the last 18 months and still ongoing right evolving we'll say and i think you're right that's the beauty of these conversations for folks who may be joining us for the first time in this series this is intended not to be a one-off this is intended to be a start of a conversation the continuing conversation where these sessions are being recorded and we're made accessibl
e to all in any who want to come into this bigger broader community of practice around building future ready workforces which is really going to be a good segue into my next question which is if i ask each of you to think about from the role that you the many roles quite frankly and the many hats that you each wear in the sector in the community within the province and then bigger than that can you talk to me a little bit about what do you see as the primary role of your organization and or your
self as a leader and community member that could maybe help illuminate to somebody who's sitting in a similar position to you that maybe hasn't had quite the experience or the time to think about and sit in this space as all of you have where this is what you do um you spend time concerted effort here but talk to me a little bit about what do you view as the primary role that employers organizations job seekers from whichever perspective you would like to attach it first noam will probably come
to a couple of those the primary role each of us has to play in building future ready communities that are able to adapt technologically i'll toss it up to whoever wants to go first for that one now leslie you take this one you take this one you were trying to beat me to it andrew i'll take this one um yeah i mean i think as whether we're an employer or a mentor influencer however you kind of identify in the space um i think we all have a role to play in being advocates of continuous learning an
d development in our not only in our respective workplaces but on boards that we sit in industry associations that we're a part of or whatever people have to continually adapt new occupations are going to emerge and old ones are going to become redundant and ai will indefinitely replace jobs a hundred percent no matter what way we look at it but we have to figure out as humans how we can augment what ai can do and so when you think about it you know the displacement of low skilled tasks is reall
y giving us all the opportunity to innovate be creative be proactive which i think is really important and to use our collective brainpower in a more impactful and robust way um when we think about things like big data and our access to big data what that really is doing is it's giving us insights and we now have the power to interpret those insights on a more timely basis so regardless of your level in an organization your status in an organization we all have that power to be kind of entrepren
eurs um as well as entrepreneurs so i think the main thing you know we all have to remember when we think about continuous learning and development and taking kind of accountability for that is that even if we are to develop really high skilled technical skills they will become outdated so we have to become perpetual learners and i think as as employers and advocates and you know just influencers in the industry that's what we have to remind people is that you know getting that coding skill toda
y isn't going to guarantee you success for the next 30 years of your career you have to be willing to keep up with the pace of change that the world is the trajectory that we're on awesome thanks leslie i'll i'll jump in and reinforce that largely because our development team who is um a little noticeably younger than i am um make fun of me because i talk about c plus and java and they just shake their head and scoff at me because that was the extent of my coding skills uh back in the day but um
you know if i take the the employer perspective here as i talked about earlier you know i think first and foremost and this is difficult to do you know in it you know everyone's head down trying to sort of thrive and survive and whatnot but trying to think forward to what as i said earlier technology means for your business um and i think it's really important as you do that and and you know hopefully paul a lot of the companies that you helped out really took a purposeful approach to that beca
use i have literally heard other you know ceos what not say to me things like ai machine learning i don't know what it all is but i know i want it and i and i i i sort of like and of two minds of that because at first it's like well that's a great just general attitude to have an approach however if you launch a digitization initiative with that only um you could probably waste a lot of money and not actually deliver any value so it's really about identifying and carving out those really specifi
c pain points and the specific opportunities for value creation and and as you go through that and then identify what those skills are that are needed even if it's only over you know it's got a certain time horizon leslie it's a great point that you know things are going to continue to evolve um but i think engaging in dialogues like this as opposed to just all right now i'm going to go post the job uh and get frustrated because there's not enough people out there with those skills you know havi
ng engaging in dialogues like this to be able to translate that back to educational institutions and help through organizations like technell paul you're getting all kinds of uh shout outs from from over here but who can help advocate on behalf of the industry as a whole to set you know political uh priorities for education and whatnot um i think you know if as a i'm reflecting even myself here today is if i just sit back as a business owner and complain about the fact that i can't hire the peop
le that i want to hire you're not really i'm not really helping solve the problem uh however talking about um the specific skill gaps and whatnot and that that are needed and can be forecasted you know over the medium term um even if it's with you know there's some subjectivity or or or risk in that i think it's it's uh that's where we need to be as employers is trying to look forward and and help sort of solve things at an ecosystem level thanks andrew and yeah i can be really snappy here um i
mean i think that my fellow panelists have certainly given you lots of great uh great feedback i think we there's a great quote around we overestimate the impact of technology in the short term and we underestimate the impact in the long term and i think we we live that and there's been some great work about the cycle of change and how there's a lot there's the over hype about technology impact and then there's that valley of disillusionment or something and eventually we get to it to a place wh
ere we can somewhat create a level of commodity around some of the emerging tools and technologies to make it easier for companies to adopt and then we start seeing the true impact of some of the emerging technologies and things so i think we're still somewhere earlier in that continuum uh especially when you look at canada we're a country of smes right i think 98 99 of our companies are considered smes where they're not they don't have large groups within the corporate walls that can easily ado
pt technology and make change happen so again that's i think the notion of starting small and getting help getting support and like andrew said don't think i'm going to adopt ai and oh i need ai it should be my business needs to do this better what's the best way to do that look at digital options and i can guarantee you there will be a solution there to some degree that can help and do that other things i think we we all have a role to play i think we can support that shift to digital and learn
ing early and young leslie made some great comments earlier about more women in tech and diversity in tech in general and in all in all areas frankly of work we know that young girls before the grade before the before grade six they're already starting to form their opinions on what their career should look like so if we're going to impact them we really need to be looking at getting to young girls earlier than grade six if we want to talk about stem and tech careers and that type of thing we've
certainly done things like getting new courses in the high schools there's 15 pilot high schools in our province that now have uh college accredited courses that if the students take them it's college credit they also get a 2500 um voucher towards a tech program upon graduation and things so there's all kinds of things you can seed in the school system but the earlier and the younger we get to the better and i think making sure we support diversity is going to be critical and leslie's doing som
e amazing work in that area here in our province and i think the last thing i'd sort of end on is be an advocate and we certainly do lots of advocacy but you gotta also roll your sleeves up and be a mentor you know we took high school kids ourselves this summer we have six co-op students right now on staff and we're not a big organization uh so you know what give give students an opportunity to give young people an opportunity um and actively mentor i think is a big part of this and i think that
definitely holds true for women in leadership roles and women in tech and diversity in tech awesome i appreciate that and i think actually if my lovely panelists will indulge me a minute actually i think that's a really important piece just to dive into a little bit um there's a lot of conversation you know when we think about um talent pipeline so getting people into the pipeline but also there's the retention part and the progression in the development and i think it's something that is appli
cable to all stakeholders in this conversation from from your education system all the way from very very early ages as you just alluded to paul to our post-secondary institutions to re-skilling initiatives that we're seeing some of across the country right now in terms of supporting people and navigating post-pandemic job loss and maybe getting into better paying industries of course tech is a great spot for that um and then the employers on this side that need them and there's there's just too
many spots in the middle so i think oftentimes um i would love i should say oftentimes but right now i would like to take the opportunity with the three of you to maybe focus specifically from that perspective and if we could look at say advice to the folks who are getting the talent ready so whoever that happens to be whether that's folks in our education system employment readiness centers community programs um to the folks who ultimately want to create businesses with that talent and our you
know entrepreneurship's a part of that too but what would be some tangible advice or some takeaways or some lessons learned from your perspective around building a truly diverse talent pipeline in technology so that we have future communities that are representative of all of us big question i know and leslie i'm gonna put it over to you first because you're doing a lot of work in this space and that's actually how you and i started to interact um so so maybe you can kick us off there and then
and paul or andrew just anything from your perspective that you could encourage folks um to think about again as it relates to really cultivating an intentional talent pipeline for now and for years to come so leslie first one over to you big question yeah i mean i think um paul hit on a lot of the points that i'll repeat again and it's a lot about you know the kind of see it be it mentality so creating the role models giving the opportunity building the experience that way but also i think ther
e's a big onus on the individual to take accountability for your own leadership and development i mean you have to inevitably be really self-aware you have to understand where your passions or your interests lie and be able to kind of overlay them with what you're learning more broadly on a macro level about where industries are going and i think that's kind of underestimated is the onus on the actual individual i think gone are the days where you know you you join a company and they tell you ok
ay once a year you have to go and do this learning development training session and everybody in the organization does it and that is your you know your pd for the year i think now it's definitely a more uh curated approach really employers just can't treat employees as a homogenous group not even just employees but interns or kind of university students everybody has different needs but i guess one thing really is is stays constant regardless if you invest in your people then you will inevitabl
y see return so i think it's a two-way street right the individual has to take accountability for their own destiny chart their own course and take it in their own hands but i think that kind of the mindset shift around what learning and development development will look like in an organization will change and that may mean bringing in people who are really really green because you need to give them that opportunity someone needs to start somewhere or everybody needs to start somewhere and then
hiring with the right growth mindset just perpetual learners awesome i appreciate that and again i think you know big conversations and i don't underestimate that by any stretch um definitely i think some nuggets there for you know all of us to think about um when we think about the role that we can play or something that perhaps we're already doing that is just a reinforcement actually to keep doing it in a lot of cases that perpetual component in particular i think just really resonated immedi
ately um paul i see you're unmuted so you're up yeah i was trying to give andrew the uh the closing comment here on this question so i'll jump in i i had also for this question thought about being a constant learner but i like leslie term perpetual learners a better way of looking at it and having a growth mindset and it's been some great books written on that as well i think that's part of it i think i think that whole notion of um of looking at things even like micro credentials of what can i
get over time what can i add to my resume not just about resume building but just sort of badges of completion and okay i have at least this level of expertise there's so much available right now to people around micro credentialing that a lot of it's even free or 50 bucks 100 bucks there's so much of that out there um that can help individuals self-paced learning that's all excellent and i think people should should look for that i also encourage a lot of youth like linkedin as a tool i know th
ere are others but a lot of tech employers at least here when someone applies for a job you often go to linkedin to see what they've been up to what they do and i encourage people you got a credential you have a volunteer activity that should be your calling card your linkedin profile especially around younger folks who don't realize how important it is to have a professional you know it is the the facebook of the professional world um and uh it's really a key asset that we look to so some piece
s of advice i think some more specific tangible things around the topic of how do we create a community that is digitally writing i mean the notion of diversity uh is critical there's the 50 30 challenge that we saw minister baines had put out we've taken it i know leslie's organization has also taken that challenge there's a diversity pledge that a lot of us in the tech sector have also signed on to my own bylaws we can only have at most six men or six women uh on the board we have eleven board
members so we can only ever have six of either or right now we have six women five men we have diversity clauses for our board um we things like that when we look at panels if we're asked to speak on a panel first thing we do is what's the representation like and we'll turn out we'll turn away from panels or get someone else to do it same thing with advisory boards and committees we will step away from a request to be an advisory board if we find okay there's ten men and one woman or vice versa
let's let's get some more diversity in there so there's some tangible things you can do like that around diversity but i think that's really important as we build a digital workforce to make sure we're building diversity into that as well appreciate that thanks paul and yes cool remarks on this question over to you andrew thanks no 100 i mean i think i think as we look at diversity as as you know a diversity of of perspective a distributed background brings a diversity of perspective which brin
gs a diversity of thought which leads to better outcomes from a business perspective so it's not it's not about you know political correctness it's about good business and um one of the the the groups i i've given shout outs here all over the place but um access has been great uh in terms of helping new canadians uh get into the workforce and we've we've sort of worked with them on a number of occasions uh to bring um bring new employees into the into our business um you know i think the other t
hing that that employers need to think about when they're hiring is you know if you're if you're i um i'm looking for a degree from um western university or i'm looking for queens or i'm looking for dow whereas you know qualifications come in a number of different sizes and you know paul great point on on micro credentials uh so udemy um even even locally here um you know jan and sahana doing a great job with get coding there's there's a lot of great um ways to reskill uh and whatnot and so you
know we sure everyone looks at a resume when you're hiring but our first filter is you know we particularly for a software developer is we give them a technical problem and it's not necessarily do they solve it it's what is the methodology they use to think about how to solve the problem and so it's a really more practical hiring approach as opposed to necessarily focusing only on the sort of macro level you know degrees and whatnot and we also hire a lot of students which is um in the in the co
mpetitive um [Music] environment for acquiring you know talent in that in a tech space uh getting uh getting students in and transitioning into full-time employees we found to be very successful um so and i think you know i've spoken about software development but i think the other message i have out there is quite frankly software development's not necessarily for everybody obviously so you don't like the adoption or the the the impact that technology is having on um employment and and business
doesn't necessarily mean okay i need to go be a software developer but if you have you i think it's not an overstretch to say you you have to have uh digital literacy and even more so you know quite frankly um for us even being able to sell or help a customer reap the benefits of the technology is just as important as building the technology so being able to to use the language understand the fundamentals of you know on an input and output basis if we make sure the inputs are like this then you
can get value on the output side of that as opposed to necessarily knowing how the box works in the middle i think being able to navigate those conversations and quite frankly i mean just the nature of our particular product the challenge is more so in helping customers tweak their their business processes and routines to get value out of the tool as opposed to building the tool itself and so i think those are really don't don't um underestimate the value of like soft skills are going to be imp
ortant forever being able to communicate with people have emotional intelligence empathy understand and listen to people and then communicate with them i i think are even more important when we're all looking at each other on a zoom screen um because everything's intentional and so you can't just bump into someone at the water cooler and the lunchroom uh as much as you used to so um i went all over the place there a little bit but uh that's uh i you know i guess my my final thing on on on skills
in this regard is like yes technology is important but just being able to spend time with humans and connect with them and communicate is there's no never going to be a replacement for that that's a fundamental skill i think there again so many things here and i'm going to throw um an another we do have a question from the audience so i'm actually going to throw that in and then if we have time i think andrew you provided a great opportunity and for paul and leslie i'd be curious what you might
add particularly think about job seekers employees future talent as young as they might be at this point advice to them around what does gaining digital literacy actually mean like if we could get to that a little bit um that i think that might be really helpful um just because i think that's that's a term that we probably don't all have a common definition of particularly when i think about students going into organizations and then even employees who may not view themselves in technical roles
or even in the tech sector so i think there's some unpacking that we could do there but first we do have a question from our audience so we've got a question um actually this is kind of aligned a little bit um which is around for a recent post-secondary grad with no professional experience i'm gonna say limited to no professional experience struggling to get their foot um in the in the door so to speak um within software development and or technology in general and this very well may merge the
question i was going to pose to you in this but but maybe not so if we think specifically about that part of our talent pipeline any advice for somebody who identifies that they don't really have any experience to date they've got knowledge from a post-secondary institution and they're just trying to get their foot into the door a couple key takeaways from you of what you would suggest to that person and let's face it we've got a lot of those within our country which is great for us so what woul
d your advice be to those eager soon-to-be recent or recent graduates trying to get into the sector i can i mean i can maybe start i'm just starting to write back i think this question was from christopher i'm giving him an email address for uh our talent manager so he can send his resume over to her that's something very practical we do share resumes and try to identify where skill sets are so i'll put that in the chat in the chat function back to christopher but other things is get involved an
d volunteer so employers will look at you know we do hackathons and there's all kinds of tech mash-ups and tech meets their software development clubs get involved and volunteer it's incredible how many people you'll meet in those scenarios genesis puts off events that andrew goes to and i go to them as well so get out there in the industry especially if christopher's here in our province i think he is um there's it's a small world my board chair who was an executive with a tech company he volun
teers a lot of time at hackathons and hacking cafes and coding clubs there's a lot of people around like that so get out there and get involved in the meantime i'll send them the email awesome love it yeah i want to build on that because i can't stress the importance of that enough just getting out meeting people um anyone who knows me well knows that i kind of i just thrive in situations like that really makes me feel alive so i randomly reach out to people on linkedin all the time i'm really d
rawn to interested people interesting people sorry um and i just go grab coffees with people meet virtually it's the best way to learn for me the best way to network and the best way to really find out more about yourself so i definitely promote that get out and kind of whatever networking means to you whether it's in person or otherwise i think the more conversations that you can have the better thanks leslie so i can't agree more with with paul and leslie so i'm not gonna repeat what they said
but i'll i'll give them a vote but the other two items i'd suggest is uh so if you starting out um work experience uh you know there's a chicken and egg thing there but but i think if you can take on hey i'm gonna i'm gonna build a website for x or i'm gonna develop an app for why and take on sort of a personal project that's often what we reference with junior employees that's what we reference um as much as um work experience so i think you know carving out a project developing an app for wha
tever um it doesn't really matter what it is it's more of you know what's the thought process you put behind it and how did you approach it and what you know and what but that helps you hone the theoretical educational skills into something really tangible with it with an outcome in mind um the other suggestion similar to um to paul's suggestion is go to yourtotaliq.com careers we've just posted a couple of jobs one of which is a uh full stack development intern so christopher i encourage you to
apply yeah and on that how's that for tangible outcomes today everybody i love it i was going to say on that too um whether or not christopher is from our province we'd love to have him here so genesis center where leslie works they have a job board and technl.ca we also have a job board so lots of positions available lots available out there awesome and i think beautiful i love that can't get any better than that as you say outcomes and what happens in you know an investment of time that was y
ou know maybe an hour three potential new connections um within the tech sector in newfoundland and more when you consider the rest of us all on this today so thank you um to our amazing panelists the time flies it does in these conversations um we really do appreciate your perspectives your insights and and quite frankly your passion for the topic um i think it's infectious and quite frankly also your willingness to to extend and connect with people in that way some really good practical tips a
nd then i think some bigger questions for all of us as employers job seekers community agencies to consider so stay tuned for the recap everybody who's joined us we will do our best to pull all of this together and of course um we extend an invitation to folks to reach out on linkedin um and we will be letting everybody know when the recording is made available as well so stay tuned i'm going to pass it back to florence to actually close us out with just a thank you panelist again really really
appreciate all of your time and yeah your amazing stories and again smiles today that's great thank you so much leslie andrew and paul really for taking the time to share with us your thoughts and your expertise in this space it's truly um listening to you i i think i learned so much as chantal mentioned earlier in the session for us these conversations today is not a one-off um through magnet's partnership with the future skills center which was funded but is funded by the government of canada
we built a community of practice where people can come together and discuss these topics further the link to the community of practice should be in the chat and we encourage you to create a free account and become a collaborator on the future skills center community practice to continue this conversation um just to give you a little bit about the future skills center they are currently working with over 120 funded projects across canada and from that we've learned from every project and every or
ganization we work with um such as what we're seeing today and we learn best practices and what works and what doesn't work so coming together to share that learning is very important part of that process so i really want to thank you again leslie andrew and paul for your insightful words and chantal for leading this discussion um and thank you all for joining us i do want to say because we're talking about you know hiring students and things like that the government does have a student work pla
cement program for um for companies that are looking to hire um sort of those students that are in a work work integrated learning program so uh you can get up to seventy five hundred dollars so we encourage you to look into that because uh sometimes it's a scary thing for small and medium-sized businesses to say i want to hire a student as opposed to just somebody who they know will have the expertise so this is a way of doing that and and finding and you know learning from that as well so i ju
st want to put that out there um and also you know when you're talking about soft skills you know there's the whole idea of really understanding who you are as well and so magnet also has this sort of program called a line where you do an assessment and it really helps you understand what your soft skills are because those are important especially as we transition and change as we move forward so i just want to put that one out there as well uh last bit of just housekeeping as you leave you will
be asked to do a little questionnaire survey so if you can please fill that out it's really helpful to us to learn a little bit more about those who are participating in these sessions so thanks everyone and have a fantastic day
Comments