Case Study - Hydropower

Supplying Hydropower Expertise - Canada

The Hydropower market is relatively junior within the Canadian landscape, meaning that the local market is candidate short, especially for more experienced members of staff.

Their internal talent acquisition team cannot afford adequate time to find suitable contractors, or keep up to date with the contractor market to keep watch for those coming to the end of their assignment.

Our client requires personnel with skillsets ranging from experience in generators and brazing, to welding and winding. Initially, we were tasked with finding a Winder for their Manitoba plant.

Previously, the client would take their search to an international level to find suitable personnel, however the travel restrictions imposed by the Coronavirus pandemic put a sudden stop to this, delaying several of their project plans.

The unpredictable nature of our client’s work means that the client often needs staff in a rapid timeframe – sometimes as little as two days. This means they need people who are flexible and can mobilize extremely quickly, further narrowing the eligible talent pool.

It was clear that the client needed the support of a recruitment partner with a local Canadian talent pool and the capacity to deliver contractors quickly. Through our existing client relationship in the USA, the client had confidence in our hiring capability.

The Solution

We appointed a team of Renewable Energy Consultants based in our Calgary office to run the recruitment drive.

Leveraging our wider Canadian network, our specialists sourced a wide variety of candidates, head-hunting the passive and open candidate market, and following referrals from existing contractor relationships.

We quickly found a suitable candidate for the Winder position, and the client was so pleased with the hire that they extended our scope of support to include further roles. To date we have placed contractors across the client's sites in Manitoba, British Columbia and Alberta, including supplying:

  • Winders
  • Millwrights
  • Contracts Managers
  • Site Supervisors

Our recruiters are backed by award-winning assignment support teams who orchestrate:

Payroll: We have online timesheets for our contractors to reduce administration all round, to speed up the process and to improve accuracy through reducing the risk of human error

Travel Logistics: We organize all flights, hotels and car rentals to assist the contractors in their journey and to remove this logistical headache for the client. We provide around the clock support to the Hiring Manager in this respect - most mobilizations take place at the weekend and NES Fircroft staff are always on hand to assist and make sure that the process runs as smoothly as possible.

Comprehensive Onboarding: Our team orchestrate full back-ground checks and process all paperwork compliantly. Our tried and tested methods mean that the process is rapid yet water-tight to maintain our 99.9%+ compliance record. Our process has enabled us to onboard contractors as quickly as two days from first receiving the vacancy.

We now have an MSA with the client which due to our success has already undergone several extensions. The Hiring Manager has commented that previous negative experiences from working with other employment agencies had once deterred them from seeking external help, but after working with NES Fircroft, they could not fathom losing this service and value our local expertise.

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