The founders of a job fair for those with autism don’t only want to find careers for an untapped workforce — they also hope employers will realize these highly skilled job seekers can help solve a national labour shortage.
“People with autism are very much capable of working and they are some of the best employees,” said Neil Forester who, along with his business partner Xavier Pinto, created the Spectrum Works Job Fair that ran Friday.
Now in its sixth year, the job fair has grown from having 150 attendees to almost 2,000 job seekers with autism, all looking to connect with recruiters and hiring managers at major tech, finance, hospitality and retail companies across the country. Though it’s been held in various cities, the job fair was a virtual event this year and last.
Getting companies to take part, though, has been a struggle.
Of the 10,000 employers Forester and his team have reached out to in the last six years, just 40 companies took part in this year’s job fair.
“The majority of the time we don’t get any response,” Forester said.
The creators of the fair say they understand there is a wide range of abilities across the autism spectrum and, while perhaps not every person with autism is employable, both Forester and Pinto are confident a large portion of this community can and wants to work.
And Forester questions why more employers aren’t looking at this neurodiverse talent pool to help solve the labour shortages that so many companies are experiencing.
A national labour shortage
In the last quarter of 2021, Canadian employers were looking to fill 915,500 jobs, up 63 per cent from the year before, according to Statistics Canada.
And with the current unemployment rate so low, “virtually all industries are bumping up against labour shortages,” wrote Royal Bank economist Nathan Janzen in an economic update this week.
Even with the demand for workers, employment barriers remain for Canadians with autism.
Data compiled by the Public Health Agency of Canada found that in 2017 just 33 per cent of Canadian adults with autism reported being employed compared to 79 per cent of adults without a disability.
Forester said he was unaware of just how few neurodiverse employees there are in the workforce before he started the job fair.
“I just didn’t realize how big of a problem this was or how big of an issue this was to the community,” he said.
Javier Herrera, a business systems analyst with an insurance company based in Vancouver, attended the Spectrum Works Job Fair last year and got a job offer. (submitted by Javier Herrera)
Javier Herrera is one of the comparatively few Canadians who are both employed and living with autism.
He attended the Spectrum Works job fair last year and got a job offer.
“It was overall a very positive experience. I met not only recruiters, but also other facilitators, coaches, government agencies, non-profits, you name it,” said Herrera who now works as a business systems analyst with an insurance company based in Vancouver.
Herrera is encouraged to see that some employers purposefully seek out people with autism, but he feels that “as a society we are still doing baby steps” to get more people who are neurodiverse into the workforce.
The ‘Big Four’ are buying in
That said, there are some companies specifically tapping into this talent pool, including two of the so-called “Big Four” accounting firms.
In the last few years, Ernst & Young has made strides in diversifying its hiring strategy.
The multinational launched theNeurodiversity Centre of Excellence in Toronto in November 2020, with a goal of recruiting employees with autism, ADHD or other sensory and cognitive differences.
“We’re dying for talent as an organization,” said Anthony Rjeily, a partner at Ernst & Young and the company’s neurodiversity program national leader. “So we wanted to see if there was any talent pool out there that we could potentially tap into.”
Since the launch of the program, the company has recruited 45 neurodiverse employees to their Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax and Montreal offices — and plans to expand recruitment in other cities.
Rjeily said the initiative has more than paid off, noting the retention rate among neurodiverse candidates that the company has hired is 98 per cent.
“The level of creativity, the innovation, the productivity that they are able to deliver is incredible,” he said.
Under Ernst & Young Canada’s neurodiversity program, program leader Anthony Rjeily says the firm has hired 45 staff with autism, ADHD, or other sensory and cognitive differences. (Craig Chivers/CBC)
Mohit Verma was one of the first people Ernst & Young hired in 2020 through the neurodiversity recruitment program.
“At EY my work revolves around certain sub-competencies such as automation, data science and, to some extent, blockchain,” Mohit said in an interview with CBC News. “So far I have been part of five to six main projects.”
Deloitte Canada is another corporation with an eye on hiring the neurodiverse.
In an attempt to better understand the barriers and workplace needs of neurodiverse workers, the accounting giant teamed up with Auticon Canada, a global technology consulting firm that employs people with autism and recently did a survey along with Deloitte of what the needs of employees with autism might be.
In their survey, they found that 41.7 per cent of respondents were underemployed, meaning they were working on a part-time, contract or temporary basis or were doing jobs that were “under their educational capabilities,” said Roland Labuhn who is a partner with Deloitte Canada.
One of the most eye-opening findings was that the hiring process itself could be a major barrier, as 40 per cent of those polled said the job interview was a “great challenge” for them.
“The people we surveyed felt that the interview was a trick or scary,” said Labuhn, who worries that the typical job interview process could eliminate some highly qualified candidates with autism.
With a goal of getting better at both recruiting and retaining neurodiverse workers, companies like Deloitte and Ernst & Young are trying to change the interview process so that it focuses more on competence rather than how a candidate might behave in a certain scenario.
That kind of accommodation provides hope to people like Pinto and Forester.
The inspiration for their job fair came out of Pinto’s concerns about his son’s future. Xavi, 12, is on the spectrum and is “so creative,” his father said.
He’s “really focused on what he wants done.”
And seeing more employers begin to sign up for the job fair gives him hope that he’s helping to create a world in which his son can go after his dreams.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
