What led me to pursuing a career in recruitment

What led me to pursuing a career in recruitment

Fluor Story submitted by: Jasleen Sihota, Recruiter, TRS Staffing Solutions, Calgary, Canada

My story with TRS Staffing Solutions (TRS) began in August 2018. This was shortly after graduating from the University of Calgary with my Bachelor of Commerce in Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources and Minor in Sociology.

Prior to starting my position at TRS, I was introduced to recruitment in a more unconventional manner in comparison to traditional internship programs. Throughout my academic career, I was heavily involved with volunteer initiatives on campus and throughout the community. These programs along with my part-time role as a Student Life Assistant, focused on recruiting for volunteers, attracting new members, and growing the presence of the organization to ensure we met targets and grew a strong base on campus.

Further to this, while having a recruitment element, they also emphasized the importance of a strong marketing and communications program as a significant amount of our target audience were busy students that were overwhelmed with information on student initiatives.

During my final year of post-secondary, I was deciding which career trajectory I wanted to pursue. While Human Resources was an area I was passionate about, the volunteer and part-time work I had done, introduced the marketing and business expansion element to me. That is when I came to the decision that I wanted to pursue a career that incorporated elements related to each area. Further to this, I wanted to pursue a career with an organization that was adaptable when it came to changes in the market and focused on growing and diversifying. This was around the same time that I learned more about recruitment agencies and the work that they do with recruiting, marketing, and business development. I always had a strong belief that recruitment is an incredible way of directly impacting an organization’s business operations as you are responsible for hiring talent that will bring the business to a new level. This added element of combining marketing and business development gained my further attention.

Shortly after graduating, I interviewed with Ian Smistad, Manager of TRS Canada, and Mark Gendy, Operations and Business Development Manager and started my role as a Researcher/Resourcer as a part of the recent graduate program. Once I started with TRS, I was thrown into a world that pushed for growth. My role initially focused on sourcing for technical engineering and construction roles with clients in infrastructure, assisting our senior recruiters, and coordinating with our India team for additional sourcing along with other responsibilities.

Since then, my role has transitioned into being a Recruiter and the scope of my responsibilities has increased to include construction positions with Fluor on LNGC and other projects as well as recruiting for general contractors in heavy civil projects, transportation infrastructure including LRT and bridges, as well as ICI projects. Along with this, my recruitment efforts include engineering consultancies that focus on municipal, land development, geotechnical, and water/wastewater engineering. A recent addition to my scope of work has included positions within the technology and IT sectors.

Some of the successes that I’ve had include placing mid-senior level technical and non-technical positions coast-to-coast with an emphasis on AB, QC, BC, ON, and SK in temp, contract, and permanent positions. Some challenges have included recruitment efforts with first time clients, identifying new clients to work with, and learning new industries.

Prior to my role at TRS, I wasn’t familiar with the technical terminology involved with engineering and construction positions. Since then, each day includes constant learning to determine what the needs of each client are and how to best tailor my recruitment efforts to ensure I am able to find the right candidate for each opportunity.

As recruitment is an ever-changing industry, the pandemic has pushed us to expand the industries and clients that we work with. Over the past year, my role responsibilities have further developed to include IT/tech recruitment, determining new ways of finding candidates in the era of remote work, as well as business development initiatives to add to our client base.