FEATURES
COVER STORY: RISING STARS
PAVLO FARMAKIDIS
MUNDEEP GILL
SHELBY HARRISON
Recruitment coordinator Woodbine Entertainment Group
Senior analyst, process optimization & vendor SLA Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
HR administrator MacDon Industries
As a recruitment coordinator at Woodbine Entertainment Group, Pavlo Farmakidis certainly knows how to hook people – for example, by arranging a Pokemon Go Job Fair. In this innovative program, Farmakidis worked to set up three ‘PokeStops’ and a ‘Pokemon Gym’ at the Woodbine booth and hired two expert Pokemon Go players to set ‘lures.’ The lures attracted people from all walks of life to Woodbine’s booth, where he could let them know about current vacancies at the company. The tactic drew nearly 500 avid player candidates in search of employment. Farmakidis’ strategy was featured on several popular online news sources, and the ingenuity he displayed by tapping into one of the most immersive technology crazes of 2016 demonstrates how HR can get creative with recruitment strategies, while giving a major boost to their employer’s brand among new entrants to the job market.
Optimizing human resources delivery requires streamlining company processes in order to save time, effort and costs, with the goal of providing a desired experience. This is precisely Mundeep Gill’s role at CMHC. He was a project manager on the payroll administration outsourcing project for the company in 2015/2016. He also played an active role in the design and implementation of a revamped HR service delivery model that took internal HR capacity and third party service offerings into account. Gill also worked on the HR system & service delivery benchmarking project (in partnership with Ernst & Young), and through this exercise, played a lead role in conducting an HR governance review to provide the groundwork for setting related parameters within the company’s frontline HR operations framework. Gill’s work regularly involves extensive research into HR best practices and emerging trends which are used to inform on-going work in the HR Transformation and Technology Team at CMHC.
As a member of the HR team for a manufacturer with international operations, Shelby Harrison faces quite the challenge in ensuring that compensation and benefits packages are aligned. For the past year, she has been working on the company’s benefit coverage in the US, which has involved extensive research on best practices and careful documentation of all relevant processes. The project requires significant knowledge of US legislation, so she is growing her expertise in this area through webinars and research. Harrison is also working to learn more about the recruitment process in light of MacDon Industries’ continuing growth, which saw the company open a new parts distribution centre in Winnipeg this year. Her advice to young HR professionals? Keep learning and maintain a professional attitude for a successful career in HR. Her career achievements thus far include being named as a finalist in the Rising Stars category of the recently held Canadian HR Awards.
KRISTIN EVERTS-CLARK HR manager Bird Construction
Kristin Everts-Clark’s earnest and straightforward attitude makes her a trustworthy member of Bird Construction’s HR team. “Personable but frank, she doesn’t shy away from crucial, difficult or fierce conversations, and is understood to always have the best interests of the organization and the individual in mind,” her manager says. One of Everts-Clark’s key contributions to the company has been the introduction of personality profiling as a recruitment tool and a leadership development facilitator. To ensure effective implementation, she obtained the necessary certification and began training other managers on how to administer the tool. Given this new expertise, she has been assigned to take over the previously outsourced training module at the company’s leadership academy.
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22/11/2016 5:04:14 AM