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Omar Yaqub

Working temporarily in Canada - 0 views

www.cic.gc.ca/...index.asp

Work immigrants recruiting

shared by Omar Yaqub on 17 Feb 12 - Cached
  • Certain categories of workers have their own requirements. See: Information technology workers Live-in caregivers Business people
  • Omar Yaqub on 17 Feb 12
     
    Certain categories of workers have their own requirements. See: Information technology workers Live-in caregivers Business people
Omar Yaqub

This Just In: Job Recovery Rx: Worker Skill Training February 7, 2011 - 0 views

blogs.dc-intl.com/...just-in-job-recovery-rx-w.html

work trends competitiveness

shared by Omar Yaqub on 08 Feb 11 - Cached
  • Job Recovery Rx: Worker Skill Training
  • Neal Peirce’s latest Citistates column suggests that the solution to the U.S.’s impending talent shortage lies in targeted training programs in the country’s metro regions.
  • Cities are beginning to experiment with innovative pilot programs, including those like “Chicago Career Tech,” an intensive six-month, six-day-a-week course that retrains middle-class workers for technology careers.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • targeted efforts inside our metro regions.
  • Colleges and community colleges, for example, presumably produce graduates who can think, analyze, read manuals. “But they’re turning out people who can’t do anything” — as simple, Walshok suggests, as working with spreadsheets, building a website or describing a complex piece of technology like an iPad application. So targeted post-graduate job training becomes critical.
  • demand for science and engineering jobs has been growing by about 5 percent a year, and the country has an estimated 2 million jobs unfilled because of lack of job skills
  • “Chicago Career Tech,” for example, is a new program launched by Mayor Richard M. Daley to take in middle-class workers adrift in the current recession and retrain them for technology careers
  • welders. Close to 100 percent of welding school graduates get snapped up by industries spread from aircraft manufacturing and ship building to erecting and repairing bridges — not to mention mass transit and railways along with green industrioes such as building wind energy turbines.
  • twice as many welders are retiring as being trained — the U.S. shortage may be as high as 200,000, in a field that pays solid wages.
Omar Yaqub

Welcome - Ottawa Tech Centre - 0 views

www.ottawatechstudents.com

education canada

shared by Omar Yaqub on 26 Jan 11 - Cached
  • This program was created to address the declining enrollment in post-secondary technology courses.  If Ottawa is to maintain its position as a technology leader, it is critical that we ensure that we have a sustainable talent pipeline. 
  • the programs with the greatest impact on the students were the ones that allowed them to explore leading edge technology under the mentorship of industry experts. 
Omar Yaqub

http://www.career.nelson.com/ceg/HelpFiles/pdf/NOC_TRAINING_TUTORIAL.pdf - 0 views

www.career.nelson.com/...NOC_TRAINING_TUTORIAL.pdf

work immigrants

shared by Omar Yaqub on 27 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Omar Yaqub on 27 Feb 12
     
    Skill Type Skill type is based on the type of work performed, but it also reflects the field of training or  experience that is normally required for entry into the occupation. This includes the educational  area of study required, as well as the industry of employment in cases where experience within an  internal job ladder is required for entry. These categories are intended to indicate easily  understood segments of the world of work.  The first digit of the NOC code normally designates the skill type (see 0 Management Occupation Skill Level (alpha) Skill  Level (digit) Nature of Education/Training A Occupations usually require  university education. 1 q University degree at the bachelor's, master's  or doctorate level. B Occupations usually require  college education or apprenticeship  training. 2 or 3 ß Two to three years of post-secondary education  at a community college, institute of technology  or CEGEP or ß Two to five years of apprenticeship training or ß Three to four years of secondary school and  more than two years of on-the-job training,  specialized training courses or specific work  experience. ß Occupations with supervisory responsibilities  and occupations with significant health and  safety responsibilities, such as firefighters,  police officers and registered nursin
Omar Yaqub

Today's innovation, tomorrow's prosperity - Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity - 0 views

www.competeprosper.ca/...nnovation_tomorrows_prosperity

work canada demographics innovation

shared by Omar Yaqub on 29 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • As the economy slowly recovers from the recession, we need to do what is necessary to achieve a solid recovery in the short term and to begin repairing our provincial fiscal situation. But our long-term challenge remains – raising our productivity, which is synonymous with improving our innovation capabilities and performance. Robust innovation results can be achieved through more key business investments and by the right government policies and strategies for innovation. The Report concludes that businesses need to step up their investments in technology – from R&D to patents to adapting existing technology to their businesses. Equally important is the ongoing need to develop stronger management capabilities in our businesses. The Task Force also recommends that governments improve their innovation polices by shifting their efforts from new-to-the-world inventions to relevant-to-the market innovations. These are the key conclusions of the Ninth Annual Report, Today’s innovation, tomorrow’s prosperity, released today by the Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress.
  • Omar Yaqub on 29 Nov 10
     
     (PDF) 
Omar Yaqub

City joins regional marketing effort | Local News | St. Albert Gazette - 0 views

www.stalbertgazette.com/...SAG0301

shared by Omar Yaqub on 04 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • four sectors on which to focus its growth efforts: agri-food, medical devices, clean technology and information technology
Omar Yaqub

Chris Moore on 2010 and the year ahead for IT at the City of Edmonton at MasterMaq's Blog - 0 views

blog.mastermaq.ca/...for-it-at-the-city-of-edmonton

shared by Omar Yaqub on 26 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • “We want to create a place where employees want to be,”
  • “We need to use technology in a unique, dynamic, future way, so that they choose the City over other opportunities.”
  • Users are increasingly demanding more, and the technologies they use and learn about at home are making their way into the workplace as well. “Today’s consumer electronics are tomorrow’s corporate electronics,
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The future of organized IT in enterprise is going to change dramatically, and I’m intrigued by that.
Omar Yaqub

Andy Kessler: Is Your Job an Endangered Species? - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3439504576116340050218236.html

work trends competitiveness

shared by Omar Yaqub on 23 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Technology is eating jobs—and not just obvious ones like toll takers and phone operators. Lawyers and doctors are at risk as well.
  • Forget blue-collar and white- collar. There are two types of workers in our economy: creators and servers. Creators are the ones driving productivity—writing code, designing chips, creating drugs, running search engines. Servers, on the other hand, service these creators (and other servers) by building homes, providing food, offering legal advice, and working at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
  • Many servers will be replaced by machines, by computers and by changes in how business operates. It's no coincidence that Google announced it plans to hire 6,000 workers in 2011.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Sloppers are those that move things—from one side of a store or factory to another. Amazon is displacing thousands of retail workers. DMV employees and so many other government workers move information from one side of a counter to another without adding any value. Such sloppers are easy to purge with clever code.
  • Sponges are those who earned their jobs by passing a test meant to limit supply. According to this newspaper, 23% of U.S. workers now need a state license.
  • Supersloppers mark up prices based on some marketing or branding gimmick, not true economic value.
  • Slimers are those that work in finance and on Wall Street. They provide the grease that lubricates the gears of the economy.
  • Thieves have a government mandate to make good money and a franchise that could disappear with the stroke of a pen.
  • Like it or not, we are at the beginning of a decades-long trend. Beyond the demise of toll takers and stock traders, watch enrollment dwindle in law schools and medical schools. Watch the divergence in stock performance between companies that actually create and those that are in transition—just look at Apple, Netflix and Google over the last five years as compared to retailers and media.
  • this economy is incredibly dynamic, and there is no quick fix for job creation when so much technology-driven job destruction is taking place. Fortunately, history shows that labor-saving machines haven't decreased overall employment even when they have made certain jobs obsolete. Ultimately the economic growth created by new jobs always overwhelms the drag from jobs destroyed—if policy makers let it happen.
Omar Yaqub

Degrees and Dollars - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...07krugman.html

education

shared by Omar Yaqub on 07 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of skill. That’s why, in an appearance Friday with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President Obama declared that “If we want more good news on the jobs front then we’ve got to make more investments in education.”
  • But what everyone knows is wrong.
  • technological progress is actually reducing the demand for highly educated workers.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • since 1990 or so the U.S. job market has been characterized not by a general rise in the demand for skill, but by “hollowing out”: both high-wage and low-wage employment have grown rapidly, but medium-wage jobs — the kinds of jobs we count on to support a strong middle class — have lagged behind. And the hole in the middle has been getting wider: many of the high-wage occupations that grew rapidly in the 1990s have seen much slower growth recently, even as growth in low-wage employment has accelerated.
  • jobs that can’t be carried out by following explicit rules — a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors — will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress.
  • production workers in manufacturing down to about 6 percent of U.S. employment, there aren’t many assembly-line jobs left to lose. Meanwhile, quite a lot of white-collar work currently carried out by well-educated, relatively well-paid workers may soon be computerized.
  • robot janitors are a long way off; computerized legal research and computer-aided medical diagnosis are already here.
  • we need to fix American education. In particular, the inequalities Americans face at the starting line — bright children from poor families are less likely to finish college than much less able children of the affluent — aren’t just an outrage; they represent a huge waste of the nation’s human potential.
  • things education can’t do. In particular, the notion that putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have is wishful thinking. It’s no longer true that having a college degree guarantees that you’ll get a good job, and it’s becoming less true with each passing decade.
  • education isn’t the answer — we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen.
  • What we can’t do is get where we need to go just by giving workers college degrees, which may be no more than tickets to jobs that don’t exist or don’t pay middle-class wages.
Omar Yaqub

Where the US will find growth and jobs - McKinsey Quarterly - Public Sector - Economic ... - 0 views

www.mckinseyquarterly.com/...will_find_growth_and_jobs_2544

us work trends

shared by Omar Yaqub on 17 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Policy makers pinning their hopes on cutting-edge “clean” technologies to create jobs on a large scale are likely to be disappointed. Innovation in R&D-intensive sectors can play a vital role, enabling productivity gains and consumer benefits in the economy more broadly—think IT. But such sectors alone are simply too small to make an economy-wide difference in growth and employment.
  • In the past, it has too often been hit or miss because it was based solely on a macroeconomic view—whether one country is more competitive than another.
  • The quest for new jobs, for example, is much more likely to bear fruit in large local-business and household-services sectors, where regulation can have the most direct impact.
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  • From 1995 to 2005, service sectors generated all net job growth in high-income economies and 85 percent of net new jobs in emerging economies. Low-tech green jobs in local services, such as improving building insulation and replacing obsolete heating and cooling equipment, could generate more jobs than would be created through the development of renewable technologies.
Omar Yaqub

Five key trends likely to shape the world of work in coming years - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...article2067108

trends Work canada

shared by Omar Yaqub on 28 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Five key trends likely to shape the world of work in coming years
  • GREYING WORK FORCE:
  • GOING GLOBAL: Overseas experience, familiarity with other cultures and the ability to speak multiple languages will take on ever-greater importance in this globalized economy.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • COLLABORATION: Technology, including social media and a need for innovation, will spark more collaboration – employees will work on teams within organizations and together with suppliers, customers and even rivals.
  • CONTRACT WORK: The long-term shift toward temporary or contract work is expected to accelerate as employers favour a more nimble work force. That may bring more flexibility for free-agent workers – but also more insecurity.
  • REMOTE WORK: Forget showing up for the 9-to-5 grind. The changing face of work will mean using more mobile technology to work at the coffee shop, at home in pyjamas or while in transit.
Omar Yaqub

Importing Foreign Workers- The Basics - 0 views

www.singleton.com/...reign_Workers-_The_Basics.aspx

work immigrants

shared by Omar Yaqub on 02 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Canada has agreed to the inclusion of the following service sectors in the GATS agreement: business services, communication services, construction services, distribution services, environmental services, financial services, tourism and travel related services and transport services.
  • A GATS professional is one who seeks to engage, as part of a services contract, in an activity at a professional level, provided that the person possesses the necessary credentials and qualifications. There are nine accepted professions under GATS:
  • • engineers; • agrologists; • architects; • forestry professionals; • geomatics professionals; • land surveyors; • legal consultants; • urban planners; and • senior computer specialists.
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • Under GATS professionals may only work in Canada for a period of 90 days in any 12 month period
  • Spouses Spouses (including common-law partners) of temporary foreign workers can apply for a work permit without a confirmation from HRSDC, provided that the principal applicant is authorized by a work permit to work in Canada for at least six months. Initial this category was only available for spouses of skilled workers but recently it has been expanded to cover spouses of any temporary worker. The spouse of a temporary worker may apply for an open work permit, which allows the spouse to accept almost any job. The spouse's work permit will expire when the principal applicant's work permit expires.
  • As a general rule, a person who is not a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident must hold a valid work permit in order to work in Canada. Work permits are issued by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (“CIC”). Further, as a general rule, prior to the CIC issuing a work permit, the employer must receive a confirmation of employment from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (“HRSDC”). This confirmation of employment is referred to as a “Labour Market Opinion” (“LMO”).
  • Foreign workers may also require a temporary resident visa to work in Canada; however, citizens and permanent residents of the U.S. are exempt from this requirement.
  • Under Canadian immigration law, it is the worker who must apply for and receive the work permit.
  • foreign worker must submit to CIC a copy of the HRSDC confirmation of employment and a detailed description of the employment offer (provided by the employer). There is a non-refundable fee of C$150 for processing an application for an individual work permit.
  • worker may apply for a work permit before entering Canada, at a port of entry or from inside Canada, depending on the worker's status
  • Generally, temporary foreign workers must apply for a work permit before departing for Canada, although the actual work permit will be printed and given to the foreign worker at the port of entry when he/she enters Canada.
  • If the foreign worker is from the U.S. or if the foreign worker does not need a temporary resident visa to visit Canada and an exemption is available from the requirement to obtain a confirmation of employment
  • the foreign worker is prohibited from applying for a work permit until his or her arrival at a port of entry.
  • If the applicant has been working in Canada for at least three months under an exemption, other than as a business visitor, but wants a permit to accept another job the foreign worker can apply for a work permit while already located in Canada
  • The worker is expected to abide by the terms and conditions set out in the work permit. Work permits are valid only for a specified job, employer and time period. However, workers can apply to the CIC to modify or extend their work permit. An application to extend a work permit should be made at least 3 months prior to the permit's expiry.
  • It is currently taking CIC over 117 days to process an application to renew or to change the terms and conditions of entry to Canada
  • Once the application is submitted the foreign worker can continue in employment pending approval of the extension, as long as they remain in Canada while that application is pending.
  • If the employer dismisses the foreign worker, the employee must apply to change their status to a visitor or find a new employer and apply to change the work permit to that new employer. There is no positive obligation on any employer to report the change in employment status to Immigration
  • Confirmation of Employment As a prerequisite to issuing a work permit, an immigration officer will generally require a Labour Market Opinion or a "confirmation of employment" from HRSDC. An employer who wishes to hire a temporary foreign worker is responsible for having the job offer validated by HRSDC. HRSDC will base its confirmation of employment on the following factors:
  • guidelines introduced by Service Canada for minimal recruitment efforts are as follows and are strictly adhered to:
  • NOC O and A Occupations You will have conducted the minimum advertising efforts required if you: • Conduct recruitment activities consistent with the practice within the occupation (e.g., advertise on recognized Internet job sites, in journals, newsletters or national newspapers or by consulting unions or professional associations); or • Advertise on the national Job Bank (or the equivalent in Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan or the Northwest Territories) for a minimum of fourteen (14) calendar days, during the three (3) months prior to applying for a LMO
  • If HRSDC is satisfied that the employment offer to a foreign national will not adversely impact the Canadian labour market, it will issue a confirmation of employment or LMO to the employer and enter the confirmation of employment into a database that can be accessed by immigration officials.
  • The employer then generally sends the foreign worker a copy of the LMO, as well as a detailed employment offer to be presented to immigration officials when the worker applies for his/her work permit at an overseas Canadian Consulate or upon the worker's arrival at a port of entry, if the worker is coming from a country that is visa exempt. Upon receipt of the HRSDC confirmation, immigration officials will decide if the foreign worker otherwise qualifies for a work permit.
  • confirmation process through HRSDC is a distinct stage from that of the work permit issuance by CIC. Currently the processing time at HRSDC is estimated at 3 to 5 weeks after receipt of acknowledgement of the application. Acknowledgements of receipt are currently taking 2 to 3 weeks.
  • Workers who require a work permit but not a confirmation of employment include those who are found to provide a significant benefit to Canada, spouses of temporary foreign workers, information technology workers, graduate students under a specialized work program and those who qualify for exemptions under NAFTA and GATS.
  • a 4 year cap on LMOs and an expiry date so foreign workers must rely on it within 6 months of issue or new recruiting efforts will be required.
Omar Yaqub

More Canadians now work from home - 0 views

www.calgaryherald.com/...story.html

alberta work trends

shared by Omar Yaqub on 08 Dec 10 - Cached
  • In 2008, just over 1.8 million self-employed people worked at home, or 60 per cent of the total, up from 50 per cent or 1.4 million eight years earlier.
  • Robyn Bews, program manager for WORKshift with Calgary Economic Development,
  • According to economic development, research consistently reveals that employees who telework two days per week are 15 to 40 per cent more productive than their office counterparts
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Bews estimates that 10 per cent of Calgary employees are working outside the normal office environment one day or more a week.
  • "The biggest obstacle to this is middle management and there's a tendency to still feel like 'if I can't see someone, it means they're not working'," said Bews. "So those are certainly the people that we're working with.
  • Bews said Calgary is growing. There is an increase in urbanization. Commuting to work is taking longer. Gas is getting more expensive. Technology is getting better.
Omar Yaqub

Alberta C.O.P.S. game a unique recruiting tool - 0 views

www.edmontonjournal.com/...story.html

alberta

shared by Omar Yaqub on 15 Dec 10 - Cached
  • Omar Yaqub on 15 Dec 10
     
    recruiting via video games
Omar Yaqub

Manpower Inc. - Growing War for Talents Looms as U.S. Economy Continues to Recover - 0 views

www.manpower.com/...releasedetail.cfm

work us trends competitiveness

shared by Omar Yaqub on 07 Feb 11 - Cached
  • Growing War for Talents Looms as U.S. Economy Continues to Recover
  • the world has entered a new age, where employers will be awakened to the power of humans as the future drivers of economic growth as access to talent replaces access to capital as the key economic differentiator.
  • Aging workforces, the collaborative power of rapidly-evolving technologies, the need for companies to do more with less, and the problem of the skills young people are being equipped with not matching the skills businesses need are converging, making talent attraction and retention critical in order for organizations to gain a competitive edge
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • As the economy begins to click into second gear, employers are hiring but they are doing so with extreme caution. They will only hire individuals who have the exact specificity of skills they are looking for,"
Omar Yaqub

Why Are Some Cities Happier Than Others? | www.theatlantic.com | Readability - 0 views

www.readability.com/...yepsuhkv

happiness

shared by Omar Yaqub on 23 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • My own research has documented the connection between a large-scale presence of the creative class of workers -- people who work in science and technology; business and management; arts, culture and entertainment; medicine and education -- and the prosperity of cities. But it's about more than prosperity. Once a certain threshold of income is met, our research finds, the work people do plays a substantial role in their happiness, over and above the effect of income at the national6, state7, and city8 levels. Our findings here reinforce and confirm this conclusion. There is a substantial positive correlation between city happiness and the share of creative class jobs (.5) and a significant negative one between well-being and the share of working class jobs (-.4).
  • composition of city job markets plays a considerable role in our sense of well-being as well.
  • cities with more blue-collar economies have been among the hardest hit by the economic crisis. Unemployment is high, incomes are lower.  Workers in these kinds of jobs have faced much greater trouble finding new jobs (the unemployment rate for production workers is 10 percent; for construction workers it tops 20 percent). Not only do these workers have skills and incomes which are tied to their specific jobs, many in these areas are trapped in underwater homes and unable to relocate to areas with more work and greater opportunity:  Hardly a recipe for happiness
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Americans are divided by their sense of happiness and well-being as well. Along with everything else that polarizes us, America increasingly faces an increasingly unequal geography of class and happiness.
Omar Yaqub

More than just email: Google Apps goes live at the University of Alberta at MasterMaq's... - 0 views

blog.mastermaq.ca/...e-at-the-university-of-alberta

productivity technology

shared by Omar Yaqub on 21 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • The shift will enable the university to reduce infrastructure costs, which should lead to some broader cost savings (he noted that no positions would be lost) and some productivity gains, as the mundane task of managing email can now be removed.
Omar Yaqub

Employers Spend on Equipment Rather Than Hiring - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...10capital.html

Work productivity

shared by Omar Yaqub on 10 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Workers are getting more expensive while equipment is getting cheaper, and the combination is encouraging companies to spend on machines rather than people.
  • We just can’t afford to compete with countries like China on labor costs, especially when workers are getting even more expensive.”
  • People don’t seem to come in with the right skill sets to work in modern manufacturing,” Mr. Mishek said, complaining that job applicants were often deficient in computer, mathematics, science and accounting skills. “It seems as if technology has evolved faster than people.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Some economists support policies that might shift the balance away from capital spending. Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University, advocates tax incentives for hiring that mirror those for capital investment. Congress passed a hiring tax credit along these lines last year, but it was not well publicized, and some said it was poorly devised. The proposal is reportedly floating around Washington once again.
Omar Yaqub

Dream big, Albertans urged | www2.canada.com | Readability - 0 views

www.readability.com/...ilrvqafv

trends

shared by Omar Yaqub on 09 May 11 - No Cached
  • A report issued Thursday by the Premier's Council for Economic Strategy should be required reading for all Albertans.
  • Among its five "big ideas," it urges the creation of a new Global Centre for Energy and an Alberta Institute for Advanced Technology to thrust the province into the forefront of global energy innovation.
  • the creation of a new Alberta Water Authority to protect the province's precious water assets;
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