Ontario Public Service (OPS) Recruitment Drive
“I didn’t even know there was an Ontario Public Service!” exclaimed one ENW client after a great recruitment information session put on by two OPS program managers for 20 ENW clients.
This is understandable because in Ottawa the OPS is almost invisible compared to the federal and municipal governments. Yet there are thousands of OPS jobs in the region.
Like the other levels of government, the OPS is on a post-COVID recruitment drive to replace staff who retired and, most encouraging, to use the moment to pro-actively increase its diversity. To this end, the OPS has recently added some flexibility to its staffing system making it easier and faster for managers to hire people.
Rosemary Young and Katie Cavanaugh, both Service Delivery Managers in the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, gave a great presentation on the OPS staffing system and their roles in it as hiring managers. This was interwoven with a guided tour of the OPS Careers Web site (https://www.gojobs.gov.on.ca/Search.aspx ) by Katie who was in OPS HR for 14 years.
She urged people to sign up for the Job Alert service (https://www.gojobs.gov.on.ca/JobsAlert.aspx ) and described how to track the status of your job application in a process that might take months (https://www.ontario.ca/page/careers-hiring-process#section-3).
Rosemary explained how to find the contact information for anyone in the OPS using “INFO-GO” at https://www.infogo.gov.on.ca//infogo/home.html#category/271. “You can find a manager to cold call for an informational interview,” she suggested.
“The OPS is more concerned with skills than education. Uppermost is the candidate’s ability to do the job,” Rosemary emphasized. “But if you believe you can do the job, it’s always worth applying,” she advised.
Wrapping up, Rosemary mentioned that, while preparing for the information session, she had made sure World Skills was on the OPS list of community partners and would routinely receive postings for jobs in the region (and ones that can be done remotely).
