Profiles & Features

BC Hydro dips into U.S. talent pool to fill positions

Mary Frances Hill
For bchydro.com

Raj Sharma knows promise when he sees it. After 10 years at BC Hydro, he has honed his eye for talent. And lately, he has been fixing that gaze beyond the 49th parallel.

As manager of Strategic Talent Acquisition – in layman's terms, a professional faced with "attracting the right talent at the right time" to meet the organization's needs – Sharma ventures far beyond the conventional job descriptions when he looks for new hires.

"It's about much more than being a qualified candidate. We're trying to broaden our criteria," he says. "We're not thinking in a linear way, like 'you must have seven or nine years of experience.' We look at the rounded-out package someone's bringing to the job."

Today, Sharma's department is dealing with a job market climate unlike any it has faced in more than a decade. With a relatively strong economy, skilled workers are being gobbled up by hungry employers who must play the peacock – polish their image to attract the best candidates in a shrinking pool of potential employees.

Such a competitive environment calls for some savvy innovation, so Sharma and his team are looking for promise beyond Canadian borders.

Combing the U.S. for talent

A peek over the 49th Parallel tells it all: a slowed economy, a huge talent pool, transferable skills, plus Canadian expatriates looking to renew their ties with their homeland and educational levels on par with our own. It's time to mine the potential, he says.

"We have a robust economy, we're doing well as a province, and people have more choices," he says. "It used to be a war for talent, but the applicants have won that war. The employer has to bring people in with a brand and a promise of what they can expect."

But how? Sharma looks to senior staffers in his workplace for inspiration – and a perfect example of what can attract newcomers from beyond borders to the scene.

"It's very common at BC Hydro to have a 25 or 30-year career," he says. "I'm awed by the fact that I can walk into a room of four or five people and see an accumulation of 150 years of experience. It's incredibly powerful."

The BC Hydro advantage

After a decade or so in one position, it's not uncommon to hear of burnout among employees. But BC Hydro is large enough, and the roles within the corporate structure are so varied, that employees can vary their roles. A career change is always refreshing. And one within the same organization adds that much more stability.

"You can have multiple careers here," he says. "You have the ability to shift careers based on lifestyle, and where you are at in your career. "I've been on four or five different career paths and I never had to leave the company."

What BC Hydro is looking for

Sharma's own career shows a man who's as motivated as he is fortunate.

After schooling in Burnaby, he jumped right into a psychology degree at University of British Columbia. But like many psych graduates, he came out of school with broad knowledge but little professional focus.

After a couple of jobs, he was referred to the Human Resources program at BCIT. Just a few months shy of graduation, he drew up an ambitious "top 20" list of employers he wanted to work for, with BC Hydro at the top. He made "connections at every level," he says, from the person sitting behind the receptionist's desk, to the corporate leaders with whom he now works.

Along the way, he has learned more about what works, and doesn't, in the BC Hydro environment. As anyone who's worked in an office environment knows, it is vital to nurse a certain amount of Zen calm to summon up in times of stress – and to pass on to colleagues. Sharma says that emotional maturity is prized in employees bound for roles as leaders within the company.

"We always look for someone with the ability to handle a variety of situations with calmness," he says. And with that comes a personal sense of reflection. "We need people who can give us a sense of where they are today and where they expect to be in the next five years.

"Equally important is their answer to the questions, 'What do you know about us besides the fact we're a Crown corporation? Are you aware of our long-term goals? Why are we trying to encourage our customers to conserve energy?'"

Ultimately, Sharma sees an ideal workplace as one with a huge array of talents, its employees running the gamut of age, experience and diversity. "The new generation, Generation X, the baby-boomers and the traditionalists – these four generations come together in the workplace with different expectations of work and with different needs," he says, "and they all bring different strengths."