In the current business environment, organizations are rethinking traditional recruiting practices to keep pace with the emerging trends in attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent. When it comes to strategic talent acquisition and retention, companies are seeking leaders who can navigate the new corporate environment and lead a diverse workforce.

Select People Solutions is a full-service recruitment and staffing agency specializing in executive, professional, permanent, and temporary placements. This locally owned company has a dedicated team who has contributed to over 30,000 successful placements with many great companies throughout Southern Alberta over the past 24 years.

In an interview with Manage HR, Ryan Miller, President and CEO of Select People Solutions, discusses how they have been serving the career development and employment needs of job seekers and local businesses for over two decades.

Offering Full-Service Solutions

Select People Solutions is focused on talent acquisition and staffing in the Lethbridge region of Southern Alberta, a major agricultural and agri-food hub of Canada.

At Select People Solutions, we have five divisions–– professional recruitment, industrial, agricultural, office and administrative, and HR services.

Our professional division focuses on managementlevel, technical and trade positions requiring specialized skill sets. The industrial division is centered on production, manufacturing, and warehousing.

Our agricultural services support our region’s world-class agriculture industry, and our office division caters to our local administrative talent needs. Additionally, our HR services provide employers with valuable resources, assessments, screening, and testing to ensure the “right person” is in the “right seat.”

Recruiting in a Diverse Economy

As a family-run business, we are highly invested in and connected to our local community. Select People Solutions works with clients to help them attract and retain talent to work in one of the best small cities in Canada.

In this region, the economy is primarily centered around agriculture, not oil or gas, like a large part of Alberta. Attracting skilled talent to this part of the country is a challenge that we are facing. Other regions are home to many oil and gas companies, and the wages are much more attractive, which draws the workforce toward these areas. In Southern Alberta, we have a very diverse economy with agriculture at the forefront, and it is a very stable industry that attracts a workforce that is family driven and wants to live in the region. The main focus of our work is to promote diverse, stable job opportunities and attract the right type of people from across Canada to live and work in this community.

Lethbridge recently surpassed 100,000 people, with a surrounding area of 350,000. The overall growth of the agricultural sector in our province has led to more demand for qualified talent.

Many experienced, highly qualified people in the industry are leaving the workforce to look for alternative work or retire. Bridging this talent gap and facilitating growth in the industries in this region are challenges we will face in the upcoming years.

We have two excellent post-secondary institutions and are a short drive to Montana, British Columbia, Calgary, and the Rocky Mountains. The Lethbridge region is recognized as one of the top small cities to live in due to its cost of living and access to amenities, featuring the best water and the most sunshine days in Canada. These factors are what make Lethbridge a great city to live, work, and play in and are critical to how we attract talent to support our industry’s continued development and growth.

Hiring the Right Talent

Our focus is strictly centered around southern Alberta. This allows us to know, understand and represent our clients’ culture and business. This makes a huge difference, as sourcing the right talent depends heavily on understanding the uniqueness of an organization, its management team, how they operate, and how they onboard people.

Community involvement has aided us in finding the right people for our clients. We actively participate in our community, which has helped us build trust and relationships with employers and bring awareness of the existing opportunities to our local talent. We have been recognized by the Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce with their Legacy, Leadership, and Innovative Marketing Business of the Year Awards, along with being nationally recognized for outstanding community work through the Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Resources and internationally through the American Staffing Association. This community investment is important to gain the trust of both employers and candidates who are looking for opportunities in our region. We are able to provide prospective talent with insights into the quality of life and economic benefits of living in Lethbridge, and not just the job description.

We are strategically located in Lethbridge and recently have participated in the redevelopment of the historic Lethbridge Post Office building. We have moved our office into this iconic building in the heart of downtown to connect the work we do with the rich history of this building over the past one hundred years. We purposely feature this fantastic prairie history, alongside the advantage of being one of the best cities in Canada, to help job seekers from across Canada understand that working in southern Alberta is more than a job; it is about quality of life with strong employment, affordable cost of living and a gateway to the mountains.

To this end, we have executed a national recruitment campaign called “It’s a Great Day to work in Lethbridge,” where we use marketing strategies to focus on these aspects that make our city a great place to live in Canada. We attend job fairs, universities, and colleges to encourage young people to seek job opportunities in our city, and even connect with them on social media.
Tools That Set Us Apart from the Crowd

We are fortunate to be able to directly visit our customers. We are constantly connecting with our clients by touring their facilities, meeting management and staff, and getting to know their specific cultures. This helps us when we are recruiting talent, especially executive or higher level, as we can be more effective in promoting and onboarding the right people for these positions. Additionally, when we undertake staffing projects, we visit our worksites on a regular basis to ensure the right fit and proactively address both client and staff concerns, providing valuable support to the supervisors and resulting in significantly greater retention and performance rates. We understand our clients are buying “reliability and fit,” not recruitment. To achieve this, it is essential to work closely with both our placements and our customers.

Assessment and testing are critical components of achieving the “Right People” in the “Right Seat.” We have a comprehensive suite of resources and tools, including psychometric assessments, which include position benchmarking and skills assessments to help employers evaluate if a candidate is the right fit for an organization and make informed decisions in the hiring process.

We also conduct criminal record checks, credit checks, and pre-employment screening and offer payroll services. These tools help candidates and employers make good decisions and directly influence better results.

Catering to Leading Clients

With a world-class agriculture industry, we have supported key agri-food businesses, such as Richardson International, Cavendish Farms, McCain Foods, and Rogers Sugar, in attracting leaders and specialized skills into their organizations. With a competitive market and the critical need to retain top talent, finding the right executives and leaders to lead this new workforce is our goal. Further, we have developed customized large-project, fully managed workforce solutions to provide essential labor groups to support the production of millions of acres of parent-seed canola and sugar beets. As our clients are asking for more and more customization and value, our focus on innovation and agility continues to evolve our business and change the way we provide services.