The recruitment firm helping Indigenous workers find corporate jobs

WINNIPEG -

Connecting the right workers with the right companies is crucial for success in the economy, and one Winnipeg recruitment firm is bringing the two together by tapping into the local Indigenous workforce.

When E.J. Fontaine saw Indigenous people face barriers to employment, he set out to remove them.

Originally from Sagkeeng First Nation, the Anishinaabe entrepreneur and his wife co-founded AMIK in 2006 -- a recruitment firm that helps open doors for Indigenous workers to jobs in corporations.

"We saw that many of our people were not in corporate Canada or on worksites and we thought that, well, that wasn't right and that needed to be changed,” Fontaine said.

One of AMIK's primary services is an Indigenous job board on its website, which Fontaine said is one of the biggest in Canada.

AMIK also has a direct recruitment service, which screens resumes from Indigenous applicants and then sends suitable candidates to companies.

"Then once they're hired by these corporations we then stick with them for about six months after providing them with what we call cultural support," Fontaine said.

AMIK's services are also geared toward corporations by providing things like cultural sensitivity training to their workforces.

Some of the companies AMIK has worked with include Canada Life, the Bank of Montreal, and CN Rail.

Fontaine said 2,000 employees at the railway company have received cultural sensitivity training.

"Actually, since 2019, we've made that training mandatory for all of our Canadian employees who are management,” said CN Rail's Leslie-Anne Lewis.

“And we've trained thousands of our own employees and have even actually done training with some of our customers."

AMIK also collaborates with companies to develop their recruitment strategies, including writing culturally appropriate job ads that make Indigenous people feel more comfortable applying to large companies.

"Those types of services are very important to the company, because in the end, what it does is it creates an environment that is tolerant but also culturally sensitive for our people so that our people feel that they're wanted in that corporate setting," Fontaine said.