The region's largest high-tech employer has expanded from typical recruitment techniques, like job fairs, to tracking potential workers' interests on the Internet. As the area's largest high-tech employer, Nortel sometimes seems like a grizzly bear under attack from a giant nest of wasps. Its workforce of about 17,000 is continuously subjected to recruiting forces from competitors both at home and abroad. Nortel counters with what is one of the most imaginative recruiting initiatives of any company in the country. At SuperComm Atlanta in June, Nortel hiring managers were distributing invitations to prospective candidates to have dinner and drinks with Blues Brothers Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi.
Nortel recruiters are at rock concerts in Boston and wine-tasting festivals in California.
We were at the Boston Marathon at the finish line with our recruiting booth,'' says Nortel spokeswoman Wendy Herman. Here in Ottawa, we run ads in movie theatres. The company has student ambassadors on every university campus in the country and many in the United States. Nortel's Web site is linked to banners and online sites all over the Internet. Everything we do comes back to the Web.