Laura Vreeken Motyka is looking to hire a stylist for her busy hair salon in Garibaldi Village, but is finding it tough to find suitable candidates.
“It is impossible to find qualified staff in Squamish,” she said. “We only get resumes from girls looking to work the front desk part-time.”
Motyka said she pays above-average wages and her Concrete Blonde Hair and Body Studio has been getting busier, so she would like to expand the shop’s hours.
“We have a hard time keeping up with the demand. I would love to extend our hours further and into Sundays if we had plenty of staff.”
Finding it hard to hire is a recent complaint from employers in the district.
The Squamish Job Seekers board has multiple postings by local employers looking to hire.
Amber Gould, founder of the recently formed Squamish Tenancy Association, said the lack of candidates is likely connected to a lack of affordability in the district.
“Service sector workers can’t afford to live here – and neither can some professionals, like myself,” she said. “Many are relocating. With the seasonal influxes of tourists and outdoor enthusiasts, the demands for products and services increases in Squamish, but the workers to support that demand don’t – and increasingly so – really exist.”
Whatever the reason, Aaron Lawton of the popular eatery Mag’s 99 Fried Chicken and Mexican Cantina finds himself growing desperate for staff. “I can’t keep up with the pace we are growing,” he said.
Lawton needs to hire two dishwashers, a cashier, a manager and a cook, but an advertisement in the newspaper last week and on the restaurant’s Facebook site posted June 20 has garnered only two applicants.
Lawton acknowledged that some of the positions for which he is hiring aren’t easy.
“The kitchen game isn’t an easy one,” he said. “You have to work hard, it is hot and it is uncomfortable, but there is also a kind of camaraderie there and… we have a good team.”
He said in the two and a half years he has been running the restaurant, this is the toughest it has been for him to find staff.
“I am at the point that I would like a weekend off, but I don’t see one in my future – it just doesn’t exist.”
There are ripple effects of being short-staffed, he said.
“Sunday in here we were so short-staffed, people were waiting 30, 40 minutes for a burrito and they were doing it OK, I wouldn’t say happily.
“And I don’t want to be that way and then I am short [tempered] with my staff and it all comes out and then you get a bad vibe going,” he said. “It can all snowball into something that it is not.”
According to data from the Training Innovations’ Squamish office, there has been a decrease in job seekers compared to last year. To date, the office has served 292 clients in 2015, compared with 333 at this time in 2014.
“We saw consistent numbers in the early part of 2015, January and February, a spike of new clients in March, then declining numbers from April to June,” said Naomi Dunaway, resource centre and marketing coordinator with Training Innovations.
Last year, staff at the office served 161 new clients between April and June, and in 2015, it served 119 new clients from April to June.
Rec tech job fair
Training Innovations, which is WorkBC for Squamish and Whistler, is hosting Squamish’s first job fair dedicated to the recreation-technology industry because some rec-tech companies were finding it tough to find qualified local employees, according to Dunaway.
“We’re seeing that these companies are here, they are looking for talent, they are looking for skilled people and we want to highlight opportunities that exist here and in the Sea to Sky Corridor,” she said.
The Squamish Rec Tech Job Fair will be held July 10 at the Squamish Adventure Centre from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. About 10 employers will be at the fair representing 10-15 job openings, Dunaway says.
