GRAND FALLS-WINDSOR, N.L. – If connection is what makes community, the same can be said for a successful job hunt.
“It’s about welcoming people to the community and really helping them kick start their professional network,” Ashley Verge, Connector NL’s central co-ordinator, explained.
The new program seeks to match immigrants, newcomers, Canadians relocating to the province, or locals moving back home with established community leaders, business owners, employers and civil servants based on a shared interest in a specific industry or discipline. Connector NL pairs the newcomers, called connectees, with connectors, established business and community leaders, who can impart a better understanding of the local job market, insight into the community and expose them to business and career opportunities. Connectors refer connectees to three people in their network, who refer them to three more.
While Verge is based in Grand Falls-Windsor, the service is meant to cover all of central Newfoundland.
Verge knows first-hand what it’s like to reconnect to an area and local market. She has been working in St. John’s for 12 years. She recently relocated back to central Newfoundland where she is from to launch the Connector NL program. She feels she has to reacquaint herself with the area, build her network, re-establish local connections, and form new ones. Her new job is to help others do the same.
“It is difficult to understand who everyone is right away,” she said. “We facilitate meetings so people don’t spend a couple months trying to find that one good connection.”
A population projection report conducted by geography professor Alvin Simms, co-authored by Jamie Ward and released last September by the Harris Centre, offered grim statistics. Low birth rates combined with an outmigration of young people leaving to find work has resulted in a population that is aging faster than any other province in the country. The report predicts that the population in Grand Falls-Windsor and the Norris Arm area will drop by 21 per cent and citizens will be, on average, 51 years old by the year 2036.
Verge said Connector NL, offered by the Department of Advanced Education Skills and Labour in partnership with the Exploits Regional Chamber of Commerce, is working to reverse those dire numbers.
“The government and municipalities realize we have to bring in other people,” she said. “We can’t just rely on locals who move back or locals who are having children to increase the population. We need to bring people into the province.”
Verge is hoping to attract 30-40 connectees and the same amount or more on the connector side.
“Once you build a network and establish those connections, it helps you feel settled and ideally it will make you want to stay in the area, because you’ve got that network and you’ve got those roots. It is a retention program as well,” she said.
Connector NL is part of a national program established in 35 communities across the country including St. John’s. The program claims that it has matched 1,000 connectees to 650 connectors, resulting in over 450 jobs found. Another office is scheduled to open in Corner Brook in the coming months.
Verge said the highest measure of success will be the number of connectees who become connectors.
“We are going to be looking at a qualitative approach with the connectors and connectees,” she said. “We take in these people who are new to the area, people looking for a connection and in a year they’re in a place where they can be a connector. They have stabilized themselves, they are settled and now maybe they know people and they turn around and want to help others. That means they really went through the program and succeeded to the highest level.”
