One of the first real-world projects I worked on out of grad school was a series of public consultations on Canada’s labour market. It was the year 2008. I thought it would be one of the most boring endeavours of my life, but I reluctantly said yes. Looking back, the eight months I worked on these consultations were some of the most rewarding of the early part of my career. I learned so much about the hidden human resources needs across a number of industry sectors, organizational hurdles to having reliable data, what skills are missing, and where talent is needed to keep Canada’s industry sectors growing. It wasn’t the hottest topic or the most flashy of projects but it drew me into the behind-the-scenes but critical work of skills shortage data analysis and labour market information that drives industries.

Those were the days when we had an HR Council for the Voluntary