Hands-on training has proven to be an ideal way to help recruit First Nations into heavy equipment careers.
A Fort William First Nation training and recruiting company is making inroads into the mining industry by reaching out to companies and communities with their own brand of matchmaking employers to prospective employees.
Origin Operator Recruitment and Training is a spinoff of Hardy Giles Consulting founded by the husband-and-wife team of Paul Giles and Melissa Hardy-Giles.
The couple had been operating exclusively in the forestry realm but decided to haul one of their heavy equipment stimulators down to the annual Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada’s (PDAC) conference last March in Toronto.
Their aim was to showcase their abilities and track record for helping industry source hidden talent among the unemployed members of First Nations.
Though no deals were done, Paul Giles said it was worth the trip to mix with industry and First Nation communities and talk about proposals and pricing.
“Being at PDAC, it’s hard to measure the results but I think we’re on the radar,” said Giles. “I think they’ll be more work to come because of it.
“I think mining is definitely on the upswing for us,” said Giles. “What the operators union told us last summer was that we had a shortage of operators in Thunder Bay. I’m assuming that’s not going to improve this summer because of the Lac des Iles (tailings pond) project.
“From everything we’ve been told, the New Gold project (near Fort Frances) alone will draw quite few operators from this area, which will create openings in other areas.”
The company recently added a fourth training simulator and has a new trailer on order.
Over the past year and last winter, the company has hauled its simulators into many accessible and remote First Nation communities across northern Ontario, including Eabametoong, Nibinamik, Kasabonika, Poplar Hill, Pikangikum, Lac Seul, Wabigoon, Seine River and Rainy River First Nation.
This past May, they ventured into northeastern Ontario where they had a booking in Sagamok, near Sudbury.
At Kasabonika, the simulators were flown in for a week of training.
“We took 26 people, who were unemployed and available to take training, and we worked with the community to select six of the most suitable candidates,” said Giles. “From there, we used the simulators to start them on the full training program and transitioned over to the real equipment.”
Five landed jobs immediately landed jobs with a contractor working on a sewage lagoon project in the community.
With the business expanding, the couple were moving this past spring from portable trailers on the Fort William reserve to a renovated 3,000-square-foot permanent training space in a Thunder Bay industrial park to conduct their consulting work, work readiness and life skills programming.
The ribbon-cutting was set for late June.
