SNC-Lavalin is a Montreal-based company focused on engineering, procurement, and construction services. Boasting over 50,000 employees worldwide, SNC-Lavalin is one of Canada’s biggest companies. Their teams are agile, collaborative, and driven by possibilities. By employing anti-discrimination hiring practices, SNC-Lavalin has built itself a diverse employee roster. They believe diverse groups make better decisions – which in turn, leads to better business. They put resources into each and every one of their employees, creating a structure of support and training. This helps them develop their employees, giving each one the power to enhance their performance in positive, impactful ways. The digital, modern workplace has been accelerated due to the pandemic. However, SNC-Lavalin had already adopted many of these practices well before Covid-19  began, allowing them to lead the transition for Canadian companies.

Career Opportunities

SNC-Lavalin provides many career paths for students and graduates within their organization.  The most obvious example is the vast opportunities available in a wide and international company like SNC-Lavalin. Their vast resources allow employees to work on a diverse range of projects across industries. In many large companies, a person can become lost in the sea of employees. SNC-Lavalin avoids this by providing mentorships throughout their company and a graduate development program that allows its employees to further their knowledge and refine their skills.

Being such a large and important company, SNC-Lavalin had to adjust quickly when the pandemic hit. Luckily, they already had the necessary online and virtual tools in place to continue business as usual. They were able to continue focusing their priorities on ensuring the safety and wellbeing of their people and candidates. The new workplace model the pandemic has brought requires employers to help students and new grads transition. When asked about this, Ariane Lamy, a Campus & Diversity Recruitment Manager, replied, “We’re a company that drives innovation, so we’re committed to the next generation of original thinkers, wherever you are in Canada. You’ll work on our major projects in Canada, where we will provide you with excellent mentoring and learning support. Great team spirit and collaboration define our culture. And guided by our transformative leadership, we’re always improving our workplace for all, with the necessary online and virtual tools in place.”

Anti-Discriminatory Hiring

At any organization, it is essential to keep hiring processes fair and anti-discriminatory. SNC-Lavalin approaches this topic seriously. Each job description is reviewed with a gender decoder tool to reduce subtle biases in job postings. This increases the chances of candidates from less common gender demographics, particularly in industries dominated by one. Their next two approaches focus on blind hiring. Resumes are often stripped of names and headshots to ensure personal prejudices are not factored into the hiring process. Secondly, they employ skill scorecards to examine each employee based on their practical knowledge rather than aspects of their personality or appearance. By engaging in these practices, SNC-Lavalin reduces the chances of any discriminatory hiring practices occurring, keeping the hiring process fair and leading to a much more diverse workplace.

Hiring and the Modern Workplace

As this new workplace model continues to develop, recruitment and hiring trends will continue to be impacted. Unlike many organizations, SNC-Lavalin’s recruitment process wasn’t affected during the pandemic as they were able to adapt rapidly and implement the necessary tools to develop a virtual recruitment process. However, they do believe they will see changes in major hiring trends in the future.

For a company like SNC-Lavalin that predominantly hires employees with professional designations, campus programs will continue to be a significant source of potential candidates. Next, the team at SNC-Lavalin believes that worldwide team collaboration will also increase. As the pandemic has accelerated remote work, the ability to work internationally and collaborate with teams across the globe will undoubtedly rise. Their final few thoughts all focus on an increasingly digital workplace. As documents become digitalized, SNC-Lavalin believes they will see a rise in no-resume hiring and video introductions for their candidates. The team here at TalentEgg thinks the same thing, which is why we have developed our Candidate Video Showcase, which allows candidates and employers to facilitate video applications and interviews. The modern workplace and hiring processes are undoubtedly becoming much more digital. Being aware and staying at the forefront of this transition period allows companies like SNC-Lavalin to succeed.