'AI is a tool and balancing it off with human judgment in order to make the right hiring decision' is important'
HR professionals managing recruitment in sectors facing skills shortages should note that artificial intelligence (AI) hiring tools are widening, not closing, the gap between skilled newcomers and the jobs matching their qualifications, according to a labour market expert.
Newcomers with permanent residency experience unemployment at nearly double Canada's roughly six per cent national rate, says Simon Trevarthen,CEO of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC).
"The reason for an immigration system is to attract talent to Canada," he says, but underemployment — performing work below one's qualifications — affects an estimated 25 to 30 per cent of newcomers, compared with about 12 per cent of Canadian-born workers.
"When you come to underemployment, you have that mismatch between people who have foreign qualifications and the level of work they're doing," Trevarthen says. He attributes the gap to lengthy credential recognition processes, employer expectations around Canadian work experience, and limited access to professional networks.
Citing Statistics Canada survey data, Trevarthen says about 40 per cent of newcomers report being told they lacked sufficient Canadian experience, while roughly a third said their international experience was not accepted by employers during hiring.
The jobs of temporary foreign workers are the ones young Canadians won't take, according to a previous report.
Automated screening adds new hiring pressures
Trevarthen says employers are increasingly relying on AI to screen resumes, even as applicants use AI to draft them, creating what he called a flood of algorithm-generated submissions. He cited one major financial institution that told him it receives over one million applications for 2,000 roles annually.
"It's a blizzard of AI-generated applications that they're trying to wade through," Trevarthen says, adding that AI tools carry their own risk of bias.
"There is implicit biases within AIs," he says, noting that "you can put two slightly different prompts into an AI and get quite different results and quite different recommendations."
Despite those pressures, Simon says human judgment should remain central to final hiring decisions. "An interview still remains one of the best ways to assess a candidate," he says , arguing that structured human review helps ensure qualified newcomers are not filtered out before employers can assess their fit.
His recommendation to employers is to treat AI as a complement to, not a replacement for, human decision-making in hiring.
"It's understanding that the AI is a tool and balancing it off with human judgment in order to make the right hiring decision" is important, says Trevarthen.
Some provinces have declined a federal offer to raise the cap on low-wage temporary foreign workers for rural employers.
