PEtER HOLSt JANUARY 2015 BCBusiness 19
Cameron Laker
The CEO of Mindfield, Canada's only recruiting
company focused solely on hourly workers,
reveals hiring trends to watch for in 2015
by Felicity Stone
W
hen Cameron Laker
launched Mindfield
with Jade Bourelle in
December 2005, he
was 26, had no recruit-
ing experience and worked in the
attic above Bourelle's garage. To
pay the bills, he took on everything
from technology and senior sales
recruiting to
CFO searches. Then
Mr. Lube came along looking for
help hiring hourly employees—and
Mindfield found its niche. In 2014,
the company placed more than
15,000 people, approximately the
same number as in its first four
years of operation. Today it has
700,000 hourly job seekers in a
database and represents more than
40 hourly employers and sub-
brands. No longer above a garage,
last year Mindfield moved into The
Stables, a renovated three-storey,
16,000-square-foot heritage build-
ing in Gastown that once housed
Vancouver's police horses.
Why did you launch Mindfield?
I launched it originally because
I felt like there was a gap in the
recruiting world. Things like
MySpace were starting to pop
up, and the web was starting to
become social around 2005, 2006.
And I couldn't understand how
companies were being charged
what they were for outsource
recruiting services. On top of this,
when I looked at what was available
to these hourly employers, there
wasn't anybody who was saying, Listen,
why don't we cut through the noise here
and just own the result of helping you hire
great people really quickly.
What sort of workers are employers
looking for?
To give you a little bit of context, some
hourly employers are running north of
100 per cent turnover on an annual basis.
So number one, they're just looking for
H u m a n r e s o u r C e s
