A large 62,000-square-foot Home Hardware Building Centre store under construction in Clarington, Ont., will obviously need a full complement of staff when it opens soon. This at a time when retailers across Canada are finding it difficult to hire.
Savvy multi-store owner-operators Dan and Emily Moulton were up to the challenge. They turned to a local community college, Durham College, to run a job fair for their forthcoming new store east of Toronto on Feb. 9. They advertised that they were looking for up to 60 staff.
The full-day job fair went extremely well, said Lindsay Karch, a job developer for Durham College Community Employment Services. Karch estimates that about 180 job seekers attended the event. “There was such a big interest that we had to have more staff from the stores” to come and interview all the applicants.
While the organization that Karch works for is affiliated with Durham College, she stressed the “Community Employment Services” part of the name. Indeed, Karch said that the majority of the applicants who attended the Moultons’ job fair were not Durham College students, but from the wider community.
Durham College’s three employment centres are funded by Employment Ontario. They are open to anyone seeking work—or anyone with businesses that are looking for workers. Similar assistance is available for businesses looking for workers in each province, from Work BC, Alberta Works, SaskJobs, Nova Scotia Works, and more.
The Moultons’ new Clarington store joins an impressive cluster of southern Ontario Home Hardware Building Centres that the couple have built up since they purchased Hanover Home Hardware Building Centre in 2012—as 24-year-olds. The Moultons also own Home stores in Alliston, Bowmanville, Haliburton, and Minden. Another branch of the Moulton family operates Home stores in Ontario in Allandale (Barrie), Ingersoll, Strathroy, and Woodstock.
