Staffing agency helps Ukrainian newcomers get hired

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/11/2022 (1367 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A West St. Paul resident is helping Ukrainian newcomers fleeing the war secure employment in Manitoba.

“It’s been right at the top of altruism and giving back,” said Mark Myrowich, founder of Myrowich Staffing Agency. “My grandparents came from Ukraine after World War I, and I often remember them telling me about how difficult it was. I’m affecting peoples’ lives in a positive way, which is a big responsibility but also an awesome way to help.”

Myrowich began hiring Ukrainian refugees for his other business — ECBVerdyol, which manufactures re-vegetation, soil control and erosion inhibiting products in Blumenort and Riverton, Man. — when he encountered difficulty finding workers for his operations.

“They just kept coming and wanting me to find them jobs, and that’s how I started Myrowich Staffing,” he said, adding he now has nearly 30 Ukrainian refugees working for him. “If you would have talked to us two months ago, I knew none of them. Now we’re all working together and have 600-something resumes in our database.”

One of these employees, Yurii Linov, translated and built him a website, www.myrowich.com, to attract Ukrainian immigrants interested in uploading their resumes to the company’s online database. The other website they created, www.hireukrainian.ca, is designed for Manitoba businesses looking to hire Ukrainians. Both sites launched in early October.

“Mark came to me and said, ‘Yurii, I have an idea for a staffing agency,’” Linov said. “I thought we could help a lot of Ukrainians because I know they need help. When they arrive to Canada, they don’t know where to start. We did a good thing. We have to help if we know how, and Mark knew how.”

Linov, who previously owned a Ukrainian athletic wear company, moved to Winnipeg with his family in July after connecting with Myrowich on Facebook, who offered him a job with ECBVerdyol at its factory in Riverton. He began work as a team leader shortly after arriving in Canada.

“I wrote to him, and he said, ‘I can give you work,’” Linov said. “He prepared apartments for us. Mark took care of us and what we needed. He really helped us.”

While Myrowich passed along newcomers’ resumes to Manitoba businesses prior to kick-starting his staffing agency, he said the disconnect — which often led to these applicants not being hired — came from the differences between Ukrainian and North American resume standards.

“A lot of the times it’s a language issue and understanding what their skills are,” Myrowich added. “I try to be the matchmaker where businesses can talk to the Ukrainians and see if there’s a fit.”

Communities across Canada are facing worker shortages, said Myrowich, a second-generation Ukrainian-Canadian.

“There’s a lack of people. We bring in 400,000 immigrants a year into Canada, and during COVID there were two years of no real immigrants,” Myrowich added. “So there’s 800,000 less people than we should have in Canada, and the baby boomers are retiring so we have a cohort leaving the workforce.”

The staffing service also works with employers to share information about the lifestyles newcomers will experience, particularly those who are moving to parts of rural Manitoba, where there’s high demand for work but a lack off applicants.

“There was a farmer in southern Manitoba who wanted to hire farmhands, so we put three in front of him. They did a Zoom interview, and he goes, ‘I think the three of you should come out to my farm and see it.’ We put them into a truck and drove them out there, and the farmer got to meet them physically,” Myrowich said. “He was only going to hire two out of the three, and I thought even before they went that he’s going to hire all of them, and that’s what he did.”

Manitoba businesses interested in hiring Ukrainian newcomers can submit job requirements at www.hireukrainian.ca and someone from Myrowich Staffing Agency will get in contact.