KITCHENER, ONT. — The last time I was in the Waterloo, Ont., region was days before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The buildings hosting co-working spaces and tech accelerators were unusually quiet, and there was a feeling in town that everything was about to change. 

When I returned yesterday evening with The Logic, the area’s innovation hubs had revived. Yet there was that similar feeling from three years ago of a place in transition. 

A community steeped in the entrepreneurial spirit, Kitchener-Waterloo doesn’t tend to cower in the face of change—when challenges arise, its leaders see opportunities. But at The Logic’s subscriber event held at Catalyst Commons last night, that optimism was tempered by the undercurrent of uncertainty. On a panel with three local innovation leaders, we discussed the changing talent market in a place that has long been known for its tech workers. Here are the highlights: 

Don’t expect a startup boom: The belief that tough markets breed innovation is common among tech leaders. Just look at the startup ecosystem that emerged from BlackBerry’s fall in Waterloo. But things are different now. 

Kris Braun, board chair of TalentLift Canada, which connects refugees with job opportunities, said the region’s critical mass of established companies gives laid-off workers a soft landing pad that didn’t exist in BlackBerry’s heyday. Joseph Fung, the CEO of Uvaro, a career accelerator for sales professionals, agreed there may not be the same kind of startup creation this time around, but for different reasons—namely, a lack of government funding to reskill the type of worker that’s being affected. “It is not fashionable right now for political support to go into funding reskilling laid off engineers at Google or others,” he said. “It’s going to be tough.”

A shift in in-demand jobs: Fung said he’s seeing just slightly fewer job postings now compared to 16 months ago when hiring peaked. The bigger difference is the type of jobs being advertised. There’s a shift away from positions that focus on sales growth—those are down about 30 per cent, he said—and towards jobs that prioritize customer retention, which are up about 50 per cent. 

Mary Wells, dean of engineering at the University of Waterloo, said the type of co-op placement the faculty offers is also changing. While software engineering students have typically found jobs faster and for better pay, the school’s civil engineering students are now finding more employment success, said Wells. 

AI as a superpower: Fung said companies need to be thinking of generative AI as the new norm in office productivity tools, and training their employees to use it to ultimately grow their companies faster. “Every role is going to be able to take advantage of it,” he said. “It’s really about giving all our team members superpowers.”