Ottawa is moving talent attraction closer to the realities of employers, with specialised recruitment becoming part of the place proposition.
Talent attraction has long been treated largely as a communications problem. Make the place visible, promote the quality of life and the opportunities, and trust that the right people would notice. That approach is getting harder to sustain. As competition for specialised talent intensifies, places are having to be far more precise about whom they need, what employers actually want, and what happens after someone decides to move.
Kim van der Horst, Senior Manager, Talent Strategy at Invest Ottawa, has watched the change up close. “Talent attraction has become much more targeted over the past few years,” she says. “Where during the pandemic we simply needed more tech talent to enter the sector, we’re now in a phase where we need niche and more senior professionals to fill the critical skills gaps to support the growth of the local labour market.”
That reframes the question a place has to answer. Quality of life still matters, but for a highly specialised professional it answers only part of the question. “Companies are hiring for highly specific skills and need access to qualified talent at the pace their businesses are growing,” van der Horst says. Attraction therefore has to track real-time employer demand and the actual state of the local labour market. We are currently seeing that for example in the increased demand for hardware engineers and professionals to work in the Defence sector.
But attraction is only half of the equation. Retention has become an equally important priority, she says, with cities and community organisations investing more in helping international talent build long-term careers and lives locally. The number that matters now isn’t just the new arrivals, it’s who’s still here in three years which is why it’s so important to encourage collaboration amongst the organizations servicing, newcomers, students and underrepresented communities.
This is where conventional place marketing tends to fall short. A city can call itself affordable, liveable and innovative without answering the employer struggling to fill a vacancy, or the professional trying to work out whether there is a genuine career here beyond the first job. Van der Horst sees the gap plainly: messaging leans on lifestyle when career growth matters just as much. “Cities need to demonstrate not only why people should choose to live there, but also how skilled professionals can find meaningful employment opportunities, build their long-term career, and integrate successfully into the local ecosystem.”
Her sharper version of the point is that talent attraction is no longer about marketing a destination but about delivering workforce solutions that let businesses grow.
From place proposition to hiring infrastructure
For Ottawa, acting on that has meant building an employer-facing layer around the place proposition. Invest Ottawa’s Global Talent Program, expressed publicly through Work in Ottawa, gives technology employers shared infrastructure rather than another campaign: candidate access, labour-market insight, salary benchmarks and immigration resources brought into one place.
A campaign can generate awareness, but it cannot on its own tell an employer whether the right talent exists in a given market and connect that employer to candidates. “By bringing together place and employer branding, recruiting events, labour market intelligence, and newcomer resources,” van der Horst says, “we can better align what we’re doing with what the employers need.”
The ambition is not simply more arrivals but useful outcomes: people hired, people retained, and the flexibility to adapt as labour-market needs change.
What employers actually need
The shift also changes how places compete. The older contest was partly about who could tell the most compelling destination story; increasingly it turns on whether a place understands the specific talent markets it is competing in and can offer credible routes into them.
That does not make the city brand irrelevant. “A strong city brand can get people’s attention,” van der Horst says, “but it has to be backed up by real employment opportunities.” On her account, the places that stand out will be those that work closely with employers, understand the skills actually needed, make immigration pathways easier to navigate, and help people build a life in the community.
From attracting attention to delivering outcomes
This goes further than destination marketing. A campaign can point to how many people it reached. Hiring infrastructure has to be judged on whether it worked – did employers find who they needed, did newcomers stay? That’s the bet Ottawa is making on where the competition goes next.
This article is part of Talent Attraction: Practitioner Perspectives, a series of six perspectives from people shaping talent strategy in cities and regions. For the wider picture, drawn from 43 places, see The State of Talent Attraction 2026: From Campaigns to Infrastructure.
Ottawa is also featured in the Talent Attraction Leaders Europe & North America special edition.
