Director of Retention and Attraction

About Us

The Department of Labour, Skills & Immigration (LSI) works to provide fairness, safety, and prosperity for all Nova Scotians by helping them live, learn and work to their highest potential. We have a staff of more than 500 employees working from offices throughout Nova Scotia. Together we are responsible for safety, labour standards, apprenticeship, immigration and population growth, and many other facets of everyday life. 

The Immigration and Population Growth (IPG) branch has a large mandate. We are responsible for attracting, integrating, and retaining newcomers to our province. The impact of our work is felt both on a macro level, as we help businesses succeed and help our population to grow, as well as on a micro level, as we make decisions every day that impact the lives of people choosing to make Nova Scotia home.  

About Our Opportunity

The Director of Retention and Attraction is responsible for ensuring that Nova Scotia employers are well-positioned to attract, integrate, and retain talent that meets Nova Scotia's labour market needs. They are responsible for the international recruitment of skilled foreign workers, marketing the province as an attractive destination, and overseeing outcomes focused settlement grants and programs that ensure their successful integration.  

The Director plays a critical role in developing relationships with sector organizations, employer associations, individual employers, and other government departments to identify new programs, markets, and initiatives that strengthen opportunities to meet Nova Scotia’s most critical labour needs. This includes ensuring immigration allocations, international recruitment efforts, and settlement investments are targeted toward the skilled workers the province needs most.

The Director leads the delivery, management and evaluation of IPG’s settlement funding programs, working closely with the province’s settlement service providing partners to ensure alignment with government priorities. They lead the community navigator and employer engagement programs to ensure community outreach supports are available for newcomers to settle and remain in the province, and that employers, sectors, and occupations facing the most critical labour needs can effectively access provincial immigration programs.

A champion of change, the Director will lead highly participatory projects with various partners to ensure that the work of IPG is responsive to current labour needs and creates the conditions for strong retention of newcomers in the province.

This position reports to the Executive Director, Strategic Policy & Initiatives.

Primary Accountabilities

Key Responsibilities include: 

• The position leads strong sector involvement, engagement with foreign embassies and High Commissions, federal, provincial and territorial colleagues to create recruitment policies and programming that will best meet Nova Scotia’s most critical labour needs and support sustainable, strategic population growth across all regions of the province. 
• Accountable for leadership in ensuring immigrant settlement programs meet provincial needs for the long-term retention of newcomers in Nova Scotia. Administers settlement funding programs to support and hold settlement service providers throughout the province accountable for achieving outcomes. 
• Lead a team that equips partners across the province with the programs, supports, and culture needed to strengthen Nova Scotia’s capacity to welcome the skilled newcomers essential to communities throughout the province. 
• Assures priorities for immigration are achieved and that activities meet labour market and economic needs by leading a team that uses a variety of tactics and skills, including social media, logistics planning, and writing creative materials.  
• Develop and manage relationships with a broad range of internal and external partners throughout the province, building a robust program for employer engagement specialists and community Navigators to meet partner needs and be innovative in approach.  
• Engaging in consultations and discussions with senior government officials and external stakeholders; and working closely with communications staff to create a vision and strategic messaging for external stakeholders and the public to build a shared understanding of the importance of utilizing immigration to fill critical labour needs and supporting newcomers to succeed in the province. 
• Manages time, budget, and resources to keep large-scale international recruitment, settlement funding and marketing projects within scope and on time, meeting projections and objectives of the projects. 
  
  

Qualifications and Experience

To be considered for this leadership opportunity, you hold a university degree in a related field with substantial senior leadership experience. You are a recognized leader, a strong and effective communicator, and have experience leading teams. 

You are committed to open communication, collaboration, and consultation with staff and partners, and are recognized for your personal and professional credibility, creative problem-solving, and in-depth experience leading international recruitment, marketing and engagement initiatives.  

An equivalent combination of training and experience may be considered.  

You must also demonstrate:

• Several years of successful leadership and relevant work experience at a managerial level; 
• Experience in designing and implementing an effective engagement process; 
• Experience in developing, implementing and evaluating international recruitment and marketing strategies,  
• Experience leading programs and managing agreements, 
• Excellent interpersonal skills, an ability to handle and organize large workloads, and a proven ability to communicate effectively both orally and in writing;
• An aptitude to deal with complex issues, strong analytical skills, tact and diplomacy, capacity for decisive action, and the ability to influence; 
• Experience in budget management.

Would be considered an asset:  

• Comprehensive knowledge of immigration programs and initiatives 
• French-speaking 
  
  

Equivalency

Applicants relying on education and experience equivalencies must demonstrate such equivalencies in their application. 

Benefits

The Government of Nova Scotia offers its employees a wide range of benefits such as a Defined Benefit Pension Plan, Health, Dental, Life Insurance, General illness, Short and Long Term Disability, Vacation and Employee and Family Assistance Programs.  For information on all our Benefit program offerings, click here: Benefits for government employees.

What We Offer

• Career development where you have access to career guidance, tools, resources, and ongoing training for every stage of your career 
• Engaging workplace: our employees feel valued, respected, connected, and tuned in, we have forward-thinking policies and strategies 
• Countless career paths 
• A Dynamic, client-focused office environment where service excellence and teamwork are our focus.