Guides for BC trades employers who need to hire

Skilled Trades Certification and your hiring plan

The direct answer: if you work in one of BC's compulsory certification trades, the rules decide who can do the work and how many apprentices each journeyperson can supervise. That makes certification a hiring-plan issue, not just a paperwork issue.

Read the guide: how Skilled Trades Certification shapes trades hiring in BC. It covers:

• which trades SkilledTradesBC lists as compulsory, as of October 2026, and which are announced for 2027;
• what "certified journeyperson", "registered apprentice" and the designated pathways mean, in plain words, with links;
• how the two-to-one supervision ratio links apprentice and journeyperson recruiting;
• how to word job ads for certified roles without overstating requirements;
• a planning worksheet you can fill in for your own crew.

Telling an honest Red Seal story

The short answer: a career path towards the Red Seal is one of the strongest recruiting messages a trades employer has, but only if it's specific and truthful.

Read the guide: using the Red Seal in your recruiting. It covers:

• what the Red Seal endorsement is and why candidates value it;
• what an employer can and can't promise;
• how to describe sponsorship, supervision and school blocks so an apprentice and a parent can follow them;
• example careers-page structures and ad wording, written as templates;
• the most common ways employers accidentally oversell.

The hiring funnel, in numbers

The direct answer: you can't judge any recruiting spend until you know your cost per qualified applicant and cost per hire, and what an empty seat costs you.

Read the guide: working out what a hire really costs. It covers:

• the stages of a trades hiring funnel, from ad view to 90-day retention;
• a fully worked example with placeholder figures you can swap for your own;
• how response speed changes the numbers more than ad spend;
• when to stop a channel and when to give it more time;
• a one-page tracking sheet layout.

Who these guides are written for

They are written for the person who actually does the hiring in a small or mid-sized BC trades company: often the owner, sometimes an operations or office manager, occasionally a senior foreman who has been handed the problem. We assume you know your trade far better than we do, and that you have limited time. So each guide starts with a direct answer, uses tables and checklists you can copy, and keeps the explanations short.

They are equally useful whether you're an electrical contractor in a compulsory trade, a roofing company in the Fraser Valley or a carpentry shop in the Kootenays. Where a section applies only to certain trades or regions, it says so.

How to use these guides

Read them in this order if you're starting from scratch: funnel numbers first, so you know what you're measuring; then certification, so your plan fits the rules; then the Red Seal story, so your message is ready.

If you'd rather have someone apply them to your business, our services put each guide into practice, and the contact page explains how to reach us. For a broader look at how hiring differs across the province, see the areas we serve.

A note on what we don't cover

We don't write about wage levels, employment law or immigration. We don't publish pay figures, and legal questions belong with the Province, the relevant regulator or a qualified professional. Where a rule touches marketing, such as BC's guidance that publicly advertised jobs show the employer's expected pay or range, we link the source and stick to the practical, non-legal side.