Services — Industrial Staffing Sectors We Cover

What we staff

Five sectors we know well enough to argue about

Job titles travel badly between sites. The tags under each sector are the roles we actually screen for, and the paragraphs are the questions we ask before we put anyone forward.

Warehousing & Distribution

Powered equipment is not one licence, and treating it as one is how people get hurt. A counterbalance operator who has only ever run a sit-down truck in a yard is not automatically safe on a reach truck working a nine-foot aisle with the mast at height, and neither of them is an order-picker operator strapped into a harness at the third level of racking. So we ask which class, which aisle width, which rack height and which attachment, then we look at the training record and its expiry date rather than take someone's word for it. Under Ontario's Occupational Health and Safety Act the operator has to be trained and competent on the equipment they are put on, and refresher training has a date on it for a reason. We also confirm the boring things that stop a shift at the gate: CSA-approved green-triangle safety footwear, high-visibility vest, and whatever your site rules say about hard hats in the aisle.

The second half of the job is the system. RF scanning, voice pick, pick-to-light and paper pick all ask different things from a new person, and someone who has spent two years on voice will be slow on RF for the first couple of shifts no matter how good they are. Tell us which one you run and we will say so honestly rather than pretend there is no ramp. The same goes for rate: if your standard is 150 to 200 lines an hour, or a dock-to-stock window you are measured on, put it in the requisition. We would rather brief a picker on the target before day one than have you discover on day three that nobody mentioned it. Beyond picking, we screen for cycle counting and inventory adjustments, load-securing and stretch wrapping, live-trailer loading and unloading, returns and reverse logistics, and the shipper-receiver work where BOLs, packing slips and a scale ticket all have to agree.

Order picker Reach truck operator Counterbalance forklift operator Walkie / pallet jack operator RF scanner picker-packer Shipper-receiver Loader / unloader Inventory and cycle counter Returns processor Dock lead hand General warehouse associate

Manufacturing & Production

A line either runs or it does not, and a two-person station with one person on it is a stopped line. What we screen for here is the difference between someone who has stood next to a machine and someone who has run one: whether they have done a changeover under time pressure, whether they can read a work order and a first-off inspection sheet, whether they know what to do when a part goes out of tolerance instead of quietly putting it in the good bin. WHMIS 2015 training and site-specific hazard orientation are table stakes. Beyond that we confirm lockout-tagout awareness before anyone goes near a guard, because the single most common way a temporary worker gets hurt in a plant is clearing a jam on equipment that was never properly isolated. If your site has a pre-start health and safety review on a piece of equipment, or a joint health and safety committee process for new workers, tell us and we will brief people on it in advance.

Then there is endurance, which nobody likes to talk about and everybody underestimates. Twelve-hour continental shifts, rotating days-to-nights, standing on concrete for a full shift, repetitive work at line speed, hearing protection in a plant running above 85 dBA: these are real filters, and a person who has only worked eight-hour days needs to be told plainly what they are signing up for. We ask candidates directly whether they have worked that pattern before, not whether they think they could handle it. We staff assemblers and machine operators through to CNC, injection moulding and press operation, plus the quality, material handling and packaging roles that keep the line fed and the finished goods moving. For a lead hand or a supervisor we will normally recommend permanent placement rather than a temporary assignment, because the role only works once the crew trusts the person.

Assembler Machine operator CNC operator Injection moulding operator Press operator Quality inspector Material handler Packaging line operator Production lead hand Changeover and sanitation

Food & Beverage Production

A food plant does not really have a general labour role. Every position sits inside a preventive control plan, and a person who does not understand that is a food safety risk before they are a productivity problem. So the orientation covers good manufacturing practices as a set of habits rather than a poster: hairnets and beard nets on before the door, no jewellery, no false nails, no watches, handwashing at every entry, no personal food past the line, colour-coded tools kept in their zone, and the glass and brittle plastic policy that most people have never heard of until they break something. Allergen awareness matters even more, because the cost of getting it wrong is a recall rather than a rework. We brief people on why a changeover between an allergen and a non-allergen run is treated the way it is, and on what a critical control point check actually means when the metal detector rejects a pack.

The other filter is physical, and it is the one that quietly ends assignments in week one. Cooler work sits around 2 to 4 degrees; freezer work runs from about minus 18 to minus 25, in a freezer suit, with rotation off the floor and boots that keep your feet from going numb. "I can handle the cold" and "I have worked eight hours in a freezer" are different answers, and we ask for the second one. Wet production floors, caustic chemicals on sanitation shift, high-pressure washdown and night sanitation hours all get named explicitly before anyone accepts the assignment. We staff production and packaging lines, blending and mixing, palletizing, quality assurance technicians, sanitation crews, and the cold-storage forklift and picking roles that most agencies quietly avoid.

Production line worker Food machine operator Sanitation worker Quality assurance technician Blender / mixer operator Packaging operator Palletizer Freezer and cooler picker Cold storage forklift operator Shipping clerk

Transportation & Logistics

Licence class is not a detail, it is the whole conversation. An AZ holder can run a tractor-trailer combination and holds the Z air brake endorsement. A DZ holder can run a straight truck over 11,000 kilograms with air brakes but cannot pull your trailer. A G licence covers the cube van and sprinter work that most last-mile routes actually need. Asking for "a driver" gets you the wrong one. We verify the class and the expiry date from the licence itself, request a current driver's abstract where the role calls for it, and confirm endorsements rather than accept a photocopy and a promise. It is also worth being clear about where the record lands: the CVOR belongs to the carrier, not the driver, so if our driver is in your truck the convictions and collisions attach to your operating record. That is exactly why we do not put anyone behind a wheel on the strength of a resume.

Routes are not interchangeable either. A driver who is excellent on a long linehaul run may be the wrong person for sixty residential stops a day with a hand truck and a signature at every door, and a shunt driver moving trailers in a tight yard at night is doing a third thing again. We ask about the pattern, the hours-of-service regime the run falls under, the ELD you use and the logging expectations, and whether the role includes physical unloading, because "driver" and "driver who unloads" are two different jobs with two different candidates. Inside the four walls we also staff the logistics roles that keep the fleet honest: dispatch and load planning, cross-dock and transload crews, transport clerks handling BOLs and customs paperwork, and yard attendants.

AZ driver DZ driver G-licence delivery driver Shunt / yard driver Dispatcher Load planner Cross-dock associate Transport clerk Driver helper Yard attendant

General Labour

General labour is the category most often used badly, by everyone. It gets written on a requisition when nobody has taken ten minutes to describe the job, and then the placement fails and the agency gets blamed. A general labourer is not an unskilled body. The role still has a specific profile: how much weight, how often, at what height, for how many hours, at what temperature, in what noise, and whether the person is working alone or on a crew. We ask all of that up front because it is the difference between someone who finishes the assignment and someone who leaves at first break. WHMIS 2015 training and a site-specific orientation covering the hazards, the emergency procedure, the supervisor's name and the right to refuse unsafe work happen before day one. Where a site requires extra training such as confined space entry or fall protection, we confirm it exists and is current rather than assume it.

PPE is the other place assignments go wrong quietly. CSA-approved grade 1 safety footwear with the green triangle is the baseline in almost every industrial setting, plus safety glasses, hearing protection where noise exceeds the exposure limit, and cut-resistant gloves on any line where blades or sharp edges are in play. We tell candidates exactly what they need to arrive with and exactly what the site issues, so nobody turns up in runners and loses a shift. And we describe the job honestly: if it is 18-kilogram totes for eight hours in an unheated warehouse in February, we would rather say that and send someone who wants it than fill the slot today and refill it on Thursday.

General labourer Production helper Picker / packer Machine feeder Sorter Loader / unloader Entry-level assembler Industrial cleaner Yard and grounds labourer Recycling and sortation

Engagement models

Three ways to bring people in

The sector decides the skills. The engagement model decides the risk, the cost and who carries the employment relationship.

Temporary and contract

Absence cover, seasonal peaks, a project with a finish date, or a second shift you are standing up for a season. The worker stays our employee throughout. Payroll, source deductions, WSIB and every Employment Standards Act obligation sit with us. You approve hours and receive one invoice at one hourly rate.

Temp-to-hire

Watch someone do the actual job on your equipment and your shift pattern before either side commits. Conversion is handled inside the six-month framework the Employment Standards Act sets for assignment employees, and the mechanics are written into the service agreement before the first person starts.

Permanent placement

Direct hire for roles you intend to keep: shift supervisor, lead hand, maintenance technician, shipper-receiver. We source, screen and shortlist against the job as it is actually done. You interview, you decide, and the person is your employee from their first shift.

Ontario licenses temporary help agencies and recruiters separately under the Employment Standards Act. Our application is in progress and we will not place a worker or recruit on a client's behalf until the licence covering that work is issued. More on what that means for clients.

Screening

What we check, in every sector, before anyone is put forward

Screening is not a personality test. It is five specific checks, and the last one is the one most agencies skip.

Right to work in Canada

Confirmed from original documents the candidate brings to onboarding in person. We never ask for a Social Insurance Number through this website, by email or in a text message, and neither should anyone else.

Reference checks we actually make

Two work references, ideally a supervisor who watched the person run a full shift rather than a friend with a phone. References from any country are fine. We care whether someone did the job well, not where they did it.

Certifications and licences, with expiry dates

Forklift training records by equipment class, driver's licence class and endorsements, WHMIS completion, food handler certification where a site requires it. An expired card is not a card, and we check the date rather than the laminate.

Role-specific safety orientation

Not a generic video. The hazards on your floor, the PPE required, lockout and machine guarding where it applies, the emergency procedure, who the supervisor is, how to report an injury, and the right to refuse unsafe work under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Shift and commute fit, honestly assessed

This is the one that gets skipped, and it is the reason most placements fail in week one. A genuinely good worker who cannot reliably reach your site for a 5:00 a.m. start is not a good placement. We ask how someone will get to you at that hour, on that day, in February. If the answer does not hold up, we say so instead of sending them and hoping.

What we never ask for

No Social Insurance Number on any form. No Canadian-experience requirement, on our forms or in a client requisition we would accept. And no fees from workers, in any sector: we never charge workers a fee — for anything, ever.

Our limits

Sectors we do not serve

Naming the limits now is cheaper for everyone than finding out three weeks in. If you need one of these, we will tell you straight away and, where we can, point you somewhere useful.

No healthcare or clinical staffing

No nurses, no personal support workers, no clinics, hospitals or long-term care. Clinical credentialling, regulated-college verification and patient-safety obligations are a different discipline from industrial staffing, and doing it badly is not a small mistake.

No international or foreign worker recruitment

We recruit people who are already in Canada and already entitled to work here. We do not run overseas recruitment, we do not work through foreign recruiters, and we do not charge anyone a fee to be considered for work. Ever.

No executive search

No C-suite, no board roles, no senior professional search. Our work is the floor, the dock, the line and the people who supervise them. That is where we are useful and it is where we intend to stay.

Tell us what the job actually involves

Shift, equipment, lift weights, temperature and site access. Send that and you will get a useful answer instead of a brochure.

Request staff Looking for work?

Sectors we staff, and what we check before anyone starts