Relève en force becomes NexWav, a firm specializing in recruitment and talent solutions combining artificial intelligence, thanks to an investment of $2 million.
Transforming a difficult period into a business opportunity is what the company managed to do, even though it had focused on recruiting workers in the events field before the pandemic.
“In the space of one press conference, we lost 100 percent of our revenue. It was a huge crisis management effort at that time. We returned to the health and social services sector. We continued to do what we were already doing, recruitment and human resources, but in the health sector,” explains William Plamondon, co-founder of NexWav and chairman of the board of directors.
“Eventually it turned into a huge opportunity. As of December 31, 2020, we ended the year with 300% growth,” he continues.
As history repeats itself, Relève en force once again found itself faced with an obstacle when the government adopted measures limiting the use of placement agencies in the health field. This has led the company to make another shift ahead of NexWav whose name change is official as of today.
“Beyond placement, we will do skills development, we will help organizations with human resources consulting. We will provide support to ensure that talents have the right opportunities and that organizations have the right talents,” indicates Dominic Lévesque, CEO and co-founder of NexWav who also served as president of Randstad Canada during his tenure. career.
Search tools
The firm will continue to recruit professionals in different fields.
“When you are in a multinational, technological changes take a very long time to make. We have already implemented, through all our operations, a huge number of artificial intelligence elements in a responsible manner,” underlines Mr. Lévesque.
“We want to use artificial intelligence to increase value, make better matches, ensure that we are able to move more quickly, to offer good research tools,” he lists.
“We are able to predict which jobs will become available and when. Who will be the best candidate for a specific job,” illustrates Mr. Plamondon by way of example.
NexWav will redistribute 5% of profits to organizations linked to education and the fight against climate change.
“It’s super important for us and we believe that all companies should get involved at the social level,” says Mr. Plamondon.
With this transformation, NexWav is setting ambitious goals by 2030. The company aims to recruit 150 permanent employees across Canada, complete more than 2,250 annual placements and meet more than 100,000 talents each year.
The addition of capital in the transformation of the company is provided by private investors.
