Liberals get more than 11,000 job applications
Alison Crawford | CBC News | Posted: November 2, 2015 10:58 PM | Last Updated: November 2, 2015
Justin Trudeau put out 'help wanted' ad on Friday, and thousands have already put names on list
Canadians voted in droves for the Liberal Party and now they want to work for the new federal government.
On Friday night, the party put out a call on the web and social media looking to hire a diverse team of passionate and hard-working people.
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Within 12 hours, more than 3,000 people had uploaded their resumes. By this afternoon, more than 11,000 had applied and most had also submitted detailed cover letters.
Liberal Party spokesman Olivier Duchesneau said so far the submissions are impressive. They include several Rhodes scholars and more than 1,500 applicants speak three or more languages.
"There's people who have 20, 30 years of experience in government — you have lawyers, you have people who are working in and running NGOs," Duchesneau said.
There are roughly a thousand jobs available in Ottawa with MPs, cabinet ministers as well as inside the Prime Minister's Office. The party is looking for senior managers as well as people with expertise in communications, administration, parliamentary affairs and policy. So far, interest is spread pretty evenly across all categories.
"Mr. Trudeau has said his government will be the government of all Canadians. You know it's an example of how we want to do things. We're doing things differently, we want to be open and we want all Canadians to be engaged and participate," Duchesneau said.
With so many CVs still pouring in, the party will have to reply to applicants soon in order to manage expectations and explain that the process will take a little longer than expected, he said.
An internal triage process is already underway to prioritize submissions for jobs that need to be filled first. Those would likely include staff for cabinet ministers who will be sworn in on Wednesday.