When Usha Srinivasan walked into the Brampton Venture Expo in 2022, she expected the usual: founders networking, startup pitches flying, and business ideas taking shape.
She did not expect to see a flood of résumés.
The event had drawn an unexpected crowd of professionals who weren’t there to launch companies. They were looking for jobs.
“There is an amazing pool of talent out there, and startups should be taking advantage of it.”
Usha Srinivasan, BReady
“The professional talent we’re talking about—people who have engineering, software, data analytics, science, business, marketing, sales, finance backgrounds—were struggling to find employment, doing what they can part-time here and there,” Srinivasan said.
“It’s nothing new, but at the same time, it’s just more exaggerated in Peel Region.”
Brampton has become one of Canada’s fastest-growing cities in terms of population, adding approximately 100,000 people between 2020 and 2025. Immigration had fuelled much of that growth, with thousands of highly educated newcomers settling in Peel Region.
On paper, they should be a hiring manager’s dream. Many hold degrees in engineering, business, and science, and many have experience at global companies. Yet, when they applied for jobs, they hit a wall.
As of June 2024, the unemployment rate for recent immigrants had climbed to 12.6 percent, significantly higher than the national average. At the same time, as of the third quarter of 2024, the Toronto economic region reported approximately 91,500 unfilled positions.
The issue clearly wasn’t a lack of talent. But there was a disconnect.
“When you’re new to the country, you typically get bombarded with the obvious brands—banks, telecoms, big tech companies,” she said. “But the reality is, large companies have thousands of applications, so the chances of getting noticed are really low.”
This is a challenge Srinivasan understands firsthand. When she immigrated to Canada in 1997, she didn’t start in a big city. She moved where the jobs were.
“When I came to this country, I lived in New Brunswick. I even lived in Whitehorse for three years, because as an immigrant, I had to move around to find opportunities,” she added.
Eventually, she landed in Toronto and built a career in market research consulting, startups, talent development, and incubators, working at Frost & Sullivan, MaRS, and more recently at Brampton Venture Zone at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).
Over the years, she saw the same story play out again and again for local immigrants, and soon realized the problem might not be with the candidates or the employers, but the way the job market is set up. And with Canada now embroiled in a trade war with one of its closest allies, that mismatch between talent and opportunity is becoming an economic liability.
Fixing a broken hiring system
Most job platforms operate the same way: companies post roles, candidates apply, and most never hear back. Srinivasan wanted to flip that model.
She built BReady, a virtual hiring platform designed to connect skilled professionals with startups and small businesses—companies that don’t have brand recognition, big HR teams, or the resources to sift through thousands of applications.
She partnered with Jeby James and Litson Thomas, the founders of AI platform 316.ai to build the platform. They understood these challenges all too well as immigrants with software development and recruitment backgrounds and prior experience building related products like writecv.io and Lilyhire.
Unlike traditional job sites, BReady doesn’t require candidates to constantly apply for roles. Instead, they create one profile—including a résumé, a 500-word pitch, and a short video answering a critical thinking question.
Employers don’t see names, universities, or other identifying details upfront, only skills and experience. Srinivasan said this means there is no way for employers to make snap judgments.
“We wanted to remove as much bias as possible,” she added.
Hiring is just as streamlined on the employer side. Companies upload a job description, and BReady’s AI-driven matching system that goes beyond just keywords and skills by ranking the most relevant candidates. If they like what they see, they send an interview request. The platform also keeps the talent pool fresh by deactivating profiles that fail to respond to interview requests.
Taking talent offline
BReady is also designed to prepare candidates for the realities of the job market.
The platform connects users with LinkedIn Learning courses, soft skills training, and offers curated education on the industry sectors that are dominant in that region, as well as upskilling certificates from partner universities. It runs regular in-person and online programming including targeted recruitment events, office hours where hiring managers and HR professionals help candidates refine résumés, develop interview skills, and get direct feedback.
That education extends beyond the platform. The BReady platform includes regular “field trips” where candidates are taken for visits to local factories in food processing and manufacturing, startup offices, or logistics hubs. This gives them a chance to meet hiring managers in person, see how the business operates, and get a foot in the door.
According to Srinivasan, the results have been immediate.
“After these trips, the candidates are always so blown away,” she said. “They tell me, “I never thought about this industry as a place for me to work.’”
“Startups should be taking advantage”
Launched in April 2024, BReady has already signed up 1,200 job seekers from across Ontario and 140 employers in the Peel Region. The focus has been on startups and small to medium-sized businesses, which often lack full HR teams and hiring managers are often the CEOs themselves.
“Speed is important in the startup world,” Srinivasan said. “All employers have to do is go onto the platform, do the search, and talk to the individual. It can take minutes to find a candidate and have a conversation.”
Now, she has spun BReady out as an independent nonprofit. Originally launched and incubated within TMU, BReady will now stand on its own, a shift that allows it to scale beyond Peel Region.
“We are already in conversation with York Region, with other communities, and with 10 chambers of commerce across Ontario, who are all interested,” she added.
The long-term vision extends even further. Srinivasan envisions BReady as a nationwide talent platform connecting skilled immigrants with employers in growing industries. “Everyone coming through the Express Entry visa program should create a profile on this platform,” Srinivasan added.
The team is developing new features, including a Zoom integration and an applicant tracking system to make hiring even easier.
With a trade war between Canada and the United States now in full swing, Srinivasan believes BReady’s spinout comes at an opportune time.
“This tariff war is demonstrating how reliant Canadian businesses are on the US market—and how unprepared they are to pivot,” she added. “Imagine the competitive edge companies could gain by hiring an immigrant from Europe, Africa, South America, or Asia—someone with firsthand knowledge and connections to untapped markets.”
The expansion won’t just benefit job seekers. Srinivasan believes it will also serve Canada’s startup ecosystem, since BReady is designed for companies that need agile, problem-solving employees.
Srinivasan, who has spent years working with incubators and scaling ventures, knows firsthand how valuable that kind of talent is.
“There is an amazing pool of talent out there, and startups should be taking advantage of it.”
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All photos provided by BReady.