The Best Outplacement Firms in Canada

If you’re looking for an outplacement service provider in Canada, you’re probably wondering who the best outplacement firms are. There are all kinds of firms out there, from small, boutique-like providers to old-school powerhouses. However, chances are you’re stressed enough with an upcoming layoff event and don’t have time to spend deciding who you’d be better with.

To help you cut through the noise, we’ve listed five of Canada’s top outplacement firms based on the information available on their websites. At Careerminds, we have an open policy about the competition’s offerings, but we must stress that this is just a list – and not a detailed enough comparison to name a winner in the end.

Before you start looking for an outplacement firm, it’s fundamental to understand what outplacement actually is. Outplacement is a service provided by an expert firm to an organization’s dismissed employees, to help them find their way in the job market and transition successfully to a new role at another company.

Outplacement is typically offered in severance packages during a layoff process. It helps to take the stress out of those events for impacted employees, giving them the tools to find new work in a fulfilling role. This way, they can get back to work more quickly than if they were to search for a job alone. It also reassures employers that their staff members are set up for success when laid off.

When you look for an outplacement partner, there are some key services they should provide to support your departing employees in finding new, meaningful jobs. These services include expert outplacement coaching, resume writing and optimization, networking, job search training, and accessible, easy-to-use support until employees land a new job. When you combine those elements, your company will be on the right path to provide an efficient career transition process.

So, without further ado, let’s get to the list of Canada’s best outplacement firms. We hope you find it useful!

Below are the five best outplacement firms in Canada today: Careerminds, Toombs, LLH, Mercer, and Challenger Gray. Let’s examine in detail the services they provide to help employees with their career transitions, starting with our own services at Careerminds.

Well, here you are: the Careerminds website! The various resources we have online are proof of why we’re #1 on this list, but this statement makes it clear why we’re different than the others:

“We combine cutting-edge technology with personalized, one-on-one career assessments and job coaching, which allows us to deliver customized solutions to anyone, anywhere, at a lower cost than traditional firms. We promise to support outgoing employees throughout the process by working with them until they are placed in a new, meaningful role.”

One of the main reasons Careerminds’ outplacement offers better results than other firms is that we don’t impose term limits or retainer fees on our clients. Actually, we work with employees “until placement” – that is, as long as they need us and until they’re placed in a new, meaningful job. Also, we’ll only charge you when you need our services. In other words, we’re committed to providing our service until the job is finished, not until the contract runs out.

This uniquely unlimited support comes with our virtual outplacement platform, proprietary technology, and a real-life dedicated coach guiding participants through the transition process. We provide individuals with comprehensive e-learning training, tools, and personalized 1-1 coaching for optimizing resumes, finding hidden jobs in the market, boosting their networks and social accounts like LinkedIn, and applying for the positions they genuinely want.

At Careerminds, we have lower outplacement costs because we leverage the internet to offer global services to clients regardless of their physical location. We can be wherever our clients are and, at the same time, ensure they receive a human-first service. This forward-thinking approach is the touch our CEO and Founder Raymond Lee gave to the traditional outplacement model, disrupting the industry and changing how outplacement providers operate worldwide.

Toombs is a career management service provider with more than 30 years of experience in supporting individuals and organizations in Canada. They opened their first office in Calgary in 1990 and expanded to Edmonton in 1992, growing from within local communities and extending their services globally through their Arbora Global Partners network.

Throughout its journey, Toombs has focused on offering services such as outplacement support, HR guidance, and career transformations. It provides personalized assistance to ease transitions for both displaced and retained employees, while supporting HR teams, managers, and employees through professional development programs.

The company offers personalized coaching from industry leaders and an online academy with tutorials, videos, tests, CV-building tools, an interview simulator, and more. Toombs also assists HR departments through personalized, discreet processes that minimize disruption in the workplace and support their clients’ talent acquisition strategy.

“We are innovative and tuned in to the needs of our customers. We believe in driving service and technology improvements, ensuring we deliver solid solutions to our HR partners and individuals in our care,” says Vice President Roselyn Himann.

With 8,000 employees and more than 50 years in the business, LHH provides recruitment, outplacement & mobility, and leadership development services to 15,000 clients in 66 countries, impacting millions of individuals worldwide. The company has supported 500,000 people in attaining their career goals, with over 250,000 success stories of people transitioning to new jobs. The firm is part of the Adecco Group, one of the world’s biggest talent advisory companies.

According to its website, LHH “delivers a tailored, technology-enabled, human-driven experience” to employees and employers. Its primary services are 1:1 career coaching, personal branding support, active placement strategies, career development programs, an upskilling and reskilling portal, and online labour market insights.

Another product LLH offers is Career Canvas, a generative AI-powered career inspiration tool that helps individuals to break out of their regular professional paths and find their dream jobs. LLH describes its vision on its website: “We imagine a world where employees are empowered to adapt and grow their careers – where a layoff isn’t the end, but the beginning of the next exciting stage of their career journey.”

Founded in 1945 and headquartered in New York City, Mercer is one of the four operating subsidiaries of global professional services firm Marsh McLennan. Mercer has offices in 43 countries and operates in 130 countries, including Canada. While it has many different business lines, its primary focus is HR and financial services consulting services.

With its fully digital, on-demand outplacement program based on award-winning technology and virtual career coaching, Mercer claims to help transitioning and displaced employees land new jobs nearly 2.5 times faster than the national average. However, this uber-modern tech approach has a downside: they don’t offer personalized 1:1 coaching sessions or support.

“We pass along savings from efficiencies in technology without compromising quality of service. In fact, our solution is ½ to ⅓ the cost of traditional outplacement solutions,” the company states on their website. “We are redefining outplacement design, delivery, and results to provide a service that meets the expectations of employers as well as the needs of all levels of employees.”

Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. was the first executive outplacement firm in the US on its foundation in 1966. Today, with offices throughout North America, it’s a global outplacement and career transitioning firm serving clients worldwide and across industries.

The company’s main message is about taking a people-first approach to outplacement services, putting compassion at the forefront. This mindset translates into building career transitions around each individual’s goals, providing them with customized programs, 1:1 sessions with full-time coaches, ATS-friendly resumes, interview support, digital branding, and more.

This is what they have to say about their services:

“Your past influences your future, but it does not define it. We are proud of our history and the paths forged over the last five decades. We know job seekers have ever-evolving challenges to face.”

“In the end, we hope to make what is a difficult moment – better. For us, it’s about helping companies do right by their employees and helping individuals take action, take initiative, and find success.”

As you can see, the best outplacement firms in Canada provide similar services such as career transition coaching, job search consultations, resume improvement, and interview preparation sessions. All of them use technology to provide virtual support to participants and their employees, and their outplacement work stems from a people-first mindset and a human touch.

If you’re shopping around for an outplacement partner, we suggest you ask difficult questions, get references from your network, review websites such as Glassdoor and G2, and schedule a demo. There, you should pay attention to their use of technology and how easy the platform seems to be to use. All this will ensure the outplacement firm you choose will fully support your departing employees while retaining talent and keeping your remaining staff happy.

Now, a final message: if you choose Careerminds, remember you’ll have a partner who will stay with you until the job is done and your outgoing employees are relocated, with no retainer fees or term limits. In other words, you’ll have a partner in touch with cutting-edge technology, using the industry’s current best practices, and committed to results. To learn more about Careerminds, click below and schedule a demo with one of our outplacement experts today.

Rafael Spuldar

Rafael is a content writer, editor, and strategist with over 20 years of experience working with digital media, marketing agencies, and Tech companies. He started his career as a journalist: his past jobs included some of the world's most renowned media organizations, such as the BBC and Thomson Reuters. After shifting into content marketing, he specialized in B2B content, mainly in the Tech and SaaS industries. In this field, Rafael could leverage his previously acquired skills (as an interviewer, fact-checker, and copy editor) to create compelling, valuable, and performing content pieces for various companies. Rafael is into cinema, music, literature, food, wine, and sports (mainly soccer, tennis, and NBA).