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Invest Vancouver / Invest Talent

Invest Talent

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Workforce development is economic development.

Invest Talent is an employer-led, data-driven regional talent accelerator, led by Invest Vancouver and funded by the Future Skills Centre. It aligns industry demand with applied, skills-first talent pathways to accelerate hiring, productivity, and long-term regional competitiveness in the Metro Vancouver region.

The Metro Vancouver region is home to globally competitive employers and world-class post-secondary institutions. This ecosystem has helped companies scale, attract investment, and innovate. Yet across high-growth, export-oriented sectors, employers consistently identify talent availability, job readiness, and hiring friction as growing constraints on growth and investment.

At the same time, workforce development efforts are often fragmented across programs, organizations, and funding cycles – making it difficult to respond quickly to changing industry needs.

Invest Talent addresses this challenge by coordinating the workforce system around employer-validated demand.

Invest Vancouver is positioned to l​ead Invest Talent

As Metro Vancouver’s regional economic development service, Invest Vancouver is uniquely positioned to lead Invest Talent.

Invest Vancouver works directly with employers across key sectors to support business growth, investment attraction, and competitiveness.

Through this role, it has a real-time view of:

  • check icon Where employers are growing or struggling to scale​
  • check icon Which roles are hardest to fill and why
  • check icon How workforce constraints affect investment decisions
  • check icon Where misalignment across training, workforce, and community systems creates friction

Because Invest Vancouver is sector-agnostic, employer-trusted, and not a training provider, it can act as a neutral convener and system coordinator​ – bringing together employers, educators, workforce intermediaries, and community organizations without competing interests.

This position allows Invest Vancouver to:

  • check icon Aggregate employer demand across firms rather than relying on one-off signals
  • check icon Translate business needs into clear, shared workforce signals
  • check icon Reduce duplication and coordination costs across the ecosystem
  • check icon Align workforce development with regional economic and investment priorities

In short, Invest Vancouver leads Invest Talent because workforce development is most effective when it is directly connected to economic development and employer demand.

Why Invest Talent matters now​​

Over the next decade, British Columbia will experience more than 1 million job openings across 64 industries and 500 occupations, with the fastest growth occurring in the Metro Vancouver region. Rapid advances in technologies such as AI will further accelerate change, increasing both opportunity and disruption.

​Invest Talent responds with a coordinated, system-level approach that goes beyond isolated programs. It brings employers, education and training providers, workforce intermediaries, and community organizations together around validated demand, shared learning, and scalable solutions.

The Invest Talent model​

​​Invest Talent follows a repeatable six-step model designed to align workforce development with economic development and regional investment priorities:

1
Identify priority sectors and roles using labour market and economic data
2
Aggregate employer demand to validate scale, timing, and readiness
3
Signal clear, shared skills needs to training and workforce partners
4
Co-design applied, role-specific pathways with employers and partners
5
Deliver targeted pilots or ecosystem interventions
6
Measure, learn, and scale what works across sectors and regions
​

Each step emphasizes employer leadership, inclusion by design, and system coordination, ensuring workforce investments are relevant, timely, and connected to real jobs.

Our initial focus

The Invest Talent pilot is focused on export-oriented, high-growth sectors critical to the Metro Vancouver region’s economy.

Invest Talent is launching with two industry hubs:​

  • check iconHigh-tech: cybersecurity​
  • check icon Life sciences: medtech

​​Each hub convenes employers, talent, and ecosystem partners to address sector-specific workforce challenges and co-design solutions that no single organization could achieve alone.

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Conne​cting e​mployers, learners, and p​artners​​

Connect with our team​​​


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Vancouver skyline
Vancouver Talent
Inclusive and equitable by design.
Reconciliation and equity are embedded in how Invest Talent is governed, designed, delivered, and measured — with shared leadership and transparency at every stage.
Industry-driven hubs.
Employers help identify the most in-demand roles and skills, shaping training to meet real workforce needs.
Flexible, career-focused training.
Short, practical learning options — like micro-credentials, workshops, and hands-on experiences — can be combined to build toward a career or credential.
Clear outcomes and continuous improvement.
Measured outcomes such as number of hires, time-to-productive hire, and retention, support built-in feedback loops and research for continuous improvement.

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Invest Vancouver acknowledges that the region’s residents live, work, and learn on the shared territories of many Indigenous Peoples, including 10 local First Nations: q̓ic̓əy̓(Katzie), q̓ʷɑ:n̓ƛ̓ən̓ (Kwantlen), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), máthxwi (Matsqui), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), qiqéyt (Qayqayt), Semiahmoo, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), scəw̓aθən məsteyəxʷ (Tsawwassen) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh).

Invest Vancouver respects the diverse and distinct histories, languages, and cultures of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit.

View Metro Vancouver's translated territorial acknowledgment

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