Patrick Sullivan helps guide thousands of people along their different career paths. Which is probably fitting, because he has travelled several routes to become the president and CEO of Toronto-based Workopolis.

The son of an army engineer, Sullivan has made a living as a brand-builder, helping companies sell milk, beer and books - in that order - along with a little household cleanser.
"My background is primarily marketing," says Sullivan, a former aspiring accountant. "We are now big marketers. Marketing was the key thing to help me build on what was already a strong (Workopolis) brand to get the message out to everybody in Canada.

Having graduated from university later than most of his peers, he offers hope to anyone who is behind schedule career-wise, while assisting companies challenged by labour shortages. For his next challenge, the late-starting jogger plans to become a blogger.
"I don't blog, but I'm starting soon, I think," says Sullivan. "(Workopolis employees) tell me that I'm starting to blog soon. I have opinions about everything, so I should blog."
So you'll see, as we jog Sullivan's memory and leapfrog through his life and career.

1.Where were you born and raised?

Bayne Stanley, Business Edge
Patrick Sullivan's varied marketing background has helped Workopolis continue to be a significant force in the online job-search market.

"I was born in sunny Chilliwack, British Columbia. My father was in the Canadian army. Then we moved to Ottawa. I spent my early years in Europe - in Germany and England - and then (moved) back to Ottawa and to London, Ontario. My parents were originally from Halifax and my father was posted back to there, so I guess I would consider it my hometown. We arrived there when I was about 14 or 15."

2. What was it like being an army brat?

"Chilliwack was where the engineers went to get their training at the time. It was great. I loved (being an army brat.) I saw much of Canada. I suppose that you could argue that it was difficult to move every couple of years and a challenge to meet new friends - but it always worked out well for me. I met some great people across the country and had a wonderful time. It brings the family a little closer together when you're moving that often. I had two sisters - one of them was born in Ottawa and the other in Germany. So it was a great family time."

3. Of all the places you've lived, which stands out?

"Probably England. I was still very young. It would have been when I was in elementary school, but we lived in a very small town (Shrivenham) in central England. My father was learning bomb disposal - which sounds terrible, but that's what you do when you're an engineer. It was a wonderful time for me. We had fields close to the house. It was an older home and I just remember having a great time growing up with lots of friends. I got to do exciting things like go to the London Zoo."

4. What steered you toward Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax?

"Mount St. Vincent is an interesting school, because it is the only women's university in Canada. It's defined that way because a majority of the staff, students and administrators are women. It was originally founded by the Sisters of Charity a long time ago as a Catholic university. Both of my sisters attended Mount St. Vincent and back in those days, although it sounds funny now, they actually had a family plan where, if more children of the same family attended, the first child paid full price and everybody after that got half-price tuition. So I went to Mount St. Vincent for the discount."

5. What adversity did you face early in your career?

"I went to university late. When I was 15, I started working in the grocery business as a grocery clerk in a small chain in Halifax called Capital Stores. I started part-time and then went full-time in grocery stores from age 15 until age 24, when I decided that I would get a university degree. So I guess my adversity was self-inflicted, as I was a little slow to go to university. Most of my friends had already gone on to other employment. Plus, I was married at the time with a child and then eventually a second child while I was in university. Although my wife was wonderful support, it was still a challenge to get through university with a family and then find a great position.

6. How did you end up moving to Toronto in the mid-1980s?

Patrick Sullivan

"It was an interesting story. I spent my university career focusing on accounting. It was my dream to become a chartered accountant - until I actually tried it out. In the interview process, I decided that, perhaps for me, there was something a little bit (missing.) I don't want to cast aspersions on accountants, but something that didn't focus on auditing (was more appealing.) By that time, I already had a wife and two children and I didn't want to, effectively, go back to school for another two years and become a chartered accountant. So I decided that marketing was a good career choice, and ended up working for Procter & Gamble in 1985. I was a brand assistant on Crisco Oil, and then I spent some time in the media and promotions department and was an assistant brand manager on Comet cleanser. So I know everything there is to know about cleaning toilets. My wife is happy I did all that learning."

7. Where did you go from Procter & Gamble?

"I was at Procter & Gamble for a couple of years and felt, in a youthful way, that there were probably better opportunities and maybe we should get back to Halifax to be closer to my family. We moved to McCain Foods in Florenceville, N.B., which was quite a hike from Toronto and, unfortunately, quite a hike from Halifax as well. We ended up coming back to Toronto after about a year and I worked for Ault Foods. They're not around anymore, I don't think, but they were a field-test dairy. They were a large milk producer, and creamery and cheese manufacturer. I was brand manager on fluid milk, which was exciting. After a couple of years of that, I decided that I would take another position that was presented to me as a group brand manager for Moosehead Breweries. So it was quite a change from milk to beer, and (I) ended up moving back to Halifax and working for Moosehead Breweries."

8. How would you compare marketing milk to marketing beer?

"It's certainly a lot more fun to go out to a bar and have a beer. It was a great experience. A tremendous experience. It really increased my marketing knowledge. I managed the Moosehead business in Atlantic Canada for a while - we had a number of brands in Atlantic Canada - and then became director of international marketing. We had a large business in the United States, so I ended up working with our importers in the United States. I launched Moosehead beer in seven countries around the world - Sweden, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Finland, Norway, Hong Kong and Japan. I also launched in the U.K. - or relaunched is a better term, because it was already selling in the U.K., but I moved it to another distributor. So that was very exciting, dealing with the challenges of international marketing and the challenges of shipping beer around the world."

9. What steered you toward Workopolis?

"It was still a long career before that. I continued to work in the beer business and moved from Moosehead to a company called the Upper Canada Brewing Co. in Ontario, which was a small micro that was ultimately acquired by Sleeman Breweries.

"I left after six or eight months with Sleeman and began to work for Indigo Books (& Music.) After six months with Indigo Books, I became the general manager of their website. From there, obviously, I had some experience in the online world and ultimately came over to Workopolis in 2003."

10. So you were the brain behind the Chapters website?

"I don't know about that. At the time, (Chapters and Indigo) were separate companies. Indigo had their own website - Indigo.ca - and Chapters had their own. We actually bought a small website that operated in Guelph and then adapted it to make it more of a national operation. We launched Indigo.ca in 1998 or 1999. It was a great success. We had great sales. Those were the days of the Internet boom. There was certainly a lot of competition between Indigo and Chapters. Ultimately, they merged, but at the time it was a tough business."

11. How did you end up going to Toronto.com?

"I got a call from a recruiter and it turned out to be a great opportunity. They wanted someone with strong experience in Internet businesses, and I went over in about 2000. It had been around for a couple of years but it was growing and I continued to grow the business. It was owned by the Toronto Star and, at the time, Bell Globemedia Interactive. After a couple of years, they asked if I would like to go over to Workopolis and I was very enthusiastic about it because it was a bigger business with more potential. It sounds like I can't hold a job, doesn't it? All those companies. Or, I was a perfect choice for Workopolis."

12. Unlike many web-based businesses, Workopolis became profitable quickly. How did that happen?

"Right away, employers saw the value of posting online with the increased prevalence of the Internet. We also had strong support from the newspapers and got a lot of the job postings from the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. If you think back to 2000, when we had the tech boom going on, there were a lot of positions available and not as many employees looking. So it was just a great opportunity to increase those postings. Our major costs were for marketing and development. Although we were profitable, we've continued to invest in the market - significantly - to ensure that we continue to grow, and obviously we've grown very well. Certainly, the web-based business slowed down a little (during the tech crash), but there was still a growing adoption of the Internet as a job-posting source. Although there weren't the quantity of postings that happened in 2000 and 2001, there were still many people who were moving from posting in other areas - whether that was newspapers or magazines or wherever - to online. So we were lucky enough to participate in that growth. Although there weren't a huge number of postings, there were still enough to keep us going."

13. Did the fact that you're linked to traditional media help you survive?

"I think that's always been a real plus for us. Back in 2000, most of the jobs were still posted with the newspapers, so our link with the newspapers provided us with a great feed of all of the jobs that the newspapers had. It made searching for employment very easy. So for us to have that quantity of jobs ... At the time, it was a significant number. I think it was 8,000-10,000 jobs a month that were coming from newspapers, so it gave us a real leg up versus our competition."

14. What do you see as potential new sources of revenue?

"It's still a very under-developed category. Last year, we had 60,000 employers post to Workopolis, but there are a million businesses in Canada. So there are still an awful lot of opportunities for growth in the category. From our perspective, we'd just like to sell more postings, get more candidates to come to apply (for) those postings, and that would still provide us with great revenue growth."

15. What's your advice to companies that want to operate web-based businesses?

"That's a good question. I think of ourselves more as a business that's enabled by the Internet. It's helping (human resources) people find staff, or companies find employees. The efficiencies that come with that are great for us. I think you need to focus on the business and the business model first. If you're enabled by the Internet, or the telephone or whatever it happens to be, that's fine. But do think about the business model first."

16. What's been the key to your brand's success?

"The key for us has been some of the investment that we continue to do and the great support we've had from our owners. The investment has allowed us to build a relationship with jobseekers across the country. We now get three million people that come to the site every month. We send out 300,000 e-mails every day (of the traditional work week) to jobseekers in the form of career alerts that tell them about the jobs that they're interested in.

"We just signed a deal with the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, so we're the official online site for recruitment.We've invested to build our traffic, we've invested to build our sales group and we've invested to get more and more employers to come to the site. We are in a business where there's a bit of a chicken and egg. We need to have the jobseekers in order to get the employers and we need to have the employers in order to get the jobseekers. We've been consistently investing in both of those areas, to ensure that we continue to get great growth from both of those groups."

17. What strategies do companies need to develop to maximize the marketing potential of the Internet?

"Where we're headed is all about one-to-one marketing. The Internet enables that level of communication. We certainly do broad advertising. We do television, we do radio, we do all those kinds of things. But the technology that exists today will enable us to effectively target. Whether it's a consumer or an employer, we'll know about that job-seeker and we'll know more about that employer, and we'll be able to present specific advertising to them and encourage them to come to Workopolis or post to Workopolis - using the tools that are out there today. Ultimately, we will be heading to that one-to-one marketing that the Internet presents."

18. What's your advice for building a memorable brand?

"First, find that meaningful consumer insight that you can use to help build your brand. What's important to consumers or to employers? What are some of their pain points? If you're trying to develop a brand, be consistent to that brand. Find a positioning that will meet a need - and then hammer away at it. It really sounds rather simplistic. But I think getting that message out and being consistent over time are two of the most important things that you can do."

19. What are some of your interests?

"We have a cottage, so going there in the summertime and spending a little time on the lake (Muskoka) is wonderful. I like to consider myself a runner. I really only started about four or five years ago, but I have done a couple of half-marathons. Two years ago, I did a 30-km race, and I'm training right now for that same 30-km Around the Bay Race. It's around lovely Hamilton harbour, through Hamilton and Burlington and back to Hamilton again."

20. If you couldn't run Workopolis anymore, what would you do?

"Boy, that is a tough question. I don't know. I don't think I've thought about that one. I do know what I want to do in 15 years. I'd love to take a sailboat and go down to the Caribbean for a couple of years. How's that sound? I'd have to learn how to sail. It would be a real challenge. I have a sailboat, a 20-foot, 30-year-old sailboat. It can barely sit in the water. But better to learn how to sail on a lake than the ocean. It's hard to get lost on a lake."

Patrick Sullivan

* Title: President/CEO.

* Born/raised/age: Chilliwack, B.C./England, Germany, Halifax/48.

* Education: Bachelor of business administration, Mount St. Vincent University, Halifax.

* Family: Wife Patti, daughter Kaitlyn, 24, son James, 22.

* Career: Since graduating from Mount St. Vincent, Sullivan has held executive and brand-management positions with companies including Procter & Gamble, Moosehead Breweries Ltd. and Indigo Books, Music and Café, as well as Workopolis.

* Moonlighting: Toronto Entertainment District Association board member. The group supports and acts as an advocacy group for the hospitality and entertainment district in downtown Toronto.

* Passions: Running, sailing.

Workopolis

* Brass: Patrick Sullivan, president and CEO; Debra Chapman, vice-president of sales; Bruno Gendron, vice-president for Eastern Canada; Gabe Mazzarolo, vice-president of sales and chief privacy officer; Raymond Cheung, finance director; David Resnick, corporate development director; Max Tremblay, vice-president of marketing.

* Profile: Workopolis operates an online career site that advertises jobs in most sectors. It was originally known as Globecareers.com, when its former owners included the Globe and Mail. In January 2000, the site relaunched as Workopolis.com. It ranks as Canada's most active jobsite, with 40,000 jobs available daily. In 2001, Workopolis expanded into campus recruitment services following the acquisition of Campuswork.link.com, now known as Workopoliscampus.com. About a year later, Workopolis launched a French edition of its main site and formed a joint venture with Quebec-based Gesca Limitee, which publishes seven French-language dailies, including Montreal's La Presse, in Quebec. Workopolis also operates CorporateWorks.com, which manages career websites for almost 100 Canadian companies.

* Corporate structure: Workopolis is a private joint venture between Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. and Gesca Ltd., the newspaper publishing subsidiary of Power Corp. of Canada.

* Stats: On average, three million people visit Workopolis per month. The firm has 70 employees with the majority in sales and technical positions. In 2006, it posted almost 400,000 jobs.

* Website: www.workopolis.com

* HQ: 720 King St. West, 10th Floor, Toronto, M5V 2T3

* Phone/fax: (416) 957-8300/(416) 957-8333

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)