Do you want to be a “budtender”?

A new Edmonton-based staffing agency might be able to help you.

Cannabis at Work has launched the agency – which its founder says is the first of its kind in Canada – to connect prospective workers and employers in the cannabis industry.

“Organizations need to step up their operations, and we’re in a good position with our HR and workplace expertise and our relationships with the industry, to capitalize on that,” said Cannabis at Work founder Alison McMahon.

The company, which offers education and strategies for employers relating to cannabis and the workplace, will launch its staffing division at the Lift Cannabis Expo in Toronto this weekend.

McMahon said jobs in the budding industry are plentiful and growing.

Someone with a horticulture and cultivation background could work on the production side as a master grower or trimmer, while corporate service jobs like accounting, IT, marketing and human resources are also needed.

On the front lines, businesses selling recreational marijuana will need salespeople, referred to in the industry as budtenders.

With Aurora Cannabis building an 800,000-square-foot production facility on the Edmonton International Airport land, McMahon said Alberta is poised to be a leader in the field.

“We have a privatized market around alcohol, so we expect we’ll probably see a privatized market around dispensaries. And I think we’ll see a lot of economic benefit in the province around that as well,” she said.

McMahon said Canada can expect tens of thousands of new jobs in the next two years or so as the industry prepares for the legalization of recreational marijuana promised nationwide in July 2018.

“California has about the same population as Canada and they only have a medical market – they’ve approved recreational but they haven’t actually implemented it yet – and they have close to 50,000 jobs just in their medical market right now,” she said.

“So I would say that over the next couple of years I would expect that we would add at least that.”