Cana­dian Flag on Par­lia­ment Hill

Wel­come to the “How To… Find A Job In Canada” series!

Say­ing that last year wasn’t great eco­nom­i­cally speak­ing is an under­state­ment. Pretty much all coun­tries world­wide suf­fered from the global eco­nomic down­turn and Canada was no excep­tion. Yet, a lot of peo­ple are still con­sid­er­ing mov­ing to Canada, while oth­ers are already in the process and are prob­a­bly wor­ried about whether they will get a job at all.

There is no easy answer when it comes to employ­ment. You know the story… a bit of patience, a bit of skills, a bit of luck.

I’m not a job coun­selor, and I’m not an expert. But I do know how it works in Canada and I’m hop­ing to pass along some infor­ma­tion that may not be obvi­ous to every­one. A post will be pub­lished every Sat­ur­day… enjoy!

To end this series, I’d like to high­light three qual­i­ties job-seekers should develop to cope with the job-hunting process.

Patience

By def­i­n­i­tion, most immi­grants are quite patient: after all, most of us waited for quite a while before being granted the per­ma­nent residence!

But once again, you must show patience when look­ing for your first job in Canada. It may have looked very easy on paper, but in real­ity, most peo­ple don’t find a posi­tion equiv­a­lent to the one they left at home for a while.

This can be very frus­trat­ing, espe­cially for immi­grants who have been selected on the basis of their skills and edu­ca­tion. But try to take it one step at the time and real­ize that every­body have been through the same problems.

You can choose one of sev­eral strate­gies to achieve your goals:

• If you are finan­cially strapped, stop putting pres­sure on your­self to find the dream job and set­tle tem­porar­ily for a lower-position. This will allow you to gain some expe­ri­ence in Canada, receive some income and learn about the culture.
• If you have enough money to sur­vive for a while with­out work­ing, con­sider tak­ing a class. For instance, a lan­guage class (such as busi­ness Eng­lish) or some train­ing related to your field. Some Cana­dian edu­ca­tion is appre­ci­ated on your resume and you may meet peo­ple and start networking.
• Vol­un­teer­ing is also a great option for those who want to net­work and gain Cana­dian expe­ri­ence.
  

Any­how, you may also look at the gen­eral eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion before start­ing blam­ing your­self for fail­ure. Right now, a lot of qual­i­fied peo­ple with expe­ri­ence are hav­ing trou­ble find­ing posi­tions. But it will be over soon… or so we are being told!

Will­ing­ness to learn

How you did things at home doesn’t mat­ter: what mat­ters is how things are done in Canada. This is the harsh truth. You may indulge in “it was bet­ter at home” evenings of com­plain­ing with your expat or immi­grant friends. But while it may be good to release some frus­tra­tion, it won’t help you fit in.

Cana­di­ans are quite wel­com­ing and the coun­try is mul­ti­cul­tural. This does not mean that Cana­dian always makes it easy for for­eigner to enter the job mar­ket. There is the “Cana­dian expe­ri­ence catch 22″. The fact that your degree may not be rec­og­nized. That your for­eign expe­ri­ence may be seen as irrelevant.

At this point, you may decide to give up. Yet, show­ing will­ing­ness to learn and to adapt really helps. The main mis­take to avoid is to be this annoy­ing new­comer who always com­plains about how things are done in Canada, and how great was “home”, wher­ever home is. Peo­ple have very lit­tle patience for this kind of attitude.

You can try to find a “men­tor”, for exam­ple another immi­grant who have been there for a while, or an help­ful local who will be able to fill you in. You can also observe the way peo­ple inter­act, who gets pro­moted and why etc. to learn more about work cul­ture in Canada. You can even do some research online, by read­ing expats forums!

Flex­i­bil­ity

Flex­i­bil­ity is a key word in North Amer­ica: it . It sums up your abil­ity to change career and tackle new chal­lenges, you abil­ity to adapt to a wide range of sit­u­a­tion and to fit in.

North Amer­ica, by def­i­n­i­tion, is a flex­i­ble soci­ety where things change fast. Some provinces or states boom while other crash, and one day the econ­omy is up, one day it’s down. It’s com­mon to change posi­tion every few years to improve and to tackle new chal­lenges. Peo­ple even often have sev­eral careers and it’s not rare to start in a totally dif­fer­ent field more than once in your life.

The more flex­i­ble you become, the eas­ier it will be to fit in. So if you can’t find a job in your field, con­sider tak­ing classes to update your knowl­edge, or move to a dif­fer­ent field alto­gether. You may also reach your goals through a dif­fer­ent way, such as set­ting up your own company!

I hope you found the series use­ful. Have you found a job already? Let me know if my advices helped you!

Related posts:

1. Get­ting Read­ing For Job-Hunting (1÷10)
2. Find­ing Job Oppor­tu­ni­ties (3÷10)
3. Use­ful Links For Immi­gra­tion (10÷10)
4. 3 Poten­tial Career Chal­lenges (8÷10)