Coming to Canada: Experienced Class

Hi peeps.

This is the second edition of the coming to Canada series.

One way to migrate to Canada as earlier explained is to come in as an international student.
The next way is through Express Entry (Federal Skilled Worker Program) which is available for those who have work experience.

Points to note:

1. NOC (National Occupational Classification): You need to confirm if your work experience qualifies you to even start an express entry application. Check your NOC throughhttps://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/express-entry/become-candidate/eligibility/find-national-occupation-code.html#find.

2. Educational Assessment: This is compulsory for express entry application. You need to evaluate your previous education to determine the Canadian Equivalent. You can do this through these websites:www.wes.org/ca; or www.icascanada.ca; or www.bcit.ca/ices; orwww.learn.utoronto.ca/international-professionals/comparative-education-service-ces; or www.alberta.ca/iqas-immigration.aspx.

3. Language Test: Language test is also compulsory for the application, the two official languages in Canada are English and French, if you have proficiency in both, it will be a great advantage for you. You must take an English or French Test or both, and the higher your test score, the higher the points you get for your express entry application. The most common test is IELTS – you need to write the General test for your application. More details for language testing can be found here:https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/express-entry/become-candidate/eligibility/language-requirements/language-testing.html. My advise to people from English speaking countries is to ensure you prepare for the test(easy to just think it will be easy because you speak English, well it doesn’t work that way). Every point counts and you will be doing yourself a favour by getting very high scores.

4. Proof of Funds: You need money to sustain yourself and dependants if you are given permanent residence. The first few months can be quite challenging when you are trying to settle down and get a job. This is why it’s mandatory that you relocate with some money. Familiarise yourself with the amount required for you and your family and you can start saving for it while going through the process of writing your language tests and evaluating your education. You can get the required information here: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/express-entry/become-candidate/eligibility/proof-funds.html.


Finally, you can check the number of points you may hypothetically get before even starting an application. This can be done through this page:http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/crs-tool.asp

I hope this helps someone. Please read, and share this with people around you too. Thanks.

Coming to Canada: Student Edition

Happy new year. Welcome to 2018. It's an opportunity to make new plans, learn a new skill, etc.

I have received enquiries from different people about migrating to Canada and I have decided to share some ways you can migrate legally. Please note that I am not an immigration consultant and what I will share is publicly available information. You can find more information on Canadian immigration website - cic.gc.ca. Just use the information you need and also pass along to others.

You need GOOGLE and a lot of patience for any process to migrate to Canada. First option to migrate is to come in as a student, because you can get a post graduate work permit when you graduate depending on the length of your study. A few notes:

1. IELTS or GMAT: It depends on the admission requirements. Some schools require an applicant to write either depending on course of study, hence my advice that you need google. Information about specific courses can be found on school websites.

2. Do you need to evaluate your previous degrees or not? Again it depends on the course of study, if you have a previous diploma for example, and you want to apply for an applied degree, you may have to do an evaluation. The following websites are available for evaluation:www.wes.org/ca; or www.icascanada.ca; or www.bcit.ca/ices; or www.learn.utoronto.ca/international-professionals/comparative-education-service-ces; orwww.alberta.ca/iqas-immigration.aspx.

3. Which school should I apply to? It depends on the course you want to study. As a general rule though, there are some provinces that are not highly populated and it may be easier to get admissions into schools there.

4. Funding: studying in Canada is not cheap and most people give up just because the funds are not available. Some schools give scholarships/fellowship to students with high GMAT scores. You have to do a lot of research to know which schools give funding.

Personal advice I have for people is this: go and learn a skill now while processing admissions and visa. Learn how to play musical instruments, coding, cooking, make-up etc, whatever skill you can learn, because it will give you opportunity to make extra income.

You will find a lot of information on Canadian immigration website.

My e-mail is immigrantincanada@outlook.com.

Job search - LL's story

I got to Canada 2 years ago and knew I will have a Career Change. However, we need to pay bills as I came into the country with my husband and 2 children.

My Husband is a certified IT professional with all them Cisco, Project Management and the rest. In fact, he was managing a team in one of the Oil companies in Nigeria. So I thought with his experience and all the international certifications, getting a job in Canada will not be difficult.

But to my surprise, first month went by...no call backs, gradually like 4 months and he had no call backs for interviews. All he got were calls from agents who will raise our hopes and then ...SILENCE.

By this time I was getting desperate, our savings was already low, so i had to do something. I went round the stores at a mall, gave out my resumes: basically applying for a store clerk position. I got lucky and got a part time position in one of the stores I applied to.

By this time, my husband was getting calls for interviews and he would prepare so hard and go there.

After a couple of interviews with the usual regret emails, I asked him what he felt the problem was because by now I was thinking abii it’s  a spiritual something ni.. My husband said he feels the problem is in the style of interview questions. As Nigerians, we are taught theoretically and the interviews here are scenario based questions. So for the first few interviews, he was struggling with the questions as he didn’t have matching scenarios.

So, the next task was getting appropriate responses to the scenario questions.  He did this and his confidence levels at interviews soared. He was able to confidently look the interviewer in the eye, answer their questions with the appropriate scenario, even if he had never experienced the said scenario in his course of duty.

By this time, he was getting more calls and our hopes were getting raised.

However, he had to downsize his resume and then apply for a customer service job which is what he is doing now while we work on the bigger picture.

My advice to new immigrants is that just find something to do... because like they say in Canada “Bills have to be paid”. Then when you go for interviews, do your best but at the risk of sounding negative, don’t expect much, because from experience, the Canadian interviewers are so nice and polite and leave you with a feeling of YES, I got the job ( due to their body language, which is what they will portray to all other candidates) but leave you hanging.

So basically, save your heart from being broken by not putting all your hopes on one job posting.

Job Search in Canada

So, you landed in Canada, congratulations, you are now an immigrant or you are on study permit or you have an open work permit, first thing to do is search for a job, right? Right. 👌

Oh, one thing is you’ve had 5 years experience in your country and just thought, my experience will count for me, right? Wrong. 👎

Searching for a job is annoying. You have to tweak your resume so much it doesn’t even look like you anymore. So, you have resumes with different names: “Resume Admin, Resume Accounting, Resume Engineering, Resume Customer Service, Resume finance……”. 😏.

Well next thing you know, even with your 10 years experience as a Professional Accountant or Engineer or Pharmacist with your first and second degrees, you can't practice in Canada. Like seriously? Oh well, apply to CPA or APEG or PEBC and you learn you have to write 10 prerequisite exams. What??????????. THAT'S NOT FAIR. 😭😭😭😭

So, how did you get your first job? By luck, networking, referrals, how exactly? What strategies did you use?

Please share your stories. Thanks.

Titi

Job search: My story - Part 1

Canada, the land of opportunities, be kind to me, this was my prayer when I landed in 2014 after a 10-year banking career in Nigeria with the hope of smoothly getting a banking job. So, I prepared a resume (the last time I had one was over 10 years) and started applying for jobs. My initial resume was 3 pages long (10 years experience is not a joke right) with details of my career. I started applying for senior roles in the banking sector, after all I was a manager at my former organisation.👍

Well, a few months went by and nothing was forthcoming, no calls, no interviews, nothing. The only response I received was “Thank you for your interest, we regret to inform you that……” urgh😠.

So, it began; I read online how one size does not fit all when it comes to job search. I had to prepare different resumes for different positions; “Resume Banking, Resume Admin, Resume Finance, Resume Accounting, Resume Customer Service etc. It was so ANNOYING.😩. So I changed strategy and started applying for any role ; entry level, mid-career, senior roles; anything.

Before I forget, let me mention that during that period, some of the recruiters I heard from were the scammers. Those ones with a mail like the one below:
Job Title :Fin Admin/Customer accounts
Salary: $4000-$6000/month
"We find your resume on indeed and want to give you the above job. your responsibilities include processing of checks from our client base and payment into your personal account. You will transfer the money to us through your account and service our cliants.
please complet the attach form and include your resume in reply to this mail.
Please note that we are looking at several people for the job and want you to be quick to take the job."

Hilarious stuff, if it wasn't so annoying. Note all the spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors in the mail. 

Sometimes I’ll curl up on the bed and just cry. Before I lost count, I had applied for over 370 jobs during a period of almost 1 year. I asked myself so many questions during that period and even started doubting myself. My confidence level dropped from 100 towards 0 so quickly, I actually lost weight.😭

Eventually, I got a job, but that's a story for another post.

Thanks for reading and please share your own stories in the comments section or send a mail to immigrantincanada@outlook.com if you will like me to publish it.

Cheers.

Titi

Johnny Just Come

It really felt different when I moved into the city a couple of years back. There was the semblance between the landscapes I saw in movies back home in Lagos and the skyline of downtown Calgary. The drive from the airport was some sort of Deja vu, a reconstruction of the images that had flashed in my mind many times over. Here we were, driving through the well lined streets, the wide open spaces and the multiple car lanes like those of German Autobahns, the feeling can’t be described in a paragraph. For me, this was the culmination of a lifelong desire to immigrate to a Country that had all the bells and whistles because the externals resonated with assumptions of what a Western Country should look like.

My first interview went fast as I got a call to show up the same day that I applied for the job. Can you imagine the new guy on the block who just came into the country, had been searching for jobs but none had worked out as I had imagined but then picked up a free magazine, flipped to the classified section and saw a job advert that looked promising. When I got the call the same day that I applied for the job, I felt ecstatic, partly thinking that this was finally my moment, I couldn’t be happier.

Trust now, I had my suit on, shined my shoes and made sure my hair was well groomed. I got to the interview like 40 minutes before time as I could not afford to let anything go wrong. I was ushered to sit in a small hall with about 25 chairs, waiting to be called for the real show. Soon after I was seated, other people started to trickle in and I began to get iffy about the number of interviewees coming in.

At a point I felt like I was in the wrong place and I had to ask a staff who was standing by to confirm that there was going to be an interview for real. Anyways, a lady who seemed to call the shot started to call people by name to an office that was right in front of the sitting area.  Each person came out with a paper which eventually turned out to be an offer letter. To my chagrin, I was called and the interview did not last 10 minutes and I was given an offer letter. Wouldn’t you ask what the job offer was? I was being recruited to sell knives. I mean, to sell knives to who? I was new in the country, cash was limited, I was somewhat desperate to work to earn money and someone was going to send me on a wild goose chase to market knives and earn stipends from commission. This couldn’t have exacerbated my frustration any further if you know what I mean. That was my first real experience as a new immigrant looking for work in far away Canada.

Story by JJC