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.