Getting PR Was the Easy Part: Looking Back After Six Years in Canada

In a way, the pandemic compressed what is usually a gradual adjustment into something much more abrupt. There was no slow immersion into Canadian life — no commute, no office. This is probably why it took two or three years for Toronto to genuinely feel like home.  

Six years on, I have a clearer sense of what worked for me and what I’d do differently if I were starting over today. If you’re planning to move to Canada, I hope my reflections will serve as guidance for your future.

Do your Financial Homework 

Financial planning is crucial, but what does it really mean? Let me break it down. 

Compare Cost of Living and Make a Budget 

The cost of living varies everywhere, and Canada is an expensive country. How expensive? That depends on where you’re coming from. I grew up in New Delhi, where I paid around INR 30,000 a month (roughly $450 CAD) for a gorgeous three-bedroom apartment. In comparison, my first one-bedroom in Toronto, which I lovingly referred to as a shoebox, cost $1,700 per month. 

The reason I wasn’t caught off guard was that I had done the research before arriving. I knew roughly what things cost. I had a budget. I had given myself enough runway, with savings to cover up to a year of expenses, so I wasn’t making decisions from a place of financial pressure. 

That said, my partner and I lived frugally our first year in Canada. The fact that we were still mentally converting prices into Indian rupees helped keep our purchasing in check. 

My advice: The settlement funds you’re required to show may not be enough to cover your expenses for six months, especially if you’re moving to a big city, like Toronto or Vancouver. Make sure you calculate your budget accordingly. 

Open a Canadian Bank Account and Get a Credit Card 

A few weeks before my arrival, I opened a bank account with Scotiabank and transferred my funds over. The confirmation letter from the bank served as our proof of settlement funds. The day after I arrived, I visited a branch to activate the account and walked out with a debit card. So, I only needed to carry a few days’ worth of cash. My first Canadian credit card arrived by mail a few weeks later.  

Start Building Your Credit History 

Understanding the importance of your credit history was the other thing I got right early. I used my credit card for everyday spending and paid it off in full each month. I had previously used credit cards in India and was familiar with how they work.  

Credit cards have incredibly high interest rates. I only spent what I could easily pay back at the end of the month. I also kept track of my credit utilization ratio and tried to use less than 30% of my total credit limit. 

Newcomer life is hectic and you’ll have a lot going on in your initial months. Set up automatic payments for your credit card, so you don’t accidentally miss a due date. 

One year and two months after arriving, my partner and I bought our first home together. That would not have been possible without treating credit and savings seriously from day one. 

Start Your Job Search Before You Arrive in Canada 

This is the part I got wrong. I assumed that since Canada was actively inviting skilled workers through Express Entry, the job market had a pressing need for people like me. That assumption cost me time and confidence. 

Over six months, I applied to more than 300 jobs in marketing. Many postings at the time explicitly listed Canadian experience as a requirement, something Ontario recently made illegal. 

I got maybe ten opportunities to interview. The vast majority never responded at all. (Ontario now requires employers to inform applicants when a hiring process closes, but that rule didn’t exist back then.)  

Use a Canadian-Style Resume and Tailor Every Application 

It took me a couple of months to figure out what was working. Switching to a Canadian-style resume format made a noticeable difference in my response rate. So did customizing my resume and including keywords for each application. These are things I had to learn by trial and error.  

As I started to build my network, I shared my resume with some professionals I met and asked for feedback. One of my biggest learnings was that Canadian employers want to see your achievements, not your responsibilities, on your resume. Including data on what I had accomplished made my resume more impactful. 

Networking Is Not Optional 

If you’re moving to Canada soon, you’ve probably heard that networking is the key to the job market. This is true. It also puts newcomers at a bit of a disadvantage because we don’thave a ready network we can tap. 

I did my fair share of LinkedIn outreach and coffee chats in the first six months. I knew the basics: don’t ask for a job, demonstrate your value. But, as an introvert, reaching out to people I didn’t know felt deeply uncomfortable. 

I eventually found a way to network that worked for me: volunteering.  

I preferred volunteering to coffee chats because it puts you in front of working professionals an lets them see, rather than hear, what you’re capable of. What many newcomers don’trealize is that volunteer experience counts as Canadian experience on a resume. It demonstrates local skills and can help you fill employment gaps with meaningful work. 

If I could go back, I would have started networking before I landed. The sooner you start, the more time you have to make meaningful connections, rather than have transactional conversations. Whatever approach to networking you take — LinkedIn connections, informational interviews, virtual events — it is possible to start before you arrive. 

Did networking help me find my first job in Canada? No, but it helped me find my second one. 

Treat the Job Search Like a Part-Time Job 

Sending out applications and hearing nothing back can be disheartening. There’s no way around that. What helped me was treating the search itself as structured work. 

I dedicated four hours a day to it and set weekly goals: a certain number of applications sent, a certain number of networking conversations scheduled. I felt productive when I hit those goals, even when the results were slow. It gave me something I could control in a process that often felt like it was entirely out of my hands. 

It took me six months to land my first job in Canada. The market was tough because of the pandemic. Luckily, my partner had moved here with a job and that took some of the financial pressure off. 

Proactively Build Social Connections 

The hardest part of my newcomer journey wasn’t the job search, but the social isolation.

Lockdowns removed most of the organic ways you meet people in a new city. Work was remote. There were no in-person events. Even people we knew from before were keeping their social “bubbles” small. There were stretches of loneliness, and homesickness that I hadn’t anticipated. 

What I learned is that you need to be intentional about making social connections in a new country. For us, that meant getting involved in our neighbourhood community and attending informal networking events just to meet new people. Our dog also serves as an excellent icebreaker, and over the years, we’ve met quite a few people thanks to her. 

Don’t wait until you feel settled to start building connections. Do it while you’re still finding your feet. It’s one of those things that gets harder to start the longer you put it off. 

Becoming Canadian 

In 2024, my partner and I became Canadian citizens, three days before we became parents. 

Looking back, the immigration process itself was the straightforward part of our newcomer journey. We submitted our Express Entry profile in November 2018 and received our Confirmation of Permanent Residence (CoPR) almost exactly a year later, in November 2019.  

When we packed up our lives, said our farewells, and moved permanently to Toronto, a city we had never visited before, it seemed like the hardest thing we’d ever do. But that was just the start. 

What comes after landing is less structured, and in many ways, more demanding. Rebuilding your career, making friends, figuring out your finances, building a life — these are the foundations that will make Canada feel like home. All of these require deliberate, sustained effort. 

If you’re planning your move to Canada, think beyond just the immigration stage. Start early on everything else: the job search, the networking, the financial groundwork. The preparation you do before you land will shape your first year in Canada.