Innovation Stream

Hello. Hello, and welcome to our second ever live stream of 2023. I am Stephen TYG of Moving to Canada, and with me we have our formidable, amazing, splendid guest, mr. Rory Spalan. Rory, would you like to introduce yourself properly to the masses for anyone who doesn’t know you?

I’m loving the sound effect. Steven. My name is Rory Spalan. I moved to Canada in 2008. I’m originally from Ireland. I’m the founder of Moving to Canada, but I’m also the founder of Outpost Recruitment, which is a recruitment agency focused on both global and local talent for the construction sector, which is amazing, because.

That’S what all of the livestream is going to be about. Today is about finding a job in Canada as a newcomer. So who better to take us there than yourself? And I know you had a few kind of tidbits or insights into the job market as it stands and kind of a direction you’d like to take this live stream in terms of who it’s for and who it could benefit, right?

Sure. I suppose to add, I suppose I’ve been working for ten years helping newcomers. So the goal today is helping people plan to get the most out of their job hunt. Despite a low unemployment rate in Canada, too many newcomers end up underemployed.

Our focus of Moving to Canada is helping them achieve their dreams. Depending on your goals, for Canada, finding a stable, well paid job is critical to funding your adventures. So I suppose the big hunt, or the big kind of reality for us is job hunting is in a new country is actually a life skill.

What we want to do today is focus on it being a process which you continue to refine throughout the period. And instead of it becoming transactional, sending out resumes, it actually becomes a set of skills which you continue to refine and bring with you for life.

Amazing. And just so everyone who’s watching is aware, this particular livestream is catered towards people who are already eligible to come and live and work in Canada. There is a load of people that are requesting things about LMIAs.

If you don’t want there, don’t worry about it. If you do know what they are, stay watching. There’s a load of transferable knowledge that will be of use to you, but we won’t be diving into the visa or permit requirements for jobs, which is more about how you can actually land yourself a job by when you come to Canada or even before you come to Canada.

So folks, before we get into our actual breakdown, what’s going to happen, I just want to set aside a little bit of time to say hello to people. So if you are currently on either YouTube or Facebook, please do let us know where you are viewing from.

We’d love to hear from you. We’ll be going back to the screen a few times throughout the livestream, so do keep those conversations coming and we’ll be asking, answering, should I say any of your questions that you put in as we go?

Anyone out there at the moment want to say hello? Brown Stewart, thank you so much. That’s awesome. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for commenting. Cool. We’ll be parking back to that periodically throughout, but let’s jump right into the meat of it.

So the breakdown of today’s livestream is going to be focusing on three different sections. We’ll be looking at the pre arrival, what you can do to get a job, what your first fortnight in Canada will look like to get a job, and also the interviews, offers and post application processes.

So, yes, we will be going into all three of those in detail with the knowledge that Mr. Royce Bland brings. So, without further ado, let us go to. To pre arrival. Rory, a question that comes with a lot of will they, won’t they is can you get a job before you actually land in Canada?

Some people say you can, other people just say it’s impossible. You have your own thoughts on it? It really depends on the type of job, I suppose. One thing to John to set the tone for today is there’s various types of work that you can get in Canada ranging from casual work which doesn’t really require much experience or skills, for example, working in a supermarket or a typical kind of survivor job.

We’ll also focus a lot today on professional job hunting that requires maybe past skills, educational and technical skills. So there’s a huge range of roles right in between as well. And when we touch on survival jobs today survival job is anything to pay the bills.

A survival job for one person might be a career job for the other. So we don’t want to kind of rank roles in terms of their importance today. We just want to acknowledge that people have very different goals and outcomes depending on the skill set and how ambitious they are when they get here.

Absolutely. When we talk about pre arrival, the pandemic has helped. I think it has pushed a lot more employers to start recruiting virtually. It really depends on the type of job, but for example, there’s lots of employers young guns which feature deer before the stream started.

They’re always willing to hire people virtually. Right. It’s casual work that doesn’t really requires that you’re physically able, but there’s lots of on the job training so they’re very happy to interview and hire people online.

And if you’re looking for a career focused role, if you’re an accountant or an engineer, for example, it may be in your and the employer’s best interest to actually meet with them in person. So yes, you can start the process virtually pre arrival.

But it may be better to get to the office, walk around, meet people, see what the culture is in reality. So really depends on the type of job. But it’s becoming more prevalent right now that people will hire virtually and then you can close the deal when you get here in person, which can be very helpful.

I think that’s a really interesting point to make it’s in there and your best interest because sometimes we feel well, I know certainly I feel that job hunting can be a one sided affair, but in reality, you’re both trying to find the right fit for each other.

So by getting a job pre arrival, it can take some stresses off, but maybe you’re landing into a job that actually isn’t what you expected or the culture isn’t what you expected. So pros and cons to both sides of it for sure.

Exactly. I always encourage people to give it a try and you’re not doing damage by job hunting from overseas. But one of the kind of gray areas I do specify in a lot of professionals, for example, is they say I’m not moving until I have a job.

But sometimes there’s a sweet spot where you have two or three employers that you’ve already engaged, you’ve gone through the initial interview, and then maybe you’re in a position to bet on yourself and say, I’m going to hop on a plane.

I know I’m not going to be a failure if I move to Canada and I’m going to get over the line with the opportunities that I have. It’s not a it’s basically there’s various levels of risk taking that people will take on.

Exactly. And there’s another part of this whole pre arrival process and that. Internet searching for jobs that sometimes doesn’t get talked about often enough, but it is part of a pre arrival journey for a lot of people, and that is fraud.

When it comes to employment services, we have experienced this in moving to can ourselves. Sometimes people take our logo, take our name, they represent themselves as us on social media, and that is factually not the case.

They are not us. We do not have any connection with them. But they’re they’re taking money off poor and suspecting people. And I know you feel strongly about this role yourself, and maybe you can talk a little bit about what to kind of expect from a Canadian employer to avoid being victim to fraud.

Yes, I think the first thing to start on is it’s not normal to be paid to expect payment for a job opportunity. In fact, as a recruiter in Canada, it’s illegal for me to accept payment for information on a job opportunity.

So not alone does this contravene laws, but we always expect our users to do your due diligence, as in you shouldn’t have to pay for an opportunity abroad. The reality then is you need to actually examine carefully why are you being asked for payment, what are the services they are actually providing, and then investigate the legitimacy of the company in many cases for moving to Canada.

It’s very, very obvious that it’s not. First and foremost, we’re a free resource. We never ask for payment. And then secondly, it becomes very apparent that Joe it’s. It’s unscrupulous people trying to take advantage of people.

Invariably, I see this most often in developing countries, where there is almost an expectation that you’re going to provide me with a work permit and a job. If it seems too good to be true, it normally is, so we really urge people to use caution in this case.

It’s extremely abnormal to actually pay for a job opportunity, so we encourage people to check and double check before you send payment to anyone. Absolutely. And I think one final thing to add before we move on to the next piece is with fraud around job opportunities, it can sometimes be cloaked in the guise of, well, it’s a package service, and you’ll get your visa or your permit as well.

If that’s the case, like Rory is saying, due diligence is so important, you have to do your research. There’s so many bad actors out there taking advantage of people’s desire to come and move to Canada that anything that seems too good to be true or seems like you’re going to get your visa and a job straight away and you’re going to be earning X amount of money, it’s more than likely not the case, or there’s some catch to it.

Maybe that’s just the cynic in me, Rory. Maybe you disagree with me, but that’s. My take on it, of course. And yeah, I guess the package is sometimes to disguise things, but it’s like how asking the questions from any consultant, whether it’s a recruitment consultant, an immigration consultant, a relocation consultant, what are you going to do for me?

What is the expectation, what are the risks involved in checking and double checking? All of these aspects validating that it’s in fact a legitimate business, but. I really urge caution on this because it’s like any scam, as in they’re basically taking advantage of people for not doing their due diligence or believing that this opportunity is too good to be true.

Right. There’s always a sense of urgency, and there’s a lot of badgering that goes on in these cases. Right. If they’re not willing to validate who they are, then that’s a sign. Yeah, absolutely. Moving on from fraud, and hopefully we will all avoid it in the future.

We have the big one. Pre arrival is planning your job search. Rory, we spoke about this because we actually do rehearse and practice these live streams before we go live. And we spoke a little bit about my experience of getting a job in Canada, which was essentially finding moving to Canada and saying, hey, I have something I think I can offer, and just kind of hounding you until you listen.

And I know you have your own take on that, but would you like to give any kind of insight into what the planning might be like and we can get looking at the get it started guide then in a minute? Sure.

So, like, high level, I always encourage people to plan different scenarios from the start. How long do you expect your funding to last without being unemployed? Do you have a plan to get a temporary job to ensure you have enough time to find your dream role?

How long are you willing to wait to find your dream role? So, depending on your plans for Canada, some people are happy to come for one or two years on a temporary work permit where a permanent resident may have more career driven ambitions.

The key takeaway, I guess, that we want to focus on is that job hunting is a process. I talked earlier about it. Many people have disbelief that it’s transactional. I send out CVS, I get a request, I go through the process, and then I get a job.

The key takeaway I really want. I want people to leave with today is to believe that you can reach for the stars. You just have to be realistic in how you do it. And there’s so many skills within job hunting that will help you as a human being for the rest of your life.

Because not many of us have job hunted abroad before. If you haven’t job hunted abroad before, you really need to focus on are you expecting Canada to adapt to you or are you willing to adapt to Canada?

And regardless of your technical skills and your education, it’s the people that are more willing to adapt that actually thrive in a new country. Very well said. And with that in mind, why don’t we nip over to our Getting Started guide, which is a moving to Canada resource that we offer.

Like Rory said, movingtocanda.com is a free resource for people looking to make the move across. We’ll add the link into the chat there so you can actually get this guide yourself. But Rory, this is something that you created with the team how to find employment in Canada, and I believe there’s some steps down here that we can look at that we are going to go through.

Yeah, we talked about that process. Right. So, Joan, reading from the writer, step one is Canadianize. Your resume. Taking that further. I encourage people a results focused resume. I’ve been looking at resumes for ten years.

You typically have 20, 30 seconds to grab a person’s interest. If you talk about the basic activities that you do, nobody is interested. Talk about the results that you achieved. It doesn’t matter whether you are a cashier or an accountant, you can achieve solid results.

So you don’t need to educate somebody on what a cashier or accountant does. You need to tell them. What specifically you achieved in that role. So always asking yourself, so what does this differentiate me?

Or am I just trying to pretend I’m a cashier or an accountant? So that’s the critical thing that will help differentiate you from the rest. Having a results focused resume means that you understand the impact of your work.

Some of the other things we talk about there is results focus is really being able to sell yourself. You have to be of the state of mind that if you’re a professional job hunter in Canada, get business cards printed off or use a virtual business card if you want to.

Nowadays, also have an elevator pitch set up. An elevator pitch is basically designed. It’s a 32nd pitch to coincide with the time it takes to ride a lift or an elevator after you meet somebody. So you really need to understand your strengths and communicate those strengths in your resume.

I can’t repeat strongly enough how many people let themselves down. I’ve meet so many people that are highly skilled people, and then they’re just too modest to sell themselves in their resume. When you have no network in a new country, this is your lucky ticket.

There is nothing else more important for winning an interview. I think on that as well. Sometimes you come from a country or environment where the resume can sometimes speak for itself. So you come into a new environment and you’re like, oh, people don’t understand anything that’s on here.

They don’t understand the potential gravitas of the employers I have or the projects I’ve worked on. So it just doesn’t read. So you have to spell it out. You have to make sure people know, hey, this is the value I brought to this, and this is what I.

Can bring to you 100%. That’s what we talked about. Canadian eyes, right? As in, you might have worked for a big company in Italy or Australia, but. Nobody knows who they are. So you have to explain who the company is, what the project is, why it’s important.

So a very simple test is, would a ten year old be able to pick this up and understand it right? And really make it easy for somebody to understand the context? So conscious there, I’ll just step through maybe some of the other items there.

Unless you have a question, even no questions. I was actually going to say, is there any of the other ones that stand out as kind of crucial ones to look at for pre arrival? Yes. So researching the jobs market, it’s very obvious, but does your current role exist in Canada?

What’s the most similar role? Is there credential recognitions required? Is your skills gaps? What are your strengths and weaknesses relative to a local candidate under roles you’re competing with locals here.

The biggest reminder, I think, to a lot of people is, remember, you are now an immigrant. I don’t think a lot of people realize that. They just kind of say, hey, I can show up. I have the skills, I’ve studied hard, I’ve adapted my resume.

But you need to be 20% stronger than the local candidates. Some of the other ones just to touch on. I talk about online presence, right? It’s very obvious. Get on LinkedIn, but I’m talking about stay on LinkedIn and communicate with people regularly.

You’ve got to be seen throughout the process, right? Don’t want to ruin the surprise for people, but your job hunt is going to take a lot longer than you think. So when you are having bad days, I want you to get on LinkedIn and put out something positive.

It’s all about marketing yourself and everybody wants to help the positive person who has learned, learning every day and realizing they made errors and on a path towards self growth. I think on that as well.

Curating your online presence, because so many of us have social media accounts that are unsearchable or we close off for a good reason. Privacy is important, but LinkedIn tends to be open and people tend to be able to view it.

Particularly as potential employers. So making sure that what is on LinkedIn might be the first thing that people search and find of you. So make sure it reflects what you want it to reflect. That’s I think, worth saying as well, going down through the list.

Roy, anything else that pops into your head? Well, networking is the huge one. It’s build your contacts here, but I just call it networking. To me, everyone think networking is a hack. It’s about meeting one person who’s going to set your life up in a new country.

Networking to me is building a team. It’s actually, once you go through a team building periods, you never process, you never lose those people. You’re in a new country, so you want to build friends to help you.

You don’t have a network anymore. So the most critical thing with networking is I always encourage people to send out a weekly email update. So every time you make a new contact, you meet somebody for a coffee, wow, it’s full of energy for three or four days and then they’ve forgotten about you.

So the key thing I encourage people with networking is send that person a weekly update from the point that you’ve met them and provide positive updates on what you have been up to, what you have been learning.

And believe it or not, I’ve heard it so many times after week four or week five or week six, that person helps you because they realize how motivated and how persistent and how positive you are that they will move a mountain to help you.

So that’s the biggest hack, really, as we kind of go through those targeted applications is very self explanatory. We talk about the hidden jobs market. If you are networking with people, a lot of posts actually don’t go public if you’re networking well and you’re sending out targeted applications to the right employer, as a recruiter, I always encourage people choose the employer, not the open role.

You know, open roles are transaction, transactionary or transitory. And what happens is, if you are networking in the right way, you will find roles before they become posted, which. Was very lucky for me because that was my situation.

You guys didn’t have any need for a videographer content creator in my capacity, but I was like, no, let me give me a shot. And here we are nearly a year and a half later. Exactly. And I even encourage people, if you found a right company right.

The biggest part of your research is, who are the three or four companies I want to work for? If you found a right company, offer to take up a temporary contract or an internship just to get to know the company.

In your case, you offered to do a tree series video package of your IC moving and we’re like, it was a no brainer. Right. It gave us a chance to get to know you. So think creatively on how you can get to know the people, not just buying them lunch or meeting for a coffee.

How can you get into the office and get to know the decision makers? Right. And that gives you a chance to create your dream role. Yeah, exactly. All right, folks, we are moving off pre arrival, but before we do, we’re going to spend a couple of minutes just looking over some of the questions that we sent in.

So please do feel free to keep sending them in. There was one up here I particularly wanted to chat on. Michael. Hi. My wife is a nurse. How can you get a job there in Canada? Roy, I think this was one of the things you talked about planning in advance that to understand that some jobs may have some prerequisites, that you have to fulfill some motor criteria.

And I believe nursing, I believe across Canada has some registration process that needs to be fulfilled. Yes. I’m very reluctant to talk in areas that I’m not an expert on because I do believe there has been some changes in the last few months as well on that.

But to the best of my knowledge and. For foreign credentials or credential. Recognition for nurses used to be long and complex, but I believe they are making some progress in that because we have so many healthcare opportunities in Canada right now, and it’s ridiculous that foreign nurses have to go through such a bureaucratic space.

So I would encourage Michael maybe to keep an eye. I know there has been some updates in the last few months, and I’m just not sure of the specifics on that right now. Yeah, there’s definitely talk about change in that process.

But, yes, Michael, have a bit of a look about what those requirements might be, and hopefully we can get you and your wife over to canda we’ll answer Anne’s question as well? Because we did kind of answer it already, but it’s good to reiterate these things.

So, she has a work permit, but not moving across to Canada until August. How easy can it be to secure a job so far in advance? So maybe we’ll focus on that in advance. Rory well, what point in the process of moving should you look at starting your job?

Hunt that’s a very good question. As a recruiter, I look at the seniority of the role. That’s one of the primary decisions. So how likely is an employer going to want to secure somebody in advance? Right.

So you got to think about the demand side. Right? Yes, Anne would like to have a job secured, but how important is it for the employer to secure a candidate for that particular role? So, depending on whether Anne is doing casual work, it’s probably he’ll just say, hey, give us a shout closer to arrival.

But if Anne is looking for a professional role, her level of seniority would be critical in this. Typically, I would say if you’re junior to interim immediate, it’s very unlikely that an employer would engage four to five months early.

Right. Unless it’s one of these niche roles where you’re a full stack developer, for example, and they might want to lock you up. So it all. It all depends on the demand side for the employer. Generally, I encourage people.

In Anne’s case, if she’s a professional and she believes there’s not a huge demand, I would encourage her to start sending out her resume maybe six weeks beforehand. She can state the date she’s arriving to Canada and that she’s available for a virtual interview at any date in between and an in person interview after this state super.

Well, let’s jump from Anne’s question about how long beforehand to what that first fortnight when you land in Canada will actually look like. So, let’s say, Rory, hypothetically, which seems to be my word for moving to Canada, I use it in every video like 50 times.

What can you do? You’ve just landed in Canada. You’ve just entered your new accommodation. Hopefully, it’s nice and everything you expected. The job hunt is back on. What can you do? So, I would encourage you to do all the things that you couldn’t have done before arrival.

Right. We’re assuming that maybe people have done some pre arrival work, like Canadianizing their resume, researching the jobs market, maybe sending out things. So, the one note, I think, when you asked me this question was, buy lunches for people, right.

The opportunity to engage in a coffee with somebody is not so special anymore. So I always encourage people the busiest people in life are the hardest to get help, but they always say, if you want help, ask a busy man, because when you get their attention, they’ll get the job done.

So this is really related to the networking thing, but it’s encouraging people to be persistent. Right. Isn’t in disguise the limit in Canada? But a lot of people will fail at the first hurdle. They are given a useful contact, they’ll send out a resume, and they’ll send them a note, and they’ll never follow up.

So. This is a little hack that I encourage people to do. You’ve got to be prepared to follow up three or four times with anyone if you’re serious about getting their help. Buying lunch is a very novel way to change things up on the third or the fourth.

So it’s a combination of tact and persistence in networking. You’ve got to realize that when you come here as a newcomer, you may have very little to offer to that person, so you need their help. So you need to be organized, persistent and tactful and creative in how you address that.

The reason I say buy lunch is everyone’s got to eat. If people are busy, you can offer them an alternative and say, I understand you’re busy whether you work from home or in the office, let me buy you lunch at your convenience or pick a day and time.

I will be there. You’ve really got to want to show people how much you want their help. The second aspect in terms of what you can do you’re going to ask me a question, Steve? No, I was just going to say, if anyone would like to buy me lunch, please know that I love barbecue and I will be there.

Just send it to me. Instagram DMs even the chat here, guys. We’ll make it work. Sorry, Rory. Keep going there. No worries. The second one I have listed here is volunteer with a local charity. So what you want to do in your first two weeks is you want to get out and you want to be seen and be heard by people in your network.

Look at industry events, look at meetup groups, look at newcomer get togethers. Volunteering is a great way. There’s a strong culture of volunteering in Canada. If you go down to a local charity and offer your help, you’ll be amazed what kind of professionals you will meet.

Amazingly, what people don’t realize is there’s lots of executive professionals that are volunteering just to get a break from the grind of running a business. So if you’re looking to find gatekeepers, volunteering at a local charity is a fantastic way to keep your mind busy and start.

Engaging in that kind of volunteer culture in Canada and most importantly, make some great contacts. Yeah, and on that note as well, it doesn’t even have to be a local charity. Obviously, it’s great to give back.

That’s wonderful. But I started my career in the media world doing sports photography and videography and signed up to a gym and scouted out which gym I wanted to go to and decided this one has the kind of people that I think can help move the bar a little bit for what I need.

Ended up making some great friends, making some great contacts, and ended up working in a few different few different projects that I wouldn’t have had I not gone to that particular gym. So maybe you don’t need to be as tactical with your whole life in Canada, but making some of those choices can really help move the bar for yourself when you do land Roy, of course.

So, yeah, like a sports team or any hobby as well is just a fantastic way. So it’s like you can do professional networking, but also realize that you’re hiring for friends right now, so any way you can get out and get to know people, keep your ears open when you’re on transit, it’s amazing what conversations are, how you can meet people.

That is great, Rory. And I see there’s been a question in from Alyssa and Melissa. We’re going to answer a little bit of this in our next little section and we will get back to your question when we go to the question section, but it is career jobs, Rory, versus survival jobs.

You have a great insight into this that, to be honest with you, I never even thought about until we started speaking on it, so I’m just going to let you take the mantle and run with it. Yeah, we touched on what a survival job is.

It basically means somebody who’s underemployed, you know, so basically somebody who may have, you know, they may have lots of technical skills, but they’re for example, they’re working as a cashier in the supermarket because they’ve been unable to use the technical skills or education or work experience that they have right now.

Um, the problem in Canada right now is too many newcomers are in long term survival jobs. It’s a fact. This is something there’s two sides to the story, okay? The first one is what we’re doing, moving to Canada right now.

We’re trying to help people assimilate. Remember, we talked about it. It’s not the skills you have. It’s how you adapt yourself to the market. That is the most critical takeaway people can get today.

Because my finding is that highly intelligent, academic people that are jumping through the economic class in PR, they do not have the persistence or the skills to manage through a job hunt. Because you’re not taught how to job hunt in university.

You’re not taught emotional intelligence. You’re not taught about how infuriating it can be. When you’re ghosted after sending out 20 or 30 applications, all of this will happen in your first month or two.

In Canada, I encourage people not to send 30 applications, but it happens. People start to panic, right? So what we’re trying to avoid at moving to Canada is people saying, I want to do it my way. I don’t need to listen.

I know what I need to do. It’s okay, you’re underestimating this. But remember, you’re an immigrant in a new country. Do you want to adapt to Canada, or do you want Canada to adapt to you? So we’re very focused on giving people those skills.

We’ve tons of free resources to help people adapt. So the survival job is something that you have to be willing to take for a specific amount of time to fund your pursuit of your dream job. To give you an example, is.

If you’re working in a field where there’s lots of complexity in terms of working in that role in Canada, you may need to give yourself three to four months. It makes sense to spend the first month full time job hunting, and then you might need to say on month two, I’m going to find if it’s survival job, I’m going to find something that will keep me busy, provide a source of revenue, but also allow the flexibility to support my job hunt.

The biggest problem I always see with survival jobs is people get stuck in them because they don’t tell their employer, I’m actually a HR professional and I’m looking for a full time job. I would appreciate the flexibility to take time off for interviews, provided I give you 48 hours notice.

So that’s simple way to make sure you don’t get stuck in a survival job because it can become self fulfilling for people, which is a really good. Point, I think on that note is, look, we all need to pay rent, we all need to eat food.

Survival jobs can be a stopgap for that, but you do need to make sure you stay focused on the end goal. Rory, a question that’s coming through on the chat and I think it will kind of fall under the bracket of career versus survival job.

And I want to touch on it very briefly because I know we didn’t discuss this ourselves. The value of Canadian experience within that first fortnight, it’s something that is thrown about a lot as kind of if you don’t have it, good luck, it’s not going to happen for you.

Can you talk on it very briefly and then maybe we’ll touch back on it again in the interview process to how to circumnavigate it? Definitely. I think I have lots of tips for overcoming it in the interview process.

There is huge value to gaining Canadian experience in your field for I’m trying to think of the nicest way to say this, so. Canadians have a flawed obsession with local experience. I say flawed because you’re assuming that local experience is better than the international experience.

You have to be fair. We have to accept that there’s different ways of doing different jobs in Canada. There might be different organizations, there might be different processes, there might be different steps.

But did you general rule is that if the job is done in Canada and overseas that there’s a slight adjustment curve. You just need to understand what’s different. That’s where an informational interview comes in really handy.

Right. We refer to that a lot in the Getting Started Guide. The power of an informational interview. So that’s asking somebody for coffee or lunch who works in your field and saying, as a newcomer, I’m not sure how I stack up.

What are the risks? What are the gaps in terms of my experience? So this really comes down to the research and the actual networking aspect. Again, in terms of figuring out the gaps, it may be very powerful to go work to take a temp role in an office.

Take on some office work if you’re a professional, ideally take on some office work in the company you want to work in. Right. But gaining that experience and putting it on your resume can definitely help when you’re coming from a developing country.

Right. There is an element of we talk about have you worked in the Western world? Right? Have you worked in a Canadian style office? So that assimilation, volunteering and gaining some temporary experience can very advantageous for people in different circumstances.

Right. Because if there’s a lot of culture shock in terms of working in Canada relative to where you come from, then taking on four to six weeks of a temporary job can actually help you assimilate. That assimilate to a Canadian office.

I find the whole thing very silly about Canadian local experience, but it’s not on you as a newcomer to convince Canada that they’re wrong. This is what I keep talking about, the adapting thing. Right.

You just have to play the game and understand that it’s important to them and talk up the learning curve. Say, what advice would you give me? And just flatter the ego a little bit and just know yourself that you’re going to adapt and you’re going to show them that I can potentially do this job better right.

Over time. And that’s the opportunity. Very well said. And I suppose one of the people that you might meet before you get a chance to talk to that whole process of, like, I can do this, give me a shot, is recruiters.

And speaking for yourself as a recruiter, we want to know what we need to know about recruiters in Canada, what should be aware of how do they work, everything that we can possibly condense into three or four minutes.

Sure, there’s a lot in there, but a great recruiter can be a very useful tool in your job hunt, right. Where you can use a recruiter to lean on industry insights, you can get a company specific information, objective advice, and maybe learn about market salary.

Right. So I do stress that you need to choose your recruiter wisely because many recruiters are lazy salespeople, and depending on the wrong recruiter can be a huge error of judgment for any newcomer.

I see a lot that a newcomer comes meet with two or three recruiters, and they effectively feel that they’ve outsourced their job hunt. That’s a huge mistake. The buck stops with you if you choose the wrong recruiters that won’t find you success.