Job search as a new Immigrant

On several requests from my friends, I am penning down my immigration story from India to Canada. This blog is focused more towards job search strategies. My wife, Pooja and I landed in Toronto on Sept 13th, 2018 and both of us started our permanent jobs in October, 2018 in our respective profiles. 

Pooja and I had first thought of immigrating back in July 2017 and since then it was never looking back. After several considerations, we finalized Canada and gave our IELTS exam. With a bit of preparation and luck, I got beyond the golden score of 8777 LRWS in first attempt and then it was just about document collection, submission and waiting for our Permanent Residency approval. After getting it, we took 3 months break to travel South East Asia for a month and spend rest of the time traveling and living with our family and friends in India. In July 2018, we booked our tickets for Sept 13th from Bengaluru to Toronto as this was the most common entry point for immigrants. In August, we started looking for job postings in Linkedin and Indeed and started targeting the kind of profiles we will be interested in. I have Sales/ Marketing background and Pooja is in Finance. During the process we realized no matter how close your profile was a match to a job requirement, it was very difficult to get a call from recruiters unless you have Canadian phone number in your resume. It’s mainly because if any recruiter shortlists your resume, their first step will be a phone call to you to schedule a face to face meeting in next 2-3 days. So, we decided to spend our time in India to refine our resume and Linkedin profile as per Canada standards. There is no Canada standard as such but it’s all about using the right words and language to get employer’s attention. The best way to do this is to pick the most common lines from the job description of the profiles you are targeting in Linkedin, Indeed and other job websites and customize it to your profile with numbers to highlight results and achievements.

The day we landed in Toronto, we got a local number and updated our Linkedin profile and resume with local number and address. Day 2 we started bombarding our resume to at least 20 matching job postings per day. Simultaneously, we also started looking for job consulting agencies specialized in our field. We started connecting to them and sending a general message to schedule call or meeting. More than 70% of the job market is hidden and never gets posted online. These will be known only to company employees or these job agencies. After 2 weeks we started getting calls for interview and were offered permanent roles in our respective fields. To summarize my few tips/ advice from our experience:

·        Update your Linkedin profile and Resume before/ on the day you land in Canada

·        Connect to online job agencies and recruiters via Linkedin/ Websites along with applying for jobs directly 

·        Survival jobs are ok but in our opinion it only distracts from our main goal as they can take a lot of your time and energy

·        Don’t just apply for 2-3 jobs per day and sit and wait for calls, rather be enthusiastic and research/ apply for 5-6 hours daily. YES, you read that right, remember “Finding a job is a full time job”

·        Don’t get demotivated because you don’t have Canadian education/ experience. Focus on the skills and experience you have and can use in the job here

·        Network through job fairs, agencies helping new immigrants and through other social events

·        During phone/ physical interview, be passionate when you talk about your experience and use words like I/me/my instead of we/us/our. They really want to hear what you did and not your team or company

·        Highlight and sell your skills, educational institution or any global company you have worked in

·        And finally, do your homework and research about company through their website. This sounds very niche but really worked for me. I was being called for a Sales Manager profile and they found me unsuitable due to lack of Canadian experience. I had explored company’s website and during my first interview with President, suggested ways to improve company’s digital presence and marketing and used examples from my experience of doing the same. Next day, I got a call from the company that they really liked me but not for the profile I was being initially called for. They created a new job role, wrote the job description based on our discussion and later called for 2 more interviews along with the Director and offered me the role of Digital Sales and Marketing Manager. Companies are always open to hire if they see that you can help them in any way.

Please feel free to get in touch with me or Pooja if you need any details or further advice on anything mentioned above.

Stay Positive and Enthusiastic! Life is not about what happens to us but all about how we react to it. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.