You are probably thinking that Canada would be a great place to live, work, and possibly even start a family.
However, making the decision to immigrate to a new country is a difficult decision, especially if you are not sure whether you will be able to find a job.
You need information. Uniivaa is here to help.
Are you a business owner looking to Immigrate to Canada? If so, email us at contact@uniivaa.com
The following is intended for general information only and is not intended as legal advice..
The first question anyone thinking about immigrating to Canada usually asks is ‘who will pay for my plane ticket?’ Fortunately, the Canadian government has changed the Temporary Foreign Workers Program in a way that makes it easier for you to answer that question. As well, it will be easier to determine if you will have an affordable place to live and whether or not you will get an employment contract.
In the year 2000 the singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, and rapper, Andre Lauren Benjamin, better known as Andre 3000, wrote a song, Hey Ya, for his band, OutKast. The song was recorded in December 2002 at Stankonia Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. The song incorporated elements from many different music genres such as funk and rock.
In April of 1954, in the city of Seattle, Washington, in the United States, some residents began to notice strange holes or pits on the windshields of their vehicles. As news of these strange pits spread, more and more people in Seattle began to observe similar such pits on their own cars. The presence of these pits began to expand to neighbouring counties such as Bellingham. Within a few weeks thousands of such pits were reported.
Many people believe that immigrants in Canada are increasingly being treated as a disposable commodity. Consequentially, your chances of being rejected as an immigration applicant to Canada are at an all time high.
What you may not realize is that Canada needs you more than you know. Non-permanent residents are a growing, powerful and critical force in Canadian society, and that is why Canada should be at the top of your list if you are thinking of leaving your home and working abroad.
In the early 1980s David Lee Roth was the lead vocalist for the mega rock bank, Van Halen. The band toured extensively and played many live shows. Van Halen developed a reputation for hard partying and rock diva excesses.
During its tours, the band signed contracts with promoters who were responsible for, among other things, preparation of Van Halen’s stage equipment and set up. Van Halen toured with a particularly large and complicated set of equipment that required substantial time and effort to put together properly.
How can you increase your chances of finding happiness as a new immigrant coming to Canada? Of course, having a great job is a key place to start. However, according to the latest research not all cities are created equal when it comes to happiness. With respect to happiness and cities, size does matter. But not in the way you might think.
One of the major discussion themes within the context of immigrating to Canada has been whether it is becoming increasingly difficult to qualify to immigrate to Canada. Many people seem to believe that it has become more difficult. So where do things actually stand?
No matter what you read or what anyone tells you the reality is that countries like Canada need international workers. In fact, a country like Canada needs lots of foreign workers and will continue to need people like you for the foreseeable future. The facts are undeniable. Canada has an aging population and a declining workforce. Additionally, the younger generation of Canadians are becoming increasingly more educated, leading to less and less workers in fields such as farm work, retail and restaurant help.
The question is not if there are jobs for you in Canada but rather why is it so hard to find them?
A few years ago we were traveling through Asia with a business executive from a large Canadian company. This individual was a relatively calm and simple man. It was rare to see him get upset and equally rare to see him complain about anything. However, there was one thing that he could not stand and that was the mishandling of words in the English language. For him, this issue made all the difference when considering an international candidate.
One of the questions that we are occasionally asked is whether potential immigrants from certain countries have a higher probability of getting into Canada than those from other countries. People seem to strongly believe that some countries hold an advantage over others. After all, if you look at the distribution of people coming from various countries then it is apparent that a few consistently come out on top. The short answer is that yes there is an advantage that people from certain countries have over others. However, the reasons for this are more prosaic than nefarious.
Many of you have probably heard that as of April 1, 2015 an estimated 70,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada have lost their immigration status and must leave the country. What happened?
It seems that this unfortunate situation is all part of the new Immigration Game in Canada. The situation is chaotic to say the least. However, wherever there is chaos there is also opportunity and if you are thinking about working in Canada this might just be a once in a lifetime opportunity.
The competition to immigrate to Canada is undoubtedly high. Most people will tell you that the best way to win this competition is to find a job in Canada before you apply for immigration or enter into the new Express Entry system. In fact, some might say finding a job first is the only way to win the immigration contest.
But with so many people trying to immigrate to Canada it has become clear that finding a job means figuring out a way to stand out from the crowd. A good way to do this is something we call Personal Branding.
One of the key issues facing Canadian companies wishing to hire workers from abroad is credibility. How can companies be sure that the people they are seeking to hire really have the education, background, and experience that they claim they have? Assessing credibility is difficult enough with local candidates, let alone in situations where the person is half-way across the globe in a place that the Canadian employer knows little about. Since Canadian employers have to take a bit of a leap of faith with most overseas candidates they consider, a good way in which such workers can differentiate themselves from their competing peers is by making their job applications more credible than most others.
How can credibility be improved?
At the beginning of 2015, the Canadian Government substantially revamped the skilled worker and skilled trades immigration categories. In past years it was possible to immigrate to Canada by having a particular professional background and enough points based on several criteria such as English/French language skills, years of work experience, and age, among a few other factors. Now the skilled worker program has been re-designed in such a way that you are entered into a pool of candidates from which Citizenship and Immigration Canada chooses the top candidates and offers them the ability to immigrate to Canada on a permanent basis. The way in which the program has been playing out in the first few months is that a job offer is essentially a necessary element for getting into the pool of qualifying candidates.
Canada has for a long time enjoyed a reputation for being one of the best countries in the world to live and work. Yet, every once in a while we come across an article describing the reasons why you should NOT immigrate to Canada. We look at a couple of these warnings from a light-hearted point of view and describe why your vision must be grounded in reality when immigrating to Canada.
What makes an up and coming international job market location or city? If you are even thinking about moving abroad then you should be asking yourself this question.
Of course, most people looking for an international job picture themselves living in one of the more established cities in Canada. However just like the housing market, people who are ahead of the curve usually end up the most satisfied in the long run and this is why we suggest you consider the city of Winnipeg and the province of Manitoba.
In the last decade or so Toronto has been a leader in the development of “green” roofs. Green roofs are composed of various types of plants which are kept as gardens on the roof tops of buildings. There are numerous environmental benefits to having such roofs. Within a large urban area such as Toronto, there arise numerous environmental concerns such as sewer overflows, air pollution, smog, and heat build-up. Most of these problems arise as a result of the lack of green spaces and impervious surfaces. Green roofs reduce these problems by retaining storm water runoff, improving air quality, lowering building energy use, enhancing biodiversity, and creating more visually appealing cityscapes.
What does this have to do with a job in Canada?
Creating an online profile, resume or LinkedIn account has turned into a bit of an art form. This is particularly true for candidates who are looking for work abroad. One thing that must be considered when creating an online presence or answering an online job application is the knowledge that employers and recruiters love to label candidates, especially when it comes to being labeled either a generalist or a specialist.
Is there a benefit to being seen as either a generalist or specialist? What version of you is best positioned to draw the attention of overseas employers? When it comes to international recruitment it seems that there are definite advantages to one over the other and knowing this could mean the difference between getting an overseas interview or being left out in the cold.
One of the lawyers working for Uniivaa had the following experience to share with us. A few years ago he worked on a case involving a woman, Jane, who sponsored her husband, Ian, from Ireland, to come to Canada. The case was rejected on the basis that the relationship between them was not genuine.
Jane decided to appeal the decision made by the immigration officer. The case was set for a hearing at the Immigration and Refugee Board. The night before the hearing the lawyer received a fax from the government lawyer who was devising the case against Jane. In the fax was a note indicating to look at the two documents enclosed with the fax. The first document, a marriage certificate, showed that Ian was married to Caroline. The second document, a governmental records check, indicated that Ian was still married to Caroline when Jane sponsored him as her husband. Ian eventually divorced Caroline but only well after the sponsorship application was submitted.
Imagine the following scenario. India is playing in the cricket world cup and has a key match with England coming up tomorrow. The night before the game, half of the Indian team gets a bad case of the flu and are barely able to get out of bed, let alone to play a world cup level cricket match. In order to be able to able to continue with England the following day, the Indian team needs to add three new players to its team even after substitute players are accounted for. Let us assume further that, due to a strange twist in the plot, the Indian team has to choose overseas players from Canada. In addition, they have never seen the overseas players in action. All they know about them is what is included in their CVs. One thousand Canadians applied for the position to replace the Indian players.
Canada has a new immigration beauty contest called the Express Entry System and whether you are an international student or an experienced international worker, everyone must compete on the same pitch to win a ticket to Canada.
How does that change your thinking as a person who wants to study and work in Canada? It means that finding success over time is out and the need for immediate success is the new requirement. It means that you need to assess your chances of finding a job in Canada before you apply to study in Canada, otherwise you might be wasting your time, effort and money in studying in Canada.
What do the following have in common: dry-cleaning, budget motels, doughnut shops, care giving, nail salons, and clothing/garments?
When you enter into a new country you undoubtedly face obstacles. After all, you are different from most of the people in that country. Different how? You were raised in a different cultural environment and, therefore, you probably think about things differently. You are accustomed to the laws, customs, norms, rules, traditions, and attitudes of the country that you are coming from. Much research has been done on cultural differences and it has been found that there actually are significant differences between people from different countries.
For many people all over the world, coming to Canada is a dream. It is a life changer for you, your family and for generations of your family to come. In fact, according to the Economist, there is no better place on the planet to live in than Canada. For 2015, based on a number of measures such as safety, cost and livability, the economist ranked Toronto and Montreal as the two best places in the world to live.
Yet, some people who have made it to Canada like to complain about how difficult things are in this country. They say they want to go back home. Of course, they rarely do. So why is there such a disconnect? How can Canada be the best and the most difficult country at the same time?
Here in North America there is a very famous book written by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink. Gladwell, who has become a bit of a celebrity and cultural trendsetter, put forward the idea that spontaneous and immediate decisions are as good, if not better, than carefully thought out decisions.
This idea, which he called ‘thin slicing’, validates the process of making decisions within the first few seconds of a situation whether it is an art dealer sizing up a possible forgery, a police officer evaluating a suspect, or a couple on a first date. The same can be said for overseas employers when looking at your job application.
A man has married 20 women in a small town. All of the women are still alive and none of them are divorced. The man has broken no laws. Who is the man?
In order to answer riddles such as the one above, we need to call into play outside the box creative thinking. It is a cliché but nonetheless one that is true and useful to realize: many of today’s problems require outside the box type thinking. Following convention leads merely to more of the same.
In 1990 a Stanford PhD psychology student named Elizabeth Newton conjured up an experiment. The experiment consisted of a group of people who were divided up into “tappers” and “listeners”. The role of the tappers was to choose a very well known song such as, for example, “happy birthday to you” or the national anthem. The tappers were then required to tap out the rhythm of the song on a table. The role of the listeners was to listen to the tapping and on the basis of the taps alone, to guess which song is being tapped out. The most interesting part of the experiment was that the tappers were asked in advance how often the listeners would correctly guess the song being tapped out. What were their predictions?
Every major city in the world has a local street market. Some of these markets are enormous. What is even more surprising is that the largest and most successful markets are filled with people selling the exact same thing. Whether it is flowers in Amsterdam or carpets in the Bazaar of Tabriz, one can only wonder how any market vendor can ever make a sale given that there are probably a thousand people selling the exact same thing, in the exact same place, at the exact same time. Why not go into a mall, where only one flower store or carpet seller is allowed?
The answer to this question has to do with knowing your customer and if you want to get an interview for a job position overseas you must know this one thing.
How can you increase your likelihood of getting into Canada? One easy way of potentially doubling the chances of getting into Canada is by involving your spouse.
The process for getting into Canada as a worker requires a job offer from a Canadian employer. That employer must have successfully applied for a labour market impact assessment (LMIA). An LMIA allows an employer to hire non-Canadians. In order to obtain an LMIA an employer has to prove that it was unable to find someone who is either a Canadian citizen or permanent resident to fill that particular position. There are numerous professions and industries in which there is an obvious shortage of workers.
Have you ever seen the movie Cast Away? It’s a movie about a regular guy who is trapped on a deserted island. For almost two and a half hours this regular guy does regular things like start a fire, drink water and open coconuts. By all measures it should be the most boring movie in the history of filmmaking.
Would it surprise you to learn that Cast Away made almost $430 million dollars worldwide? Cast Away had a secret ingredient named Tom Hanks and the real question is, just like Tom Hanks, do you have enough likeability?
If not then don’t worry. We are about to tell you how to become likeable enough to get that job in North America.
Imagine the following work scenario. You are a junior employee at a call centre. The call centre runs three round-the-clock shifts with 300 people working each shift. It is 8:00 am on a seemingly quiet Monday morning in late January. You and 270 of your colleagues arrive at work ready to start another week. You quickly realize that the 30 managers who work that shift are all absent. You find out that managers from the company went out for a company dinner the prior night and all got a bad case of food poisoning.
Not in a Chris Isaak kind of way, at least we hope not! No, we are talking about your overseas job interview.
There is a good chance that you will not get an overseas job if you fail to ask the employer this one essential question.
What is the question? Simple…
Back in the early 90s there was this hilariously flawed but fun movie called Mr. Baseball. The main actor in this movie was a sex symbol of the time named Tom Selleck. Selleck plays an older American baseball player who goes to Japan to prolong his career but looks ridiculous every time he tries to fit into Japanese Society. In typical Hollywood fashion, eventually Selleck realizes that in order for him to have success in this new culture he has to stay true to who he is as an American. Eventually East meets West and Selleck becomes accepted in Japan.
If you want a Job in Canada, don’t be Mr. Baseball.
In the past several years Canada has admitted several hundred thousand temporary overseas workers. There are over twenty thousand temporary workers from top source countries such as the Philippines and Mexico working in Canada in any given year. Each year countless new applications from temporary overseas workers are submitted. Of those submitted, a good number are rejected.
What are the major factors that distinguish a successful work permit application to Canada from a rejected one?
It is quite amazing how many people hide the fact that they used to or still own and run a business when applying for an overseas job. At Uniivaa, we see this first hand especially when working with international candidates who have run their own companies.
In some cases, we hear from international business owners that they do not want the potential employer to know they failed at running a business. Other times we are told that employers think that a person who has run a business for any significant length of time will not be able to take orders from a boss.
Most people work, at least partly, in order to earn an income. What are the ways in which you can increase your income? There are some strongly held assumptions about how you can increase your income: work harder, worker longer hours, stay with a company for many years, among a few others. The thing that these approaches all have in common is that you should put your head down and endure for as long as is necessary in order for an employer to suddenly give you a raise. In other words, you take a drawn-out and largely passive approach. While this can have some chance of success it may take half a lifetime before anything meaningful materializes.
Getting a job and starting a new life overseas is not an easy task. Every year, millions of people from countries all over the world dream about building a new life for themselves and their families in safe and prosperous countries such as Canada and the United States of America. The competition is fierce and the process can be frustrating.
Many people within and outside Canada who have little or no “Canadian work experience” assume that this is necessarily a conspicuous deficiency and some even seem to believe that it is a fatal one. This assumption, however, is false. Skilled workers who are influenced by this false assumption and who are searching for a job in Canada will necessarily be unable to generate many good options for themselves. Not only is a lack of Canadian experience not a deficiency; if positioned properly, it can actually be a major asset. How can this possibly be so?
Based on our experiences of working with a number of Canadian employers and international job candidates, we have composed a list of three tips that we have found to be particularly useful when applying for jobs in Canada.
What are the key reasons why some skilled workers from outside Canada face barriers to getting a job in Canada? While it is impossible to precisely narrow in on and lay out all the reasons, we will focus here on one reason that we have encountered most frequently while working with numerous Canadian employers.
Getting into Canada is one thing. Finding a job here as a doctor, lawyer, or engineer is quite another challenge. You have worked long and hard to become a professional and we definitely do not want you to end up being a taxi driver!
A little while ago we met an internationally trained engineer who really wanted to find a job in Canada. He knew that in order to practice as a licensed engineer he had to eventually get accredited by the professional association in Canada. Unfortunately, what he had heard about the process was disconcerting.
Every year thousands of highly skilled international professionals get jobs in Canada. Take, for example, engineers. As of 2010, Statistics Canada (Zietsma, 2010) estimated that engineers account for over half of the numbers of professionally trained immigrants to Canada. This means that a very large number of foreign or internationally trained engineers are entering into Canada.
Michael is an immigration lawyer who does immigration work for some of uniivaa’s users and discusses his experience with a particular client who employs several overseas workers. For purposes of solicitor-client confidentiality, the identity of the client cannot be revealed. The client is a small Ontario-based company that offers web design and software services to its clients.
We all know that Manny Pacquiao is rich. In fact he is super rich, famous, beloved, and is one of the world’s most endearing and successful rags to riches stories.
Who would not want to be like him? Leave home, find fortune and glory, and become a hero. However, the question for you is whether moving to a new country will lead to Manny type millions, or will it all turn out to be a mirage?
Starting on January 1, 2015, you will have the chance to win entry into Canada within six months!
It’s called the Express Entry system, but as always there is a catch. Entering into Canada under the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP), the Federal Skilled Trades Program (FSTP) and even the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) now means entering
John, a man who first came to Canada from the Philippines in September 2006, is 5’4. He is 35 years old and currently lives in Etobicoke, a suburb of Toronto. He often jokes about his height and how it actually put him on the path to fulfill his Canadian dream. He is very friendly and quick-witted. At uniivaa we got to know John through one of the employers who recruits overseas workers through our site.
A Canadian construction company located in Toronto, Ontario, recently contacted us requesting assistance with finding roofers and electricians. Management at the company spent several months trying to find people in Canada to fill the positions. They advertised in numerous publications which have a nation-wide reach. Despite their efforts they were not able to find qualified persons to fill the positions.
There are numerous benefits entailed in hiring overseas labour. Oftentimes workers from abroad are substantially less costly than local workers. The cost savings can range from 25-75% depending on the particular domain within which the workers comes from. This, of course, assumes that the work is performed overseas. If the workers are brought in then employers must abide by local wage standards.
International workers seeking to immigrate to Canada on either a temporary or permanent basis and who have been granted a job offer have a substantial advantage relative to those without one. In addition to making it far more likely to get immigration status, a job offer also makes it far easier to start a new life in Canada. Those who commence their new life in Canada with a job offer in hand can,
Companies are in the business of making money. This is a truism and, yet, something that is often ignored by potential employees seeking employment with particular companies. The adoption of a job search strategy which takes into account the self-interested motivations of companies can produce surprising and often amazing results. What are some ways in which this can be done?
Find a Job in Canada. Immigrate to Canada. Do you want to get in contact with companies who hire people from your specific country? If so, email us at contact@uniivaa.com
The above-mentioned is intended for general information only and is not intended as legal advice.