Moving Between Countries? 450
An anonymous reader writes "In six months' time, I am packing up and moving from Australia (Melbourne) to Canada (Vancouver). I'm a qualified network engineer. What I want to know is, what sort of quirks and tricks I am going to have to get used to in the Canadian job market? I'm used to Australian recruiters, and all the hoops you have to jump through, but Canada may have different hoops. I've tried contacting recruiters directly for information but they don't really give out much, as I am not actually in the country yet and therefore not worth their time. Is anyone willing to share their experiences on making the big move from country to country?"
I work in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
What I can say is that I`ve found Canadian companies want to see work samples rather than long lists of certifications. Not really sure what would constitute a work sample in your field though.
References are also very important here (and probably there as well). Generally employers want to talk to previous employers. Seeing as how that would be difficult due to timezones and long distance fees, having a few written letters of reference before you leave might be a good idea. Email might work as well.
Also there tends to be a defacto job posting site for every province, where most of the jobs in the area will be posted. Here in Nova Scotia, it is CareerBeacon. Finding out what your areas job posting site of choice is, is probably a good first step.
Re:I work in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Heh, that's interesting. In the UK, it's almost the opposite; an employer judges you based on CV, interview, previous work, and maybe qualifications; often, references aren't even followed up on, or they are checked after the job is offered to make sure you're not hiding some catastrophic thing. I think this is more sensible, too. A previous employer's reference is pretty worthless; they might make up nasty stuff because they didn't like you leaving, or make up good stuff to get you off their hands if they think you're crap.
Re:always, Always, ALWAYS, talk to a lawyer... (Score:5, Informative)
You're missing a 0 from that.
For the record, I've moved countries, and I found all the information that was needed by talking to my destination's embassy in my own country.
They were happy to help, send everything via email and also answered my questions via email.
For more general information, and social stuff I found http://www.expatica.com/ [expatica.com] to be a good resource. Googling for country-specific forums also found a place to find information which wasn't so obvious - like good local plumbers and flat shares.
My move was UK to Netherlands so it was easier as far as visas were confirmed (don't need one), but harder because of the language difference (which I've now solved by learning).
Be Canadian first. (Score:5, Informative)
Canadian work culture is different, and was more or less of shock to me. If you could say that I am wearing Canadian underwear, the probability of getting job is better than if you say, I have designed supercomputers in Australia. I know I am exaggerating, but it is not too far from reality.
One of the best way is to start is applying directly to companies, instead of recruiting agents, as they would consider you less marketable lacking Canadian experience (god knows WTF it is.) You will wasting too much of your time if you believe that agents can help you.
Second important thing is to start working and build your credibility, which could come from working somewhere either voluntarily or accepting job that was not your profession in Australia. You will need to be patient to get job what exactly you are looking for.
Third suggestion is to start acquiring some academic qualification or certifications in Canada. It helps.
Fourth suggestion is to start looking for social services network of your own community. Surprisingly, Canada has pretty good social network of helpful people. They would guide you a lot better than anybody else.
I used to tell a lot of jokes to new immigrants, and would love to share with you. Hang on.
Re:always, Always, ALWAYS, talk to a lawyer... (Score:5, Informative)
Minor varriations in realestate rules exist, but those are both provincial and municipal level things, so just any lawyer wouldn't do. The federal government has education programs and resources online as well, however those would mostly be of help from someone not from a Common Law country.
@OP: There is no Work Choices legislation in Canada. Oh, and learn the slang. No-one calls it a 'ute' here, it's a pickup.
Been there (Melb), done that (relocated) (Score:5, Informative)
It was a lot harder than I thought (Score:4, Informative)
Went from Adelaide (Australia) to Toronto (Canada). British citizen, work visa, Masters Degree, years of work history -> not a fricken response to my resume for months.
The friends we made while there explained that they don't trust a foreigner to understand what it's like to work in Canada until you already have... makes it tricky
An Australian resume is like a brief bio in some ways, educational and work history, what you're now looking for etc. etc. Mine was often 3 pages long here and worked well. In Canada it's a 1 page resume or it's straight to the round filing cabinet. Yes, they'll barely know anything about you, but this way you have a better chance of getting to an interview, where they'll spend the first 10 minutes asking the sort of questions your Australian resume would have answered!
Once you've got the first job, the rest is easy. I started back at level 1 help desk, but jumped 5 levels of management to Director in 2 years. The O/S experience sure as hell helped once back in Australia too. I've tripled the salary I earned before I left Oz only 5 years ago now.
Oh, and socially they'll love ya. Us Aussie's rock, especially in Canada.
Cheers.
Better talk to foreigners living there (Score:4, Informative)
Speaking from bitter experience, I have received more than a bit of misleading, and sometimes patently false, information from the Greek embassy. Still, somewhat in the embassy staff's defense, no one in the twisted bureaucracy here in Greece actually knows for certain what the rules and regulations are for various areas of public life. All I am saying is that it is better to go to the source and talk to foreigners who actually have experience living in the country in question.
Also, do not underestimate the execution of the actual move. Packing, shipping, selling stuff, deciding what to keep, making sure that all the formalities with respect to visas, pets (if any), etc. are followed, is a real nightmare, even with the best of planning. Whatever you do, make sure that you have a place to stay and people to help you in the destination country before you move.
Re:It was a lot harder than I thought (Score:3, Informative)
Getting even 2 minutes of face time with an employer (doesn't even have to be the hiring / HR person or the prospective manager) will give them a chance to realise that even Canadians can in fact speak/understand "Australian", and we don't all wear Akubras and shark's teeth around our necks.
Cheers.
same move 3 months ago (Score:5, Informative)
Most important things though
1. Get your qualifications recognised. I'm currently still undergoing getting my accounting qualifications recognised, it's a lengthy process. I have my accounting degree done by these guys - http://www.bcit.ca/ices/ however I'm waiting upon the chartered accountancy guys to do their end to continue my studying. They requested a ICES recognition (they being the chartered accounting institute of BC), so it seems a good place to start.
2. Work visa, I am currently on a 2 year working holiday that has very few restrictions and was rather easy to get (took all of 3 days). All acquired via post and online at here - http://www.whpcanada.org.au/ Took me forever to get through customs in Canada, my stuff was stamped off straight away once I got to the front of the line, but I came in just after a couple of plane loads of Chinese Immigrants. So don't trust the "express" check-in
3. I had a few issues with a stopover flight into the US. Basically I needed to get a US visa for the entire time I'm in Canada just to enter the country (which was for a 2 hour stopover where I had no intention of leaving the airport). It involved meeting the US consulate for an interview and I wound up just changing my flight to fly via Auckland (air kiwi fly direct from Auckland, air canada now fly direct from Sydney). If you fly air kiwi, I highly recommend the lamb
4. As an accountant, I probably had more work issues in some regards (different laws), less in others (demand for accountants). Definitely apply directly to employers, I got stuff all help from employment agencies. Applying to companies I got a lot of "get back to us when you're in the country" replies, however I found work before I actually arrived in the country anyway (however, it was through someone I already knew here who worked at an accounting firm). I think you shouldn't have too much hassle, maybe you will finding the exact job you want, but demand for skilled employment (especially in business and IT) is high, there's plenty of work around and large employers are smart enough not to worry about where you come from, just the skills you have.
5. Check out the work laws, as mentioned. You don't get public holidays in your first 30 days with an employer (I didn't work Good Friday, fortunately my overtime I'd been working covered it), you only get 2 weeks annual leave, 5 days sick leave, etc, etc.
6. Get setup when you get here. Go to a bank and get a bank account (take your passport and any other kind of ID you have, Aussie stuff worked for me). http://www.hsbc.ca/1/2/en/personal/international-services/arriving-in-canada - HSBC have quite a range of services for new-comers and non-residents. Get a Social Insurance Number, go to Service Canada (they have a zillion offices, like Centrelink, basically) and you get it on the spot. You need one to work anywhere. Get a phone too, getting a prepaid one is easy. Getting anything on credit can be more difficult, but I haven't really gotten into that
7. And a whole heap of small things. Finding vegemite is a bitch. Most things you buy have a price on them that is BEFORE tax and you'll always wind up with a tonne of change. People are wrong about it being hard to drive on the opposite side of the road. It rains really, really hard in Vancouver sometimes, however they have the sky train, which is cool. It's as pretty as hell here as well.
8. Shit I forgot, get an international drivers licence before you leave, you can get it from RACV, takes 5 minutes and costs $20 or something. I'm not entirely sure on the legality of it though, it's meant to be 1 year, but I've heard since getting here it's only 3 months for residents. Look at getting a drivers licence here eventually, I've never been pulled over to really find out. Don't buy Ameri
Re:Recruiters in Australia (Score:5, Informative)
I have found that no recruiters are ex-technical people. Some may have had lacky roles in technical companies before leaving but none I have ever dealt with, either as an employer or potential employee, knew more than the latest manager babble words.
In my last position I was tasked with finding qualified Unix engineers, programmers, sysadmins. We got zillions of resumes from people who were... well... useless. CVs full of "XP this and Vista that and Microsoft this and web2.0 that" came in but only two with any real skill. Half of the ones the recruiters sent in were basically non-computer people who filled in "I can use Microsoft blah" and got put in the "computer jobs" bin.
A resume full of buzzwords will get you through recruiters but it won't get you very far if the people looking are technical themselves.
The best advice that was ever given to me when considering an O/S job was to actually get on a plane and spend as much time there as you can. See the sights, the neighbourhoods and talk to the locals. Walk into recruiters and give them your resume; tell them you're thinking of moving to the area in the next 6 months; they'll get it out there because they get paid their cut. If you have the money and the leave at your current position do just that.
Also, try and get a decent job now. A lot of employers are happy about covering your moving costs if they think you're going to be a good long term hire. That's a two-edged sword. If you get a job that pays for you to move you might be contracted to stay there for a minimum period with a costly exit clause.
Re:I'm in Australia (Adelaide) Looking to move cou (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I work in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
> stuff to get you off their hands if they think you're crap.
In the UK references are usually just to confirm that you worked there, with perhaps a mention of how much time you were off sick. If an employer said anything bad about you - no matter how true - they would be liable for claims of libel. It's just not worth the hassle - you're leaving, so just draw a line under it and move on; it makes no difference to them if you get a job elsewhere or not. Ditto for saying very good things about an employee - if you are shit in your new job, your new employee could sue the old one for lying/exaggerating etc. Generally a new employer just wants to ensure you're not lying to cover up gaps in your employment history because they want someone who is up to speed, not someone who's done a little SQL 3 years ago but has forgotten the syntax etc.
As somebody who hires tech people in Canada ... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a development manager and hire programmers and IT people in Toronto ...
I wouldn't worry too much about getting Canadian designations or education, Canadians are used to hiring Eastern Europeans, Indians and Chinese talent and know how to deal with differences in education.
Do document what you did and what you can do in resume. Keep it to two pages unless you have 10+ years of experience. Do list specific technologies you work with and relative skill level in each. When you list designations, make sure they are either the same in Canada or explain what they are.
If you are using your employer to move to Canada, I would be careful to go with a legit company. You might want to use a headhunter for that reason. There are many headhunters that are used to dealing with immigration issues. The hiring company usually the headhunter's fees not the job seeker. If you find a headhunter that is charging you a fee run away unless it is for specific services (such as immigration aid).
I wouldn't waste money hiring a lawyer unless you get a job offer that has an employment contract containing lots of restrictions. Canada has fairly good labour laws. Be careful about signing contracts that take away too many rights upon termination.
Vancouver job market (Score:4, Informative)
http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/ [craigslist.ca]
Seriously.
One other address you may find useful: This can be helpful with getting your place furnished while you're waiting to actually have money.
http://www.freecycle.org/group/CA/British%20Columbia/Vancouver [freecycle.org]
And
Re:I work in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest lack in business is communications skills, not programming skills. Where do you think the unreasonable deadlines, the feature creep, the death marches, the zombie projects that the undead are condemned to toil on come from? And it's not "all management's fault." Everyone in the chain has to take some blame, by not being able to effectively communicate why something is a bad idea, or the necessity of feature triage, or the need for more "quiet think time" as opposed to banging out LOCs a mile a minute.
Also, to answer the original posters' question - the definitive place to look for jobs in Canada: http://www.jobbank.gc.ca/Intro_en.aspx [jobbank.gc.ca] - Canadian government web site where employers post job offers, it also supplies tools for job applicants, info, etc ...
Re:I work in Canada (Score:3, Informative)
Libel (in England & Wales) is a defamation made in a written or permanent media form. E.g. writing a reference for someone that states "they do drugs at work all the time". If that was true (and could be shown to be true/fair comment) then you'd get off when the junkie takes you to court.
Slander (again, in England & Wales, ymmv) would be if a person said it, but didn't write it. There's a fair bit of legal debate as to whether a recording of speech constitutes slander (since it was written down, ergo it is "fleeting") or libel (since now nothing spoken need be "fleeting" ever again, see youTube!). At the moment the courts tend to hold spoken as slander written as libel no matter what medium it is stored.
Course it makes no odds to me at all, since I live in Scotland, where, like a lot of civil-law based countries (as opposed to common-law based ones like England, Canada, Austraila, the USA etc.) there is no such thing as libel or slander.
It's called "defamation" and applies wherever a person or their character has been defamed to their negative detriment. Again, however, truth is a defence (called veritas in Scotland), as is privilege (hence why MP's can call Scientology whatever they want in the House of Commons without getting sued to death; not sure if this extends to the Scottish Parliament now).
However, I am NOT a lawyer, so if you depend on any of this for legal advice, not my fault!
Re:I work in Canada (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I work in Canada (Score:4, Informative)
What an employer wants to see depends on the employer. The BFIs (Nortel,
While smaller employers used whatever process they feel comfortable with. Which could be as little as the initial interview or requesting that you take a programming test. I suggest that you be ready for whatever they could through at you.
Speaking from experience of moving from one country to another, the change in culture is, or was for us more difficult to adapt to. While we had an excellent credit rating in Canada, we unknown to the major credit agencies and as such getting loans for cars or a house was very difficult. We had to purchase our car using cash from the proceeds from the sale of our home. Given that we moved here ~ten years ago and the Canadian dollar was not where it is today, we lost a significant chunk of money due to exchange rates.
Health care. Luckily for you, Canada has universal health care so you won't need to worry on that front. While hear in the U.S. health care is provided by the employer, if and only he feels like offering it. Having come from a country where health care is universal, being so dependent on your employer for health care makes you think twice about changing jobs.
Immigration laws and how they impact your employment is another issue. Given that I'm from Canada I'm not knowledgeable on Canadian immigration rules, but here is the U.S., once you've started the 'Green Card' process with one employer, it is difficult to impossible to transfer that petition to another employer. Our petition took five plus year to complete. And in those five years, my spouse could not work since she was on a dependents visa and I had to endure a very abusive boss. Something I would not have endured if we were back in Canada.
Education. Does the education system in the target country meet your cultural expectations? Here in the U.S. there are a many hot button issue. Namely, Evolution Theory, prayers in school and sex education, to name a few. If you have kids then you may want to find out what they are teaching in the Vancouver schools systems.
Don't under estimate the time and distance traveling between Vancouver and Sydney. I've done the L.A. to Sydney flight and it takes ~14 hours, plus a crossing of the international date line. Which means you'll loose a day, but you get it back on the return trip. Traveling that distance with small children could be difficult. Also, the cost of the trip can only increase with the cost of crude oil. Seeing family and friends will be less frequent since you really need to take two weeks off when traveling such distances.
Climate. Never thought I would miss winter! Southern California has the Fire, mudslide, and earthquake seasons! Vancouver winters are mild but wet.
Lastly, small creature comforts. Things that you enjoy at home that won't be available at your new place. Doughnuts! Too quote Homer Simpson. Krispy Kremes are no Tim Hortons. Favourite television programs, This Hour has Twenty-Two Minutes, Royal Canadian Airfarce, Saturday Night at The Movies, etc. Watching the Olympics from a different countries perspective! The only time we see Canadian athletes is when there are Americans participating in the event. Also, which of you electronic gadget will you need to replace? TV broadcast signals use NTSC encoding, in North America. Soon to go digital. As such you TV may be useless. Same could be true for any DVD or VCR. Electrical systems. We use 120/240 (110/220) volts. Got adapters?
Thing to think about.
Re:same move 3 months ago (Score:3, Informative)
7a. The transit service (including skytrain) is great if you live or work in the downtown core. The transit service is OK if you live and work in the same suburb of the city. The transit service is complete and utter garbage if you live and work in different suburbs of the city. It takes me 25 minutes to drive to work, and 90 minutes (estimated) to take the bus. The buses are often filled so you have to wait for the next bus and hope that its empty.
7b. There's two seasons in Vancouver. Winter, and construction season. Vancouver drivers are special. As soon as it stops raining and it becomes sunny they forget how to drive in the sun, and then take about a day or so to purge the rainy driving skills from their memory and load in the sunny driving skills. Then when it rains the same thing happens. Really messes up the roads when we get one day of sun because it seems there is no way of stopping the process. Sometimes we get snow, and forget trying to get to work ontime in snow. Vancouver is a hilly city, and people forget where their gas pedals are when there's snow, they often can't make it up the hills because they're go to slow on the flat.
7c. If you know where you're going to work, do your best to find a place to live near it. My first job out of University was great for that. I just had to walk across the street to the sky train, and walk across the street again after getting off of it. Vacancies in Vancouver for renting is relativly high right now because we've had a big building boom the last few years. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is you can find a place to live easily enough. The bad thing is that owners are expecting to pay off their mortgages and don't pay attention to market realities and have higher prices going towards the downtown. Most newer construction is terrible since there's a shortage of skilled workers and the condos are just thrown up, the workers don't car because they can easily move to another job. Downtown you can expect to pay over 2-3 dollars a square foot per month for rent. The farther out you can expect to pay around a dollar a square foot. My numbers are about 5 years out of date, so they might be low. But the father out you go the more you'll have to pay for transit or gas.
7d. Owning and maintaining a car is getting very expensive in Vancouver. Insurrance for 'good' drivers (those who haven't been caught in an accident) is around $1,400 a year. Gas pricing is about $1.38 a litre right now, a family sedan can cost around $45 a week if you have to drive it 30 minutes each way to get to work. Its those hills again, they really suck up the gas, getting a hybrid will help because of the regenative breaking, but again you're going to pay more for the hybrid. Our lovely provincial government is adding a carbon tax on at the begining of July, and gas prices are going up. I've heard anywhere between $1.50 and $2.00 by the end of summer. The nice thing is that the US border is close, and their gas is around $4.00 a gallon the last I checked. Works out to around $1.00 a litre so its starting to get worth it to go to the states to pick up gas, if you have a NEXUS card.
In other words, plan where you're going to live, and plan where you're going to work, it'll save you time, money and stress. Someone once told me that Vancouver's infrastructure was planned in the 60s for the city it was expected to be in the 70s, but the plan was underestimated at that time, and all the changes since then have been stop gap measures. The bridges are usually jammed during the rush. We have 9 major bridges connecting the out lying areas to Vancouver, and some more bridges connecting Downtown. They are building 1 major bridge right now, effectively increasing capacity by 1/9th, which isn't much when you see how jammed the bridges are currently. There's rumors of twinning one of the major bridges but it probably won't go anywhere. Hwy 10 which is the
"Engineer" (Score:3, Informative)
You're in luck.... (Score:2, Informative)
There's a high demand for qualified IT workers in Vancouver at the moment. Someone here suggested skipping the recruiters and applying to corporations directly; I have to strongly disagree with this, especially since you'll be immigrating here. Recruiters are fairly straight forward here, little fuss compared to the Aussie recruiters I had experience with. (And you're right, they won't pay any attention to you until you are actually in the country). I would highly recommend the following recruiters:
TRS Contract Consulting (www.trscontract.com)
TEK Systems (http://www.teksystems.ca/locations/Canada/British-Columbia/Vancouver.aspx)
And check out these job sites:
workopolis.com
monster.ca
Best of luck!
Re:I'm in Australia (Adelaide) Looking to move cou (Score:3, Informative)
It's largely the non-Union Jack portion of the Australian flag, so associated with Australian identity. Unfortunately as the GP alluded, the neo-nazi like folks being attracted to such causes in Australia is growing slowly at the moment as we struggle with integrating Muslims, Africans, Asians etc in a western world that has seen neo-cons rise to power.. Hopefully the change of political climate here in Aus, and a change of Whitehouse in the US might help reverse some of the damage of the last 10 years.
---Q
Re:I work in Canada (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I work in Canada (Score:4, Informative)
There is no 'definitive place' to look for jobs in Canada, as each region has their own quirks, peculiarities, and preferences. The biggest site I know of for actual job postings (many of them highly technical, like Linux kernel development) is T-Net Jobs [bctechnology.com]. That said, I've found all of my jobs through Craigslist, oddly enough (and I make pretty good money), with one exception (where a recruiter called me for job that I didn't apply for through them).
Honestly, a lot of the local companies that are recruiting talent (as opposed to 'hiring employees') can be found on Craigslist. Same goes for apartments and cheap couches.
Re:I work in Canada (Score:3, Informative)
It's improved in the last couple of years. You might want to look at it. Sure, there's still the drudge-work and low-level stuff, but there's also some gold among the 53,000 jobs currently being advertised. There's also info about the requirements for non-citizens, which the original poster will need.
Re:From someone who has done it... (Score:3, Informative)
The 'grace period' in Canada is three months, during which time they can decide that they don't want you and let you go without notice. After that, you're a full-on employee, so they have to give you notice and have some kind of a reason. Six months might be something that an employer can add in an employment agreement, but I've never seen it.
Since coming to Vancouver in August, I've had several jobs - I've just started my sixth - and a few more interviews. The first was Starbucks - just to pay the bills while I was looking for something more solid. The longer I was here, the more technical the jobs and more reputable the company. My last job was for the Coastal Health Authority, the province's largest employer. My first job (after Starbucks) was a half-assed tech company in Gastown that doesn't recognize the value of their employees or their time.
Be entirely prepared to end up talking to companies that survive despite their management, not because of it. A job can sound fantastic until you start talking about benefits or salary - at which point you may well hear an offer that makes you wish you'd asked over the phone. I had one interview with a company (which took me an hour to get to) that lasted all of ten minutes, after waiting in their lobby for ten minutes. The end of the interview was when I asked about salary range, and was told 'low end, $30k... high end, $32k'. This is potentially a living wage in Vancouver, if you live alone and commute for an hour. Potentially.
I've also had interviews that I thought went really well, for positions for which I was a good match, and was told 'We'll let you know'. Most of the time, they'll give a timeframe (since I usually ask by when they're planning to make their decision), usually 'within a week'. Usually I never hear from these companies again, until I e-mail them to ask how things are going and when I can expect a decision, to which they generally reply 'We've decided to go with someone else'. It seems that courtesy, for many companies, just isn't on the books.
Don't be afraid to say 'no' to an unreasonable salary or an uninteresting position. I had a job offer for Canada's largest independent record label, which manages or records most of my favourite artists. I went in, talked to the IT manager, he was impressed by what I knew. Called me back a week later with an offer that I declined. I told him that I appreciated his offer, but it wasn't worth leaving a company I was comfortable with for such a small raise. He called me back a few days later with a substantially higher offer. Good companies will do business this way.
Most importantly, don't get discouraged. You'll see a lot of Microsoft jobs, with inexperienced monkeys getting snapped up for them. It might take you months before you land a good job, or you might have one before you even get here. In the end, the only reason I've gotten the job I have (which, so far, is fantastic) is because I didn't give up, and I didn't settle. I've felt bad for leaving one company to go work for another, then leaving that one two months later, but you have to do what's right for you, and good employers will understand.