In this article i’m going explain step by step if it’s actually possible to get a job in canada from your home country, and if so how you can go about in doing it, and how you can actually go about getting an interview along with 15 simple tips that will help you get a job in canada.
Yes it very possible to secure a job in Canada while you’re still in your home country by following this tips step by step
1.NETWORKING
Increase your networking and references in Canada as the first piece of advice. I can’t stress enough how crucial networking is for landing a job in Canada, even from where you are. This includes using online resources like LinkedIn or even your family or friends there as references. In Canada, networking and establishing relationships and connections are the primary means of obtaining employment. Also, be sure that your networking extends beyond the area in which you are employed; it should be a continuous effort even after you land a job in Canada. Suppose you are a member of the data analyst team. You should establish relationships and network with experts in all pertinent industries, including marketing, operations, data mining, etc. because you never know when there’ll be an opening in their department that you’ll probably need at the time, and you can even piggyback on their networking and connections. If they have any references for a position relevant to your title.
2. CANADIAN WORK EXPERIENCE
Many of you may be asking weather Canadian experience is genuinely required and weather it has a significant impact on the selection process. No! Let me reassure you that while having Canadian experience is useful, it is not at all necessary to land a job in Canada. The majority of Canadian workers want to give newcomers a fair shot, so you can be hired based on your soft skills and prior work experience from your home country. However, it’s crucial that you understand the Canadian know-how and terminologies used in Canada rather than your home country and adapt yourself as well as your soft skills and technical know-how based on Canadian requirements.
In many instances, you may up skill yourself to make up for a lack of Canadian experience, and if you put in the effort to develop your technical know-how and certifications, you’ll be offered jobs that aren’t even open to applicants with Canadian experience.
3. JOB FLEXIBILITY
Another thing I would strongly advise is that if you are moving to Canada for the first time, you should be ready to be adaptable to the job title and pay range that are offered to you. Don’t feel guilty about accepting a position that pays less than what you did in your home country. In Canada, there is a lot of competition, so you shouldn’t be too specific about the job title you want. The most crucial thing is to expand your Canadian experience, thus you should instead concentrate on making relationships and applying for open employment.
4. LINKEDIN PROFILE
Building up your LinkedIn profile should be your top priority, long before moving to Canada and even after starting your first job. This is because LinkedIn is currently the best professional networking site, and if you know how to use and take advantage of it, it can help you find your dream job much sooner than other sites like JobBank, Monster, Indeed, etc. Your display photo, your professional credentials, your schooling, and your work experience facts should all be kept professional on your LinkedIn page.You can also let recruiters know that you’re open to job chances on LinkedIn by using the “open to opportunities” option. Additionally, you can filter out your results.
A further benefit is that you can filter out your current employer from seeing this, so your boss, manager, or immediate supervisor won’t know that you’re actually looking for another job. There is also an option on LinkedIn called “open to opportunities” where you can let potential recruiters know that you’re open for job opportunities. You have the choice to keep this a secret from your present employer and any other businesses you choose.
Make sure your job title, such as product manager, project manager, sales director, business analyst, etc. is present in your linkedin headline to boost the likelihood that recruiters will see your profile. As a result, your title should read “worked as a business analyst at XYZ company for X number of years.” This is because recruiters utilize the job title when searching for specific profiles on LinkedIn when there are openings for such roles. Therefore, if you don’t include your job title in your headline, recruiters may not see your profile when looking for candidates for open openings.
The first thing recruiters do when they open your profile is look at your previous and current work experience. If your work experience only lists the title and number of years worked, you will undoubtedly be passed over. Your LinkedIn profile should show detailed, comprehensive work experience for all of your jobs. Instead, make a list of all the projects you worked on along with a thorough explanation of the duties and skills associated with each previous position you held.
5. EMPLOYER RECOMMENDATION
It’s recommended to get a positive recommendations from your previous employers, Assuming you’ve worked with a specific manager, or a director, on a particular project together and they really liked your work, it’ll be really helpful if you can get that person to write your recommendation on linkedin specifying exactly what they liked about you handling that particular project, and sort of highlight a few skills of yours that were particularly useful for that project.
This makes your recommendations look really genuine and organic, and recruiters are always looking out for such organic recommendations, these recommendations help increase the credibility of your profile.
6. LINKEDIN PREMIUM PLAN(Option)
A helpful tip i can give you here is to opt for a linkedin premium plan, that adds a lot of value to your profile the first month is completely free and after that it’s around some $ per month, although you’ll have to pay after the first month linkedin premium is really worth, because it offers valuable additional features like, in-mail messages, advanced search options, and additional results in job search. For example many users, especially at the executive level, maintain privacy settings that restrict users from connecting with them, as they receive thousands of linkedin connection requests each day.
At such times premium features like in-mail messages, help facilitate connections with such people and will help you build organic networking from your profile. moreover recruiters are more likely to respond to a linkedin in-mail message rather than a traditional email, apart from this you’ll get access to a lot of hidden insights about companies job roles, salary packages, and a lot of other relevant information the main thing to remember, is not treat your linkedin profile like your other social media profiles, like facebook, or instagram and strictly keep it professional.
7. RESUME
The next big thing to prepare is your resume. HR Recruiters or hiring managers get 1000’s of resumes every single day, and it’s absolutely impossible to go through each and every one in a single day, for their convenience a system called ATS which is an Applicant Tracking System, is used when you apply for a job online. Your resume isn’t typically going directly to a recruiter or hiring manager, it’s first being processed by an ATS.
ATS is a software that keeps all received resumes in one place helping recruiters and hiring managers to stay organised, as well as saving their time by automatically surfacing and highlighting top candidates that match the open job positions the most. Even job sites like indeed and linkedin have their own built-in ATS Software. it’s very important that your resume has to be in the canadian resume format and it should also be an ATS friendly resume.
You can upload your resume and job description on websites like skillsyncer.com, jobscan.co, etc. which will compare all the keywords mentioned in the job description with the keywords mentioned in your resume and it will tell you if your resume is ATS friendly or not. Remember to tailor your resume for each job that you’re applying to, many times what people do is they just make one single format of their resume and they use this format for every job that they apply for, even though I myself have done this and this does not work in canada.
You have to make sure that your resume is drafted according to the job description that you’re applying for.For example if there’s a social media manager vacancy and you have experience in digital marketing, in all forms like social media seo e-commerce etc. then in that case you should highlight all your social media tasks and projects that you’ve completed and keep your seo and e-commerce experience as supplementary roles. The same goes for job vacancies in seo and e-commerce as well, remember to highlight your work experience based on the job description of the position that you’re applying for.
An important tip: Have 3 to 4 resumes ready that are relevant to your field of work. in this way if you’re offered another job role, for example if you’re applying for a project manager’s role but the hr or recruiter tells you that there’s only a vacancy for a project coordinator and you really need to take the job, instead of sitting at home doing nothing you have to be flexible and have the project coordinator specific resume ready, because if it take you an hour or so to edit your resume, at that time and if someone else applies within 30 minutes you’ll most definitely lose that position because you didn’t have the draft ready. A recruiter will not wait for you for so long to send over a job specific resume.
8. FORMAT FOR YOUR RESUME
Now we come to the format of your resume, remember to keep your resume very simple, plain and readable, there’s absolutely no need for fancy formatting infographics and PDF displays. The ATS Software won’t be able to read them, and your resume will be discarded right away.
Using traditional resume format is generally widely accepted in canada, there’s no need to add a profile picture to your resume, try to keep your resume short for (a maximum of 2-3 pages), but not too short that you can’t mention all your projects in details, ensure you fit all the job relevant keywords in your resume as well, so that the ATS Software systems will pick up your profile because of these keywords. Remember to keep it as detailed as possible for the benefit of the hiring manager or executive as well as the ATS systems.
I would strongly recommend using ms word formats instead of pdf formats because different companies use different ATS systems and most of them are not pdf friendly, also remember to sync the job profile you mentioned on your resume with your linkedin profile, this is because hiring managers often cross check your information and project contributions that are mentioned on your linkedin profile and if they find many differences from your resume and your linkedin profile they might not consider you.
9. DO NOT APPLY FOR MULTIPLE JOB PROFILE IN THE SAME COMPANY
Along with rejections from ATS systems, if the HR manager gets your resume for multiple job applications that are not related to each other, it will show them that you’re desperately looking out for any job role and that you’re not focused on the particular vacant position available.
It also shows that you’re not actually using your skill set to apply for either of the available jobs, if two jobs have similar roles and responsibilities then you can definitely apply for both positions, but not otherwise
10. UPSKILL YOURSELF RIGHT FROM YOUR HOME COUNTRY
Remember to build up your skills right from when you’re in your home country, don’t wait to come to canada to learn new skills and certifications. You should do a fair bit of research about the software and technologies used in Canada for your particular job roles and take the effort of familiarising yourself with those skills from your home country itself, so you don’t waste any time after you land in canada.
It is really important to upskill yourself every year. Although these certifications may not be necessary in all your job roles, they’ll definitely show the hiring managers that you’re willing to go the extra mile, and you’re a hard worker will be worth giving a shot.
11. PREPARE FOR INTERVIEW
Let’s say you’re shortlisted for the job, and you managed to bag an interview. Since most offices and businesses are working from home nowadays because of covet 19, it’s most likely that you will be having an online interview rather than an in-person interview.
it’s important that you’re comfortable in front of a camera, and you have a good dependable laptop or a computer and internet connection for the interview. You should also have a good microphone so that you’re audible and the interviewer is able to hear and understand you clearly, speaking of audio you need to make sure that you’re in a quiet room with minimal road noise and other disturbances, you can always have a test call or even a mock interview with your family members or friends to just test the audio quality of your microphone, and the video quality of your webcam or phone camera. Some of these online interviews can go on for an hour to an hour and a half so make sure that you keep yourself free and mentally and physically prepared for the duration of your online interview.
12. DO RESEARCH ABOUT THE COMPANY & JOB PROFILE
Another thing that you’ll need to do, is to do your homework about the company and thoroughly read about the job position and job description that you’re being interviewed for. Because most of your interview questions will be based on the job description, therefore you’ll really need to know your way around it, and whatever you’ll be responsible for.
If you’re hired for the job or you happen to have a connection on linkedin, or through any other way with anyone who’s currently working for the company that you’re interviewing for, you can always message them and ask them to share insights on the company and the roles available. what they look for in an employee, what kind of soft skills they’re looking for, what tools, technologies or software they’re comfortable using, and similar inside information on the company, this will give you an upper hand and a lot of confidence for your interview.
13. PREPARE A FEW QUESTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEWER
At the end of your interview, an interviewer will always ask you if you have any questions for them, i cannot stress enough on this point always. Always have a few questions prepared about the job, it gives the impression that you’re not enthusiastic or interested in the job that’s being offered to you. even if it’s just one single question, but make sure that you have a question for them at the end, you can ask anything about your job role, the company who you’ll be interacting with, who you’ll be reporting to, the policies of the company, the technology, or interfaces that they use, what projects they’re working on at the moment, anything
14. CAN YOU ACTUALLY GET A JOB IN CANADA FROM YOUR HOME COUNTRY?
Now we come to the burning question! Can you actually get a job in Canada from your home country ?
The answer is: yes, you definitely can!
Along with building your connections and networking that I mentioned earlier above, you can also use a number of online portals to help you search for a job in canada. Your best way of getting a job in canada continues to remain an inter-company transfer, which means (your existing company offering you a position in their branch in canada) if they have one.
If you do this, you won’t even have to maintain the proof of funds necessary for express entry as you’ll be able to sustain yourself and family with your job offer anyway. The next most proven method is through online portals like, jobbank, indeed, monster, and the most important and proven online platform linkedin, you’ll find a number of job vacancies on all these websites and linkedin premium like i said earlier, would be an added advantage giving you premium search filters and access to much more job opportunities and profiles.
Be sure not to fall prey to online job scammers and agents who ask you for any money before offering you a job. Always remember a job of sounding too good to be true is always going to be a scam, therefore make sure you don’t waste any of your money on agents or consultants who promise you job offers for a fee.
15.KEEP IN TOUCH WITH HR MANAGER/ RECRUITER
Even if you don’t get the job, stay in touch with the human resources manager or recruiter who helped you with the interview process. You can always get a call back for a position that wasn’t open at the time of your interview, and good networking skills can help you get that second call for another interview.
That emphasizes the value of staying in touch and developing strong natural networking relationships with recruiters or hiring managers. Okay, gentlemen, those are all the ideas you can utilize to find employment in Canada.
