Moving Between Countries?

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?"

Comments

I work in Canada

[Anrego]

.. as a programmer and havn`t moved between countries, so I can`t really provide a direct answer.

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

[jez9999]

References are also very important here (and probably there as well). Generally employers want to talk to previous employers.

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:I work in Canada

[Threni]

> 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.

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.

Re:I work in Canada

[tomhudson]

Recruiting the wrong person for a job is very, very costly, you'll end up paying a few months of salary before noticing the mistake, and then you have to re-do the entire hiring process again, which also costs money.

... which doesn't explain the over-reliance on CVs and "resume pushers." Want to hire someone? Go to a developers' conference and see who asks the most intelligent questions, who gives the best answers without trying to get into an ego pissing contest, who's honest and who's a poseur, etc. Sure, it will cost you some $$$, but you'll get a better feel of who is talking out their ass, who is respected by everyone, and who is an obnoxious toxic SOB in real life, instead of just playing at being a BOfH online ... plus you'll learn something.

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 - Canadian government web site where employers post job offers, it also supplies tools for job applicants, info, etc ...

Re:I work in Canada

[emodgod]

I'm Canadian, I've worked in Canada, mostly Central Canada, but I now live and work in Southern California.

What an employer wants to see depends on the employer. The BFIs (Nortel, ...) have very elaborate interviewing and hiring processes, structured interview, background checks, etc. These processes are not geared towards finding the best candidate. They are there to ensure the employer does not get sued.

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:always, Always, ALWAYS, talk to a lawyer...

[WarwickRyan]

>$100 it will cost for several hours of his time.

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/ 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.

[William Robinson]

I immigrated to Canada, and finally decided to leave Canada after few years. During those days, I was invited by social workers to give presentations to new immigrants to Canada.

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...

[OAB_X]

Canada is basically identical to Australia in terms of laws (British Common Law Countries), and most of the laws are federal ones that deal with all the major issues (the criminal and civil codes are all federal, except Quebec).

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)

[nyquist_theorem]

Hi, I can't find how to send you a message or email privately, so here goes... I lived in Melbourne for 4.5 years (Carlton and Kew) and am now a recruiter in Canada. I work for Hays in Calgary. Shoot me an email at matthew at area709 dot com - I've been through the whole gamut (brought my Aussie gf with me, got her PR, found her a job, etc etc) and work in recruitment so can probably steer you in the right direction in exchange for a pack of tim-tams on your arrival. :)

It was a lot harder than I thought

[Sandcastle]

Although it may prove to be a walk in the park for you, in wasn't for me.

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 ;-) Also seems weird, Toronto is the most multicultural place in the world by some counts. Australia and Canada are both english speaking, multicultural, Commonwealth countries - there are so many similarities but they didn't want to take the risk. So my advice, go straight to a professional recruiter or pay for a similar service to rework your resume and take whatever you can.

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.

same move 3 months ago

[Anonymous Coward]

I moved from Victoria (the AU one) to BC myself 3 months ago. It was definitely an easy move to make, both personally and work wise. Canadians are kind of like more friendly Australians, it's really nice.

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

[thegrassyknowl]

Some recruiters are ex-technical people and understand the business but most don't

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.