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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?"
Mate, things work pretty similar the world over for an engineer, the research you need to do is more so with visa and living arrangements.
In terms of your work, the situation is mostly the same, be it Canada, UK, Australia, in that you are expected to hold a professional attitude, and be good with your work. You will find Australians have strong work ethic reputations abroad, so you need to back that up.
Short of that, you merely need to be resourceful, and you don't necessarily need to go through recruiters. Get your resume up to speed, make sure it is within 2 pages so as not to waste others time, and advertise your skills and project work so as to give potential employment a good honest run down on your skillset.
Print it out 20-50 times, and go walk through the front door in professional attire and give it to reception, possibly ask to see if they are seeking help.
With a skills shortage of competent engineers, you will gain employment fast, and gain the margin a recruiter normally takes.
Every top 500 needs engineers, and google for the integration/IT comms companies in your city of settlement.
If you work with specialist sectors like network/comms, speak to the local distributors to find out what integrators work with those products.
Hope this helps.
MantiX
IT CEO.
I'm in Australia (Adelaide) Looking to move countries too!
;).
Canada and New Zealand are the two places I have been seriously considering, and it looks like Auckland, New Zealand has won me over. (I have a really close friend there for one, and NZ is a beautiful country.)
I'm a Software Engineer and Systems Administrator in my current role. Anyway, guess I should read what people post as that stuff my apply to me too
I bet Americans are wondering why on earth we would want to leave Australia.....
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Moving to another country, you need to familiarize yourself with the important laws and assumptions that are being made there. So, go direct to the source: find a reputable lawyer to talk to, and swallow the few $100 it will cost for several hours of his time. And, that's a LAWYER IN THE COUNTRY YOU ARE MOVING TO.
There are a variety of different topics you will want to discuss, so you might need to talk to more than one lawyer. BUT DO IT. You are no longer a visitor, so you need to understand the ins and outs of the local legal system.
Here's some topics that are important:
These are but the most important I can cite off the top of my head. It's more than worth the cost of a short lawyer consultation, and you might even be able to get a good conversation out of one on the cheap (like, offer to pay for a good dinner and drinks out, since there's not going to be any paperwork or case, it's just a consultation).
Knowing the lay of the land is by far the most important thing to find out. Getting the inside scoop from an expert is the fastest, best way to do it.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
The reason why they are not supposed to take up references until after an offer is because you might not have told your boss you are looking until after you have a job to go to. It might ruin your job prospects of your boss finds out you are job hunting.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
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.
On that scale, five bucks for a phonecall is totally worth the money.
The Iraq war and anti-Islam propaganda has started turning the knuckle-draggers here into nationalists.
And you want to move to *America* to avoid that???
And what exactly do you expect me to tell you if I've been doing Java on Windows (deployed usually on Solaris) for the last ten years? Some of us just slid in such positions, and try to get out. I have extensive Linux and OpenBSD skills because that's what I do at home, but I cannot provide a single professional reference to that.
You'd essentially get my CV and think "another one of those useless guys"... Have you ever considered that at least some of those people try to get out of the Microsoft lock-in and do have some skills but simply didn't ever get a chance proving it?
I'm just saying because I'm one of those guys with what you consider a crap CV and I try to make it up in my cover letter. So far, nobody ever replied. Sure, recruiters call me, but there it stops.
The tip that most people give is that you should contribute to an open source project and get your name out. Fair enough.... That's about the only thing I can do about it and I doubt I'd get taken seriously by you even if I did.