Immigration Canada: What do Canadian employers want?

Canadian employers often want you to have soft skills and hard skills.

Often, it is not enough to have hard skills, or technical skills. Canadian employers want to hire people who also have soft skills.

Soft Skills

Soft skills are sometimes called employability skills. They include:

Communication
Problem solving
Positive attitudes and behaviours
Adaptability
Working with others

Employers want every employee to have these skills. Someone who has these skills will be able to learn and grow in a job. These people can get along with their co-workers and are a long-term asset for the organization.

Hard Skills or Technical Skills

Each job type has its own set of skills, called hard skills. Hard skills are the technical skills you need to do a certain job. For example:

Using computer programs
Measuring and calculating
Analyzing data
Speaking a language
Operating a machine

Experience

Understanding labour market information can help you identify what kind of experience employers want.

How your professional qualifications are valued in Canada is very important. It can help you find work in your field. By finding out how your experience is valued, you will know if you need to do any academic upgrading or exams to get the same kind of work in Canada .

You might need to have your academic or professional credentials assessed. In regulated professions or trades, you cannot work in your field unless you have had your credentials and experience evaluated.

After you have assessed your skills, you need to be able to show employers that you have these skills. You can ask someone at a settlement agency or a community employment centre for help with your résumé and job search. You can find them in Services Near Me.

For More Information

Employability Skills Profile - A fact sheet with descriptions of critical skills, including personal management and teamwork skills.
Ontario Skills Passport - A website with clear descriptions of basic skills and work habits that employers want, and information about what skills and tasks are required for certain occupations.
JVS Career Voice - This blog for job seekers has information about career choices, finding a job, marketing yourself and more. You can submit questions. The blog posts are written by experts in employment.