by Alessandra Cayley
Mauricio Pereira de Oliveira is from Brazil. Daniel Sun is from China. They may have nothing in common when it comes to culture, but when the subject is jobs within Canada their similarities start to grow.
The two immigrated to Canada in the midst of the latest recession. Both are IT (Information and Technology) professionals and have families to support. It was no surprise that both needed a job as quickly as possible.
Employment agencies helped to translate their résumés – descriptions of over ten years of experience each – into Canadian standards. But after months of searching, they still had difficulties finding jobs that matched their level of expertise.
Blame it on the recession? Not in this case. Projections show that Canada’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector will need between 126,400 to 178,800 workers over the period of 2008-2015, an average of 15,795 to 22,345 new jobs annually.
Consisting of approximately 31,500 companies across the country (82 percent being small businesses with less than 10 employees), the sector was considered a “key driver of national growth” for the Canadian government in 2008, when it contributed to an increase of 2.7 percent in GDP (Gross Domestic Product).
What happened with Mauricio and Daniel is the well-known problem of lack of “cultural intelligence” or Canadian workplace experience, a factor that delays newcomers’ integration into the labour market, and causes a ripple effect in some areas of the economy, like the ICT segment.
The sector is already facing two distinctive shortages: a labour shortage and a skill shortage (lack of workers with the right “package” of skills, which can vary from company to company and region to region, such as: core technical skills, experience with specific applications or business processes, and even communications skills).
Read more at the source article at http://www.cnmag.ca/jobs-ictc-gets-the-wheels-rolling-in-the-it-sector/
