Tapping into overseas work pool key to growth

Denise Deveau, Postmedia News · Nov. 30, 2011 | Last Updated: Nov. 30, 2011 3:11 AM ET

Like any business professional on the move, Jamie Rogers, a recruitment specialist at Calgary-based engineering firm Hatch, likes to network. But his sphere of influence is a little out of the ordinary.

Mr. Rogers is a firm believer that international experience is a terrific advantage in the Canadian workplace. That's why he spends a lot of time working with immigration agencies, colleges and other associations to meet, greet and mentor new Canadians.

His passion for helping immigrants find employment goes back to the time he spent working abroad after graduating from university. "That experience gave me real insight into how businesses work out there and the many similarities," he says.

Mr. Rogers considers it an important opportunity to find talent that might otherwise be overlooked. "There's been a belief that a person needs Canadian experience before they can be hired. But overseas experience is solid. The language and cultural differences are easy to overcome if you have the credentials."

Tapping into this work pool is quickly becoming a business imperative. Lynn Merrithew, corporation relation liaison for CCIS (Calgary Catholic Immigration Society), says 24,000 new Canadians from 120 countries arrive in Alberta alone each year. "That's a large number. And given the trends - older workers retiring, lower birthrates, etc. - we have to depend on immigration to sustain our corporate growth here."

This is far from being a local phenomenon. Teresa Gonzalez, director, gateway for international professionals at Ryerson University's G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education in Toronto, says "immigrants are expected to account for all of Canada's labour force growth this year. For that reason, access to this pool of talent has become a pressing issue for employers."

The challenge for many employers lies in knowing where to find the right qualifications and talent for the job. Mr. Rogers says he likes to work with organizations such as CCIS and Bow Valley College, who offer a range of networking, professional development and placement services designed to encourage business leaders to connect with new immigrants. "These programs are a great tool for anyone in HR staffing, because you are able to reach out and find new ways to bring in highly skilled talent."

CCIS is one of several likeminded agencies in the Calgary region that have built an extensive network for immigrants and business partners. Over time it has developed a full roster of opportunities to connect, ranging from bimonthly meetings at the Chamber of Commerce and information lunches to workshops and skills building.

"A lot of businesses are just becoming aware of the infinite talent pool that can be found through agencies like ours," Ms. Merrithew says. "Engineering, accounting, IT, HR, business management - we're able to link those types of skills with employers at these sessions."

The numbers show these efforts are having a significant positive effect on the labour picture: in a three-year period, CCIS alone placed 105 engineers in the oil and gas industry.

"Some of the people we placed when we started in 2003 are now in senior and executive positions just because we managed to convince employers to take these people on for their projects," Ms. Merrithew says.

New Canadians can also help themselves enormously by putting themselves in the networking picture and working on building "soft skills" to augment their credentials, Ms. Gonzales says.

"Aside from technical skills many of these professionals have, employers are looking for communication, critical thinking and analytical skills." To that end Ryerson is developing bridging programs in collaboration with industry stakeholders to ensure new Canadians develop the right skills to fasttrack into the workplace.

Whether it's bridging programs or meet and greets, networking is becoming a business necessity given that new Canadians will play a major role in helping employers address staffing shortfalls in future.

"Networking is always a huge focus point in my discussions," Mr. Rogers says. "It opens up opportunities for immigrants to reach out to professionals. At the same time it lets employers connect with a high percentage of internationally trained individuals and establish a common ground for conversations. It's definitely helping me see how I can help my company today."

Canadians With Ethnic Names Less Likely To Get Resume Callbacks, Study Finds

Janet Aschkenasy

A recent study as to why immigrants are struggling so much more in Canada’s job market today reveals some startling findings: A lot of it may come down to ethnicity.

“Why do some employers prefer to interview Matthew, but not Samir?” This is the title of a new study from two University of Toronto researchers interested in ferreting out ethnic bias by human resource professionals in Canada’s largest cities.

University of Toronto researchers Philip Oreopoulos and Diane Decheif e-mailed thousands of randomly created resumes in response to job postings across multiple occupations in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver between February and September 2010.

“Combining all three cities, resumes with English-sounding names are 35 percent more likely to receive callbacks than resumes with Indian or Chinese names,” the researchers wrote.

Where the callback rate for those with English-sounding names, Canadian experience and Canadian education was 13.4 percent, the researchers found, “Changing only the name to one with Indian origin lowers the callback rate by 4.2 percentage points, to 9.2 percent… and changing it to one with Chinese origin lowers it to 10.8 percent.”

Being educated at a Canadian university did not seem to make a substantial difference in callback rates, "as there is only a small difference in callback rates between Type 1 and Type 2 resumes (1.4 percentage points), which systematically differ only by whether they list a bachelor’s degree from a Canadian (Type 1) or foreign (Type 2) university,” Oreopoulos and Decheif wrote.

On the other hand, “Switching from job experience acquired in Canada to job experience acquired from India does seem to matter a lot."

Callback rates for resumes that list almost all job experience from India fall to 5.7 percent, for instance.

Commenting on the study, The Vancouver Sun reports:

“If your name is Alison Johnson or Matthew Wilson, [this] inventive national study suggests you could do better in the job market than if you go by Min Liu, Samir Sharma or Lukas Minsopoulos.”

According to the Globe and Mail, managers were contacted and asked about why ethnic-sounding names might be a reason to not follow up on a qualified candidate’s application.

“Dr. Oreopoulos said it was very difficult to get recruiters to talk about their own potential discrimination, so the researchers asked participants to suggest reasons why other hiring managers might be more likely to choose people with English-sounding names for interviews. Respondents “tended to jump to the conclusion that those with the ethnic names were immigrants,” Oreopoulos said, implying that this would raise questions about whether the person had the social and communications skills to be successful in the job.

One HR professional quoted in the study reported confusion when trying to assess foreigners’ qualifications:

“In the last competition I was hiring for, I was actually looking at the resumes and I was thinking to myself, especially if they had experience from outside of Canada, take a closer look -- are they really qualified? And I found it really difficult because I don’t understand the experience in many cases. For example, it is very common in the Middle East for senior level people to do everything from soup to nut[s]. It doesn’t mean they’re not doing the senior level work, but they’re also doing things that you just normally wouldn’t expect here, to be in a job at a senior level. If you just are looking at it and just are going based on what you know, you’re probably going, ‘What does that mean?’”

Another HR executive confided that “fortunately there is some reverse discrimination at play here: Asians are known to be apt with numbers.”

The study found that of the three cities considered, Metro Vancouver employers were the least swayed by the ethnicity of applicants’ names. But even in Vancouver, resumes with English names were still 20 percent more likely to get a callback than those with Chinese or Indian names.

The problem with jobs

It’s a frustrating Catch-22: you can’t get that first job without Canadian experience, but how can you get experience without a job?

By Sarah Efron | From MoneySense Magazine, November 2011

This article was first published in theNovember 2011 issue of MoneySense.

Current issue:

MoneySense also prepared a checklist to  guide newcomers on what they should do during their first weeks in Canada.

My first job was in Canada was a bouncer in a club,” recalls Fernando Margueirat, now a 37-year-old living in Toronto. It was quite a departure, considering he was an experienced IT manager back in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Margueirat came to Canada to build a better life, but instead he found that without Canadian experience, he couldn’t get work in his field. “I took the job as a bouncer because I thought it would be better than sitting at home doing nothing. Any opportunity to build Canadian experience is going to pay off in the long term.”

After several years working in various “survival jobs,” such as working in a Spanish-speaking call centre, a friend told Margueirat about an IT job opening at the National Ballet of Canada. Having some Canadian experience and a contact at the company helped him get the job. “I was finally given a chance and a huge door was opened for me,” he says. “Getting this job completely changed my view of Canada. My company has a great work environment and they’ve given me many opportunities to grow.”

The language barrier

Language is often the biggest obstacle for newcomers. Nick Noorani, immigrant entrepreneur and author of Arrival Survival Canada, says that many think they’re well equipped if they speak some English, but they don’t realize that their beginners’ grasp of the language won’t cut it in a professional environment. “They don’t understand the level of English required is different than the level of English they might have spoken in their home country,” he says.

It’s not just learning how to speak clearly—newcomers need to master the subtleties of business communication as well. For example, Noorani describes how one newcomer, who wanted to emphasize the importance of his skills, sent out his resume in ALL CAPS, which comes across as “shouting” and was sure to turn off employers. To learn how to communicate better in a business environment, Noorani urges newcomers to take advantage of free language and employment services offered by government-sponsored immigrant settlement services.

Immigrant entrepreneurs

Newcomers often start their own small businesses so they can take advantage of their specialized knowledge, have more control over their career—and sidestep some of the discrimination that can exist in established Canadian companies. A good way to get off the ground is to take advantage of various government-funded local business centres that help entrepreneurs. Juan Guido, an immigrant from Colombia, for instance, is working with Service d’aide aux jeunes enterprises du Montreal Centre to launch a food import/export business. “You get some grants from the government and get assistance on writing your business plan,” says Guido. “I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to start a business.”

Building a network

Entrepreneurs and professionals alike need to make efforts to build up their network of contacts. By going to industry events and networking online, immigrants are more likely to hear about unadvertised jobs and business opportunities.

Salil Shah, a 31-year-old marketing manager in North Vancouver, B.C., used the online social network LinkedIn to land his first job in Canada. Shah, who is originally from India, was working in the U.S., but he wanted to come to Canada because it would be easier to bring his parents here. He applied for a job at a Vancouver technology company that had a business relationship with his California firm, but he got no response. “Eventually, I contacted someone at the company through LinkedIn who was able to get in touch with the hiring manager,” says Shah. “I did an interview and got a job offer. Most people who come to Canada start by looking for job. I was very lucky—I had one already.”

Finding yourself a mentor is another great way to expand your network and get advice. “I once contacted someone who was interviewed in the newspaper and I asked if I could buy him lunch,” says Noorani. “He’s still my mentor today.” For entrepreneurs, he advises hiring a coach on an hourly basis to help create a business program.

Volunteering is another way to meet new people and gain valuable Canadian experience. When Sobia Ali came to Canada from Pakistan, she wasn’t able to find a job, so she started volunteering at her local employment centre. “Volunteering isn’t as common back home. It’s something I learned here,” she says. “Some people questioned why I was working without getting paid, but I knew I was doing the right thing.”

A few months later, a contact Ali met through networking told her about a temporary job with the federal government. She got the gig, which she later leveraged into a permanent position. Since then she’s worked at a variety of government departments, including Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, a position she got thanks to her volunteering experience.

Super visa' immigration program launches

Conservatives say those applying for permanent residency will be eligible

By Louise Elliott, CBC News 

Posted: Dec 1, 2011 7:17 AM AT 

Last Updated: Dec 1, 2011 12:43 PM AT 

Read 188comments188

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says people who have applied for permanent residency will definitely be eligible for the visa. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

A program that allows Canadians to apply for so-called super visas launches Thursday, but the NDP immigration critic is worried that the new 10-year visa for parents and grandparents may be hard to obtain.

The new visa is part of the Conservative government's plan to battle an enormous backlog of about 165,000 parents and grandparents who are trying to join family in Canada.

The so-called super visa will be good for 10 years, but will have to be renewed every two years.

People applying to sponsor a parent or grandparent will have to show they can support their visiting relatives. To be accepted, the visitors will be required to have private health insurance coverage during their stay in Canada.

NDP immigration critic Don Davies likes the new super visa for parents and grandparents, but he wants assurances that they will be easy to get, unlike a five-year visitor's visa that has been available for years.

"I have cases in my office in Vancouver where someone's sponsoring their parents, say from New Delhi, and their application is in the lineup for 10 years," Davies said.

"So they apply for a visitor visa to come and they're turned down because they have a permanent resident application in the queue and the officials think that they won't leave."

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says that won't be a problem — people who have applied for permanent residency will definitely be eligible for the visa.

"The department informs me that they're confident that the approval rate for these parent super visas will actually be very high," Kenney said last week at an appearance before a parliamentary committee.

Kenney said the new health insurance requirement may make it easier for visa officers to say "yes."

'Really good way forward'

"One of the reasons we are requiring that people demonstrate they have health insurance when they come into Canada, is to add greater certainty for our visa officers that admitting people is not going to end up representing a net cost to Canadian taxpayers," he told the committee last week.

Debbie Douglas, the executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, said that overall, the new program is a "really good way forward" in terms of serving parents and grandparents.

She also said the new program would give the government a chance to create a more transparent system.

"It also gives us a chance to ensure that our visa posts are being consistent and fair and transparent in terms of who it is that they're granting visas to," Douglas said.

But she noted that there are still concerns about how visas will be allocated, as well as the health insurance requirement.

"We really do have to pay attention to the fact that the requirement for private health insurance is not disproportionately affecting who we let into Canada," Douglas said.

The new super visa program was announced in early November as part of a broader plan to try and clear the backlog
.

The 30/60/90 day plan

By Gautam Nath
December 1, 2011   

Landed in Canada, a new land of opportunity, but where do you go first? Myself, I needed to put down a plan, a guideline to move forward, a template to follow.

Having a corporate management background, I put on my thinking cap. My plan would have to be as strategic as when I was leading a team that re-engineered a 4,000 strong organization some years ago. Simply put, it was going to be my 30/60/90 day plan for Canada.

The first 30
The first 30 days, I decided, were going to be spent primarily putting all my ducks in a row: opening a bank account, applying for a credit card, and getting my SIN number, driving licence, cell phone, internet, calling cards and such formalities. And, I realized, I needed to understand the terrain that I was operating in — the lay of the land.
A transit pass and a flask of hot coffee and I was equipped for the days to come. Every morning, I would get ready and leave the house at 8:30 a.m. and catch the TTC — no book to read, no iPod to listen to and no cell phone to talk on; I was out with a mission. The mission? To map out the lay of the land of Toronto, with a city map as my only companion. I spent three to four hours those initial days going up one end of the subway to the other, getting familiar with the route. Soon my confidence grew and I ventured out and connected on a bus route crisscrossing the city, getting familiar with the place I now had to call home. My eyes and ears were open, taking in the ambience, watching how life went on by and listening to a multitude of languages and variety of English accents. Occasionally, I would get an opportunity to speak to a fellow passenger and that would add to my knowledge of the terrain around me.

Yes, this was the first 30, as any general worth his salt would do — understanding the terrain before deploying your troops.

The next 30
Now that I was a little familiar with the landscape, the next 30 days would begin my personal networking campaign. I had identified several networking groups during my initial month and now it was time to reach out. My initial homework was done online and connectivity was one of my initial investments as it allowed me 24 hours access to the internet. Then I ventured out and physically attended the networking meetings assessing several things — who were the members, what was their background, what were they looking for, how could I leverage my skills, how often did they meet, did I get a warm vibe and was it expensive?
The answers helped me select a few that were closer to my field and my area of expertise. And then I began to get involved. Someone once told me, “If you are taking the trouble to belong to a group, give it all you have.” So, I did not sit in the back row nor waited for things to happen. I put up my hand, got involved and ensured that I made a mark there. Giving back is also an integral part of networking and so I volunteered my time and my aptitude to the groups I was involved in. I made friends, got involved with their events and began to slowly shape up a brand personality for myself. Gautam Nath soon was moving away from being a mere statistic and an unknown face to a human being with a face and a name and a slowly growing network of Canadians who were beginning to see what I could offer.

At the end of my 60 days, I was offered a marketing advisory role in two organizations, albeit on a voluntary basis. But this helped me build my Canadian experience.

The final 30
The next 30 days of my 90-day target was all about meeting more and more people. My confidence grew as I volunteered my time and my understanding with the ways of life here became more familiar. I travelled outside the city when I could and slowly was able to see differences between Toronto and some other smaller towns like Kitchener, Waterloo, Kingston, Hamilton and Georgetown. I even got to Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver.
And, surely, by the end of my 90 days, I had met many people — not all but some were in relation to finding a job, and I was soon in serious dialogue with the president of a well-regarded Canadian firm, one that would take me into their fold for the next two years.
My 30/60/90 day plan for Canada worked! And that was just the beginning … more about my journey next month.

Cairo-born Gautam Nath is partner at Monsoon Communications and serves on several boards and committees across Toronto. He is also one of the Top 25 Canadian Immigrants of 2011.

Source: http://canadianimmigrant.ca/work-and-education/the-306090-day-plan/

Canada puts immigration at the center of its economic policy

It’s just after lunch and Natalia Gotina’s students are filing in, getting ready for the day’s English lesson.  She says people turn up speaking every language imaginable. 

"It’s Russian language, Moldavian, Mandarin…Albanian," she says.

Gotina arrived from Belarus a decade ago. She teaches at one of five new Immigrant Welcome Centre that have opened in neighborhoods and bedroom cities around Toronto.  

It’s all paid for by Canada’s Federal government.   The classes, the daycare for kids, the computer training and job counseling — it's all free for newcomers like Susannah who arrived last August from Albania.

"The course is helping me a lot about my language and I think in my future too it is very helpful for me," she says.

The goal here isn’t just to teach English.  Canada uses its immigration system to identify people like Susannah who already have specific job skills — in healthcare, engineering, computer science — that can be plugged in to the economy.

"I am pharmacist back home and they are helping to find a way for my profession here in Canada."

This is very different from the US, where the vast majority of legal immigration is based on family connections, not on a person’s professional background or training.

"We’ve instituted a managed, point-based immigration system," explains Mario Calla, head of the regional non-profit called COSTI Immigrant Services that runs these welcome centers for the government. 

Canada’s system, he says, actually grades every person who applies for the equivalent of a green card. 

People are given points on everything from health to wealth to education and professional achievement.  If you don’t score high enough, you don’t get in.  

"Canadians understand that while these people coming from other countries may be very different from us, they’re coming with great talents and skills."

Canada accepts about a quarter million legal immigrants a year.  That’s nearly one percent of the country’s total population arriving every twelve months. 

That level of immigration enjoys broad political support, in part because Canada is facing the same

demographic dilemma that now plagues American cities and small towns around the Great Lakes region.

"People aren’t having as many children as they were before.  And the work force is growing older.  We’ve got a burgeoning seniors population."

Jeff Garrah runs the Economic Development Corporation in Kingston, a small city on the shore of Lake Ontario — about three hours east of Vaughan. 

If it weren’t for newcomers, Garrah says, Canadian cities would be hollowing out and shrinking, just like many American cities. 

He helped create a group that works actively to convince immigrants to make their new life in Kingston.

"We have to have a very aggressive immigration policy to replace those jobs, particularly those high skilled jobs," Garrah argues.

No one here thinks Canada’s immigration system is perfect. Especially during the recession, a lot of newcomers – even those with marketable skills — struggled to find work.

And critics like Sayed Hassan with an immigrant advocacy group called “No One Is Illegal” says the emphasis on job skills leaves too many really needy people out in the cold.

"I mean if you look at the number of refugees coming into Canada as a percentage of its population, it’s slightly below that of the United States. And yet Canada says it has the most generous refugee system in the world."

And there has been tension as more and more newcomers arrive from non-European countries. Ibrahim Absiye came from Somalia as a refugee twenty years ago. 

"We came in big numbers and we came with a different look of skin.  We came with a different religion.  So there were some barriers to break through," he recalls.

These days, Absiye runs another immigrant help center called Culturelink.  He says there are flare-ups of racism and cultural misunderstandings.   But he says Canada’s reputation as a truly open and diverse society is no myth.

"I think Canada is known for being one of the most welcoming communities in the world…and especially here in Ontario and especially here in Toronto, the community is welcoming to the newcomers."

These days, half of Toronto’s population is foreign-born – that’s a higher percentage than in New York City or Miami. 

Here in Vaughan, the foreign-born population jumped by more than forty percent over the last decade, making this one of the fastest-growing cities in the Great Lakes region.

Matthew Mendelson, with Canada’s Mowat Center for Policy Innovation, says he thinks these multicultural hubs will drive his country's next economic boom.

"Particularly Toronto has been successful at attracting high quality, talented immigrants from around the world but particularly Asia and emerging economies – creating clusters and concentrations of talented people."

One important footnote to all this is the fact that Canada has developed its immigration system without facing the pressure of a huge wave of illegal immigration like the one that’s been so controversial in the US.

By most estimates, Canada has fewer than 200,000 undocumented workers.

In the last decade — as Canada and US have worked to synchronize border security — officials here have moved more aggressively to track down and deport people who enter the country illegally.

Source:http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/18863/20111201/canada-puts-immigration-at-the-center-of-its-economic-policy