Start Your Career in Construction Management

If you’re an internationally trained engineer, architect or other construction professional looking to gain Canadian credentials, George Brown College has a great one year program to prepare you for a career in construction management.

Construction Management – For Internationally Educated Professionals was developed with input from industry and designed to build off the education and experience you’re already worked hard to acquire. This Canadian education combined with your experience is sure to open some doors.

Jumpstart Your Career

There is a huge demand in the rapidly growing and increasingly specialized construction industry for construction project managers with international qualifications. Today’s complex building industry requires professional managers who can function successfully in multidisciplinary teams consisting of project managers, architects, engineers, regulators, environmental consultants, urban planners, contractors and trade contractors. Managers also require a comprehensive understanding of quality management systems and sustainable building practices, and a deep and broad technical background in the construction industry.

Their Construction Management Program for Internationally Trained Professionals meets this demand with a unique combination of:

• Courses offered on one weekday evening, Friday and Saturday, allowing most students to continue working during the program
• Technical courses as well as Career Portfolio and Career Preparation courses to assist with your transition into the Canadian construction industry.
• Communications upgrading via interactive workshops on teambuilding, customer service and critical thinking.
• Highly regarded faculty who come with Canadian industry experience in all areas such as Project Management, Estimating, Industry Practices, Ontario Building Code and Construction Law.
• Industry-approved courses that prepare students for management positions in the Canadian construction industry
• Canadian construction industry orientation and experiences

This three-semester graduate certificate program provides applied education for management positions in all construction settings, including an applied construction simulation or a workplace experience component to help you make a quick transition into a job. Candidates will receive graduate-level training that builds on your internationally acquired education and experience to enable you to successfully enter the Ontario construction workforce.

Courses that will help make you a preferred candidate include Construction Industry Practices, Construction and Project Management, Drawings and Specifications, Ontario Building Code, Managing Health and Safety. The program will give you an understanding of Ontario’s construction industry that will enable you to take on a variety of positions including Construction Coordinator to Estimator, Field Engineer, Inspector and Project Coordinator

Read more at the source article at http://www.cnmag.ca/start-your-career-in-construction-management/

Work: How to Learn About Your Occupation in Canada

By Efim Cheinis

The majority of Canadian immigrants are university, college or trade school graduates and have years of work experience. Is it necessary to start your professional career in Canada from the very beginning? Not at all!

Many newcomers may continue working in their trades in Canada. But, to do so successfully you have to be prepared and do your homework. What does this mean? First of all you need to carefully learn about the Canadian job market and find out how your occupation is classified. You also have to research educational and employment requirements needed to continue your career in Canada.

The best way to gather all of this information is by getting acquainted with the official Canadian trade directory – National Occupational Classification (NOC). Ask for NOC in libraries or at Employment Resource Centers and you will get 2 books. The first is called “National Occupational Classification. Index of Titles”. There are almost 40,000 Canadian jobs, listed alphabetically, in this small book. Each occupation is followed by a unique four-digit code. Look for your job title if you know it, and you will find your occupational code. Then, take the second book, “National Occupational Classification. Occupational Description” and using the code from the Index of Titles, find your occupational description, which includes:

• industries and workplaces where the occupation is found,
• examples of titles which are commonly used within the group,
• the most significant duties of this occupation,
• educational and employment requirements.

If you do not know exactly what your job title is, look in the second book. You will find 10 types of skills:

0. Management occupations
1. Business, finance and administration (such as accountants, secretaries, office clerks)
2. Natural and applied sciences (engineers, technicians, technologists, etc.)
3. Health (physicians, pharmacists, nurses, dentists)
4. Social science, education, government service and religion (lawyers, teachers, social workers, ministers of religion, paralegals)
5. Art, culture, recreation and sport (Librarians, Journalists, Musicians, Graphic Designers, Coaches)
6. Sales and service (Retail and Wholesale People, Insurance and Real Estate Representatives, Cooks, Barbers, Cashiers, Cleaners, Babysitters)
7. Trades, transport and equipment operators (Machinists, Tool and Die Makers, Electricians, Plumbers, Carpenters, Mechanics, Drivers)
8. Occupations unique to primary industry (Farmers, Oil, Gas and Mine Workers)
9. Occupations unique to processing, manufacturing and utilities (Machine Operators, Assemblers, Laborers)

Read more at the source at http://www.cnmag.ca/work-how-to-learn-about-your-occupation-in-canada/

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Jobs: ICTC Gets the Wheels Rolling in the IT Sector

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/