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One thing about the Internet is - it's always changing. In many cases, where you once could find information, it's missing - 404 - file not found. This happens for a lot of reasons: web designers change the organization of a site, content is past its shelf life, resources get moved and no one bothers to update the links, technology changes.

This is the case recently with the CBC and its online news video content. A while back, I posted links to all the daily news feeds of "News at Six" for the different Provinces. Well, that info is now outdated, because CBC has redesigned its video player. The good news is, all the media is in one place now. So update your links to the following - http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Canada and you can once again learn about the latest going on in the part of Canada that is of interest to you.

Follow The Expatriate Mind at - http://expatriatemind.blogspot.com

So you’re doing really well at your ESL classes and spending all your spare time reading up on Canadian history, culture and daily life, when you’re not researching the labour market and collecting your papers ready to immigrate. Fantastic. But there’s another area of preparation you may want to give some attention to, especially if you haven’t had routine dealings with Canadians in business environments.

Business culture and social interaction. Because, yes, Canadians are different. As are, by the way, inhabitants of every country in the world. They’re even different from Americans, incidentally. I’ve emigrated twice, and both times had to learn new unwritten rules of interaction for fear of unwittingly offending people.

Take, first of all, communicating with people. The first minefield is that little word ‘dear’. It’s used in several different contexts. One, as we’re all taught in written English, is the formal letter: Dear So-and-So. That’s fine – except the use of ‘Dear So-and-So’ in business correspondence is dying out. However, using ‘dear’ slightly differently, for example ‘Hello dear’ as the introduction to an email or private message, is not fine, because ‘dear’ in *that* context could be read in two ways, and neither are very favourable to you. One is as a term of endearment, something someone might call their spouse: like ‘Hello darling’ – not appropriate for someone you don’t know, or only know slightly! And the other context is one that’s seen as sexist: when women first started coming into workplaces alongside men in greater numbers in the Western world, some men would address women as ‘dear’ rather than using their name – for example, “Get me those photocopies, dear.” Kind of patronising – and that association has stuck.

The second minefield is making assumptions when you correspond with someone – and that includes sending a resume and cover letter to an employer. I’ve seen ‘Dear Sir’ in cover letters any number of times. I’ve seen ‘Dear Mr...’ when the writer has a last name but no first name – or perhaps wasn’t aware of the gender of the first name. (And that’s understandable; with very few exceptions, I don’t know male from female Chinese or Arabic names, for example). The trouble is that your letter or email is as likely to be received by a woman as by a man – you have up to a 50% chance of offending the person who will read your job application (perhaps even higher, as most HR managers are women). The same goes for message boards and forums such as this – or a professional networking site like LinkedIn. I’ve had people PM me and address me as ‘Dear Sir’, or refer to me as ‘he’ in a discussion thread. You often can’t tell from someone’s message-board nick if they’re male or female, though my first name (visible on my profile) is a common woman’s name in English-speaking countries. It’s very acceptable, and even recommended, in Canadian business culture to address someone in an email or letter as Dear Firstname Lastname, or For the Attention of Firstname Lastname, if you know their name. When you’re applying for jobs, that’s one of the recommended ways of addressing your cover letter. If you don’t have a hiring manager’s name, then the accepted salutation is For the Attention of (or To) The Hiring Committee.

There’s also the handshake. Every culture is different in their greeting rituals, of course, and in Canada – in much of the English-speaking western world – the handshake is at the core of professional interactions. It’s also about the only time businesspeople, both men and women, touch each other. The handshake is expected – at the beginning of business meetings, at the end of meetings, and on being introduced. If you have a job interview, a handshake is expected with all interviewers, at the beginning and end. We’re judged on our handshake, too. The expectation is that you stand at arm’s length from each other – no closer, or you’re invading personal space – and that you grip firmly for about two seconds, and then let go. No actual shaking, no multiple clasps (I’ve had the pleasure of an African handshake, and I loved it, but it’s not the Canadian way) and no ‘limp fish’ grips.

Practise your handshake – if you’re not sure how to get it right, then once you arrive in Canada ask a Canadian, maybe a settlement worker if you don’t know anyone else, to practice with you. And if you don’t shake hands for cultural or religious reasons, think about how you’re going to handle that. In a job interview, you have around ten seconds to make your first impression, and the last thing you want to do is risk offending your interviewer in those first ten seconds!

And these are just tiny minefields. The bigger challenges arise when you get hired and start a job in a Canadian workplace. Lionel Laroche, expert on adapting to multicultural workplaces and author of Recruiting, Retaining and Promoting Culturally Different Employees (http://www.amazon.ca/Recruiting-Retaining-Promoting-Culturally-Different/dp/075068240X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281821113&sr=1-1 – highly recommended, incidentally) estimates that the most significant reason why new Canadians lose jobs after being hired is *not* their ability to do the job, but instead perceived poor ‘soft skills’ – ie failure to understand and navigate workplace culture. That’s where all those unwritten rules come in again – the meaning in a Canadian context of gestures, tone of voice, posture, workplace social interaction and so on and so on. When I first started my job in Canada, I behaved in my interaction with colleagues as I had in Europe. If I went to speak to someone for a business reason, I got straight to the point. It took me a couple of weeks to realise that this was perceived as rude – that *I* was being perceived as rude. In Canada, the custom is to begin with a quick social interchange – How are you? How’s your day going? – and then get to the point. In my previous work environment, that would have been seen as wasting the other person’s valuable time. Different cultures, different expectations.

Everything’s a potential trap, from those friendly social interactions (and don’t get too personal – for example, in Canada you don’t ask after someone’s family unless you have the kind of relationship where you may have met family members) to body language, eye contact or lack of it, and timekeeping – are you perceived as a perpetual latecomer because your sense of time is looser than Canadians’, or are you seen as a clock-watcher because you assume the working day actually ends on the dot at five pm as you were told when you were hired? Are you seen as a poor communicator because you don’t tell your boss what’s going on, or because you’re continually asking your boss about the smallest things instead of using your initiative to make decisions? A friend of mine from the Middle East quickly got criticised for being needy and over-demanding of attention in her first Canadian job because she referred every small decision to her supervisor and let the supervisor know about her every movement – even going out to get coffee. That was how she was expected to behave in her home country – how was she to know any different? No-one told her. Now, she has a better understanding of workplace communication practices and what’s expected of her and she’s doing fine.

But if you don’t know these unwritten rules, how are you supposed to get them right? There are classes and workshops on Canadian business culture and understanding these soft skills, including at agencies like mine which offer employment preparation services to newcomers. If you want to get a head start, there are also books on the subject – there’s Laroche’s that I mentioned above, though that’s mainly aimed at employers. The book I recommend is You’re Hired... Now What? by Lynda Goldman, price $29.95, though I bought it from amazon.ca for $18.77. Here’s a review: http://www.cnmag.ca/current-issue/860-youre-hired-now-what. I agree with the review: there are bits of advice I saw as patronising (including that scratching yourself at work is a bad idea!), but if you can ignore those overall it’s a really useful guide. And I suppose it’s true that even those more obvious pieces of advice might help someone – who knows?

Good luck navigating the minefields!

How do you reduce the rolls of those wishing to immigrate to Canada? How do you eliminate the need to add staff to process applications? If you're Tory Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, the answer is simple: add barriers.

Recently announced changes to requirements for immigrants in the Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) class have added to potentially onerous requirements to the laundry list that a potential immigrant needs to fulfill in order to apply.

Barrier 1 - make the wall taller: By limiting the number of slots available each year in the FSW class to 20,000 applicants.

Barrier 2 - shift the playing field: By altering the list of approved professions, and reducing the overall list from 38 to 29.

Barrier 3 - add expense to immigrants: By creating a new language test requirement. The test costs potential immigrants $250.00 each time they take it. For those in poorer countries, this requirement alone is enough to make Canadian immigration an unreachable goal.

There are well documented behavioural studies which correlate the number of steps required in a process with rate of attrition (drop out rate). This goes for everything from shopping online to applying for unemployment. The simple rule is: if you want people to abandon a goal, add more requirements. Kenney's management of the CIC is a classic application of this strategy.

Follow The Expatriate Mind at: http://expatriatemind.blogspot.com

Today, the Ontario provincial government announced a new program that may be relevant to anyone considering coming to Ontario for postgraduate study and is interested in immigrating to Canada. Currently, international graduates of college or university programs in Canada need to have one year's professional work experience to apply for permanent residence under the Canadian Experience Class.

Now, if you graduate from a Masters program at a recognised university in Ontario, you may be eligible to apply for permanent residence immediately via the Pilot International Masters Graduate Stream. There is no need for a job offer or Canadian work experience.

The details are available here: http://www.ontarioimmigration.ca/en/pnp/OI_PNPSTUDENTS_MASTERS.html

From that website:

In order to apply to Opportunities Ontario as an international Masters graduate in Ontario, students must:

* Intend to live and work in Ontario.
* Have graduated from an existing Masters program at an eligible publicly funded university in Ontario.
* Have completed a minimum of one academic year degree program, while studying on a full-time basis.
* Apply within two years of the date on which their Masters degree was granted, or in the alternative, during the last semester of completing their degree.
* Currently be residing in Ontario.
* Have legal status in Canada (i.e. study permit, work permit, temporary resident visa)
* Demonstrate high official language proficiency (For English language proficiency – IELTS – General test with a minimum score of 7 or higher) (For French language proficiency – TEF – with a minimum score of 5 or higher).
* Demonstrate a minimum level of savings/income to support themselves and their dependants.
* Demonstrate at least one year of residence in Ontario in the past two years.

The latest unemployment figures were released at the end of last week, and they show an improvement – more Canadians are returning to work. 93,000 jobs have been created, and overall unemployment has fallen below 8% for the first time since early 2009. But, while there is improvement across Canada, when we break down the figures we see some patterns.

• Unemployment is still higher in some parts of Canada than others. Manitoba and Saskatchewan are the provinces to go to right now if you want to have a better chance of finding work, with around 5.5% unemployment

• The worst unemployment figures are found in the eastern provinces, and Ontario, BC and Quebec are still hovering around 8%, with Alberta not that much better

• Cities to be cautious about include Windsor (over 12% unemployment), Toronto (over 9%), the rest of south-western Ontario (over 8%), Calgary (over 7%)

• Cities that are definitely worth looking at include Regina (just over 4%), Saskatoon and Winnipeg (5.8%) and Victoria (5.9%)

• Growth in jobs has been in the private sector, in particular services, with jobs being created in retail, trade and building services, and in the public sector in healthcare. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t jobs elsewhere; it just means that most of the growth has been in these areas

• This means, too, that most of the growth in jobs will have been in lower-paying and perhaps part-time opportunities


Canada is not out of the recession yet and, as economists point out, may yet experience a reversal of this positive trend later in the year. Its economy is currently growing faster than most industrialised countries, but that doesn’t mean that everything is rosy just yet. If you’re planning on completing your move to Canada in the next six months, research carefully to ensure that your destination of choice is not in an unemployment blackspot and that there are jobs in your field in the province or city you intend to move to. And be prepared to be flexible – if you arrive and settle and discover that you can’t find work in the location you’ve settled in, be prepared to move to where the work is. The more flexible you are, the better chance you have of finding a good job.

For an analysis of current unemployment data and trends: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/private-sector-fuels-surge-in-jobs/article1633942/

To see current unemployment rates by province and principal cities and how these have changed from last month: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/where-the-jobs-are/article1633981/

A few months ago I picked up a Kindle and have gradually been making the transition to e-books. One of the great things about having it is that I now have access to a number of free book collections, including Amazon Popular Classics, Archive.org Openlibrary and Project Gutenberg.

All of these sites have loads of Canadian content. Especially if you are a history buff. A quick search with the keyword "Canadian" in Openlibrary returned over 1,500 titles.

If you have an e-reader, do yourself a favour and take advantage of a great opportunity to learn a lot about Canada.

Links:
- Amazon Popluar Classics - http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=amb_link_40669842_101/?node=2245146011&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A!133142011%2Cn%3A2245146011%2Cn%3A154606011&bbn=2245146011
- Archive.org - http://www.archive.org/details/toronto
- OpenLibrary- http://openlibrary.org/
- Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Follow The Expatriate Mind at - http://expatriatemind.blogspot.com/

Over this last weekend, the rules for applying for Federal Skilled Worker were amended again. The main changes are as follows:

• The list of in-demand occupations – the former NOC 38 – has been changed. It now contains 29 occupations. Twenty have been removed, and eleven have been added

• There will be a cap on the number of applications considered under this program within FSW, both overall (20,000) and for each occupation (1000). Note: I am not clear from the announcement whether this is in total or per visa office

• All FSW applicants, no matter what their country of origin, must now submit the results of a language test, either English or French

The press release of the Minister’s announcement can be seen here:

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/releases/2010/2010-06-26.asp

The new NOC list can be seen here: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/apply-who-instructions.asp

The change in the NOC list is as follows:

OCCUPATIONS NO LONGER ON THE LIST:
0111: Financial Managers
0213: Computer and Information Systems Managers
0311: Managers in Health Care
0632: Accommodation Service Managers
0711: Construction Managers
1111: Financial Auditors and Accountants
2113: Geologists, Geochemists and Geophysicists
2143: Mining Engineers
2144: Geological Engineers
2145: Petroleum Engineers
3141: Audiologists and Speech Language Pathologists
3143: Occupational Therapists
3151: Head Nurses and Supervisors
4121: University Professors
4131: College and Other Vocational Instructors
7213: Contractors and Supervisors, Pipefitting Trades
7217: Contractors and Supervisors, Heavy Construction Equipment Crews
7252: Steamfitters, Pipe fitters and Sprinkler System Installers
8221: Supervisors, Mining and Quarrying
9212: Supervisors, Petroleum, Gas and Chemical Processing and Utilities


If you intend to be a primary applicant and your experience is in one of these occupations, you will now need a job offer if you cannot apply under a different occupation or your partner’s occupation is not on the new list.


OCCUPATIONS ADDED TO THE LIST:
0811 Primary Production Managers (Except Agriculture)
1122 Professional Occupations in Business Services to Management
1233 Insurance Adjusters and Claims Examiners
2121 Biologists and Related Scientists
2151 Architects
3113 Dentists
3131 Pharmacists
3222 Dental Hygienists & Dental Therapists
4151 Psychologists
4152 Social Workers
7216 Contractors and Supervisors, Mechanic Trades

These are the eleven new occupations – in other words, these occupations were not previously eligible for Federal Skilled Worker processing without a job offer. They now are, providing you also score 67 points on the self-assessment.

For the sake of completeness, here is the full NEW list of 29 occupations eligible for FSW without a job offer:

NEW LIST OF 29 IN-DEMAND OCCUPATIONS:
0631 Restaurant and Food Service Managers
0811 Primary Production Managers (Except Agriculture)
1122 Professional Occupations in Business Services to Management
1233 Insurance Adjusters and Claims Examiners
2121 Biologists and Related Scientists
2151 Architects
3111 Specialist Physicians
3112 General Practitioners and Family Physicians
3113 Dentists
3131 Pharmacists
3142 Physiotherapists
3152 Registered Nurses
3215 Medical Radiation Technologists
3222 Dental Hygienists & Dental Therapists
3233 Licensed Practical Nurses
4151 Psychologists
4152 Social Workers
6241 Chefs
6242 Cooks
7215 Contractors and Supervisors, Carpentry Trades
7216 Contractors and Supervisors, Mechanic Trades
7241 Electricians (Except Industrial & Power System)
7242 Industrial Electricians
7251 Plumbers
7265 Welders & Related Machine Operators
7312 Heavy-Duty Equipment Mechanics
7371 Crane Operators
7372 Drillers & Blasters - Surface Mining, Quarrying & Construction
8222 Supervisors, Oil and Gas Drilling and Service


I hope this is helpful.

Among the happy stories of would-be immigrants receiving their visas and preparing to move to Canada, there are occasionally less happy stories of people already here and struggling to find work. The difficulties of finding work in Canada, especially outside the big cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, are well-known: language skills, distrust of foreign education and credentials, lack of Canadian experience, no networks, no references... and more.

I've given lots of advice on job-searching while I've been a member of this forum, but now I'm going to say something I should have said a long time ago: don't come to Canada as a new immigrant without making sure that you know EXACTLY what you're likely to be facing.

Do you know whether there are jobs in your field in Canada?

Do you know what qualifications are needed for those jobs?

Do you know where in Canada there is demand for your skills? (Don't move somewhere there isn't!)

Can you survive for a minimum of six months without a job? (And have you researched the cost of living in your destination city, and factored in setup costs?)

Have you already researched where you can get help in your destination city - settlement agencies, libraries, community centres, free employment counselling and preparation services, mentorship programs, local community groups for your nationality?

If you have to spend your first few months finding out all this stuff, then that's money down the drain. Hit the ground running by having all this research done before you come, so that you can make the right connections to get your job-search properly under way in your first month - having learned how to do it the way Canadian employers expect, which is rarely the same way as any of us has been used to. That applies to me too: I came to Canada from the UK, and I had to completely relearn resumes, cover letters, interview skills and networking. I wasted six months looking for work the 'wrong' way, but as soon as I learned how to do it the Canadian way suddenly I was getting interviews.

Here's one resource that might help, at least just to inform you: Daisy Wright, a career specialist and also (some years ago) a newcomer to Canada herself, has a book called No Canadian Experience, Eh? (http://www.nocanadianexperience-eh.com/). I have a copy of that book in my office, and I've occasionally recommended it to clients. Wright *gets* it. She knows what it's like and she tells it honestly, but with plenty of really good advice. It might be the best $20 you've ever spent.

Good luck on your journeys, and I hope that each and every one of you will be successful.