[HELP] Is it okay to report self-employment as unemployment

[alal791]

Hi All,

I am located outside of Canada and am in process of creating my Express Entry profile. I have about 7 years of work ex with 2 years spent in business school outside Canada. My work experiences are:

Management Consulting
Job 1: 2.60 years
Job 4: 0.85 years

General Manager
Job 2: 0.9 years

Self-employment
Job 3: 2.1 years

Product Manager
Job 5: 0.5 years

Each of the above four roles fall under different NOCs however, I have 3.5 years of work ex under the Management Consulting NOC and also >1 year continuous work ex under the same NOC. My understanding is this alone will max out the CRS points I can obtain for foreign work experience. My CRS score comes to 470 with this.

My question is: Can I report two years of my self-employment as unemployment just to reduce my paperwork? Self-employment involves paperwork because I was working at an unregistered online start-up as a co-founder in my home country. Would it hurt my chances of getting approved if I report myself as unemployed during this period?

 

[oinkario]

You don’t have to report it as unemployment. All you need is putting it under “personal experience” and not “work experience”. This way your self-employment does not give you points (which you are fine with) but won’t need paperwork either.

A lot of people do this actually. When it comes to employment, no points/eligibility claimed means no paperwork needed.

 

[alal791]

Thank you for the response.

I am not seeing a "Personal experience" or "Personal history" section when filling the Express Entry profile. Does that section only show up AFTER invitation to apply is received?

 

[oinkario]

Thank you for the response.

I am not seeing a "Personal experience" or "Personal history" section when filling the Express Entry profile. Does that section only show up AFTER invitation to apply is received?

Post-ITA you will be asked about everything in the last 10 years or since 18 years old. I can’t recall whether that’s called exactly personal experience, but that’s the section I meant.

The employment section that you are dealing with now is “every job that counts toward eligibility and/or CRS”.