Kind of confused here. If applicant's work history is a big factor in assessing residency, then why do citizenship officers focus their interview question on your current job. Is going to school full time for the whole eligibility period enough with couple of partime/coop in BTW?
I suspect my in-depth approach to analyzing relevant factors, including why they are relevant as well as what influence they can have, may encourage overthinking particular factors and to some extent distort the decision-making dynamics.
The vast, vast majority of qualified applicants who submit a properly completed application showing a life lived in Canada, can anticipate their application sailing smoothly through the process, no bumps, no issues, no side roads into non-routine processing, no unusual concerns or suspicions, no delays.
Most applicants do NOT need to worry about this or that detail, this or that wrinkle. They do not need to worry about how strong their case is.
But there are, of course, some factors which obviously increase the risk that a total stranger bureaucrat will have concerns, or questions, or even suspicions. Most applicants want to avoid doing that. Not because they are worried about the outcome, but because they want to be among that vast majority of applicants who sail smoothly through the process and reach the oath without delay.
Not all cases are equally strong. There is wide, wide variations in the particular circumstances in different immigrants' lives. Some circumstances offer a picture which leaves little doubt. Some circumstances offer a picture which may have some blurry parts.
So sure, a student's case probably is not as strong as the case submitted by someone who spent the last four years as a welder in a Bombardier plant. That does not mean the student's case is weak. That does not mean the student will run into delays or non-routine processing. How all the parts come together in the whole picture will make a difference.
For the majority, most of the key factors are what they are. We have lived the life we individually live. Thus, how each prospective applicant approaches making the application, including WHEN to apply, is a very personal decision, one which should depend on an informed assessment of at least the key factors.
For me, one key factor was being self-employed back when, during the reign of Harper, CIC tended to be very skeptical of self-employed applicants. So I waited nearly two extra years before I applied, to secure a solid margin on one hand, and on the other hand to accumulate business records to document my employment in case I was RQ'd. That was a personal choice. I could have applied much, much sooner and I probably would have eventually taken the oath.
In any event, some cases will take a little longer to process than others. We do not all fit a particular cookie-cutter model of an immigrant. Qualified applicants just need to keep their usual records and those should suffice if and when any questions arise.
I tend to address questions on the margins, at the fringe. I examine the more difficult issues. Like applying just two or three days after meeting the minimum requirement, that qualifies, but that is also really
cutting-it-close and
cutting-it-close has risks. But those are risks which a prospective applicant can recognize and reduce, by just waiting a week or month. Other risks are inherent in who we are, and those risks we simply must deal with. And everyone, no matter how strong their case appears to be on the surface, has some risk of RQ (there have been recent reports of random Quality Control RQ'd cases for example). So all applicants should keep records related to their addresses, work history, travel history, other activities, including current address and current employment . . . just in case IRCC demands proof.
Re questions about current employment during interview:
This is, probably, mostly about establishing a base line understanding about who the applicant is, to get a sense of the applicant generally and a sense of the applicant's credibility in particular. There is no requirement that the applicant be currently employed, for example, so these questions are NOT directly about meeting the qualifications. They are more likely intended as a starting point to see if there are other, more probing questions which need to be asked. For the vast majority, no, the interviewer does not see reason to pursue more probing questions.
A lot, a real lot of what interviewers are doing, is looking to see whether there are reasons to question what the applicant has reported.
Testing the water, so to say.
