Hi all, first, thank you for showering me with your wishes!
Just a quick update to let you know that I submitted my passport today at the local VFS with two pictures (both stamped on the back with all of the required info) and the tracker is telling me the passport has already arrived at the VAC New Delhi and will be forwarded to the "IRCC Office" there. You can follow the progress of my
CoPR using this link.
I also wanted to share my perspective on the debates of earlier today, adding to what
@Shahanastar and
@Maya1515 have addressed already:
1.
NOC mismatch with work reference letter: You do not need to include your NOC in the letter and your employer can't be expected to have knowledge of something so technical, especially for work outside of Canada. My letter did not have any direct references to my NOC or the official description of my NOC. It was a two-page letter, which I drafted for one of my former employers to review and sign. There is a balancing act here between the duties being
similar enough to the official description but not being anywhere near a cut-and-paste job. I have a feeling I once read about a case where an application was turned down because the candidate literally copied the official NOC job description!
Coming back to my reference letter, the first page contained a brief description of my employer (not a Fortune 500 company) along with what they were doing at the time of my employment to add context to my work there, and the second page listed my duties in seven bullet points. I checked to make sure these corresponded with the NOC I was claiming (
1112), and it was a very high degree of match. It is likely that IRCC uses a 75% bar when comparing your NOC to your letter - I haven't researched that but feel free to
dive into the law here.
2.
There is no correlation between NOCs and faster application processing. All of the bias built into the Express Entry system for certain NOCs is at the level of PNPs and other regional programs that allow you to score extra points
before you are invited to apply. It could be that you were invited sooner because you had a certain NOC, but
once you are invited (ITA) you are removed from the general EE pool. Your application is first processed for R10 at CIO-Sydney and then distributed to IRCC's network of domestic and international VOs based on a system that is too complex for me to understand but is driven loosely by geography.