foodie69 said:
Don't settle for a survival job. Concentrate on finding a job, 8 hours a day. It is a full time commitment until you are there. Yes, a survival job might help you using less money, but you might commit professional suicide. Once you work for McDonalds or pump gas at Shell, it becomes very hard to go back to your old job. Employers will see, ahh..McDonalds and suddenly your Engineer degree is out the window.
Knock on doors, email people, use linkedin, go to networking groups, register with all the online job portals, open a facebook page where you look for a job, talk to as many people a day as possible, mention to anyone you are looking for a suitable position.
It is hard and not easy, but not impossible, stay focused and do it! Every day, religiously!
This reflects a rather idealized image of the job search . . . Here are some things to consider as well:
- Canada is not a large country, and one can quickly go through the professional resources in a single area
- Canadians are somewhat less amenable than Americans to hiring people at a distance (at least in my experience), and this becomes even more pronounced when you are applying for jobs for which you are under or overqualified
- when you are doing this, you are spending your time on very low-efficiency approaches. The chance of a Facebook page being successful in your job search is not high; but the chance of you becoming depressed from spending too much time on the Internet is significantly greater.
- this approach is quite risky, because it identifies 'success' as 'a professional, middle-class job'. Setting expectations high is dangerous -- for most immigrants, 'success' should begin as getting settled in the new country, finding a life that is at least secure. Doing nothing but apply for jobs is not secure -- you have no money coming in! Every week makes you more anxious, it is very difficult to live that way.
- there are a huge number of quasi-useless approaches people are told to employ. The 'informational interview', in which the HR person stares at you and you try to explain what you are doing there when there is no job to apply for; 'volunteering', which can be good in restricted situations but usually is not; etc.
Here is a more realistic plan for finding a professional job.
1) Get any job at all, make sure that your life is stable. Why is this good? Because, frankly, there are not enough jobs for you to spend 8 hours a day applying for them. Having a few hours in the evening will force you to use your time efficiently, and choose quality opportunities. In the meantime, you settle into Canada -- you've landed, you're working, and your family is getting adjusted. Money is not great, but it is sufficient to survive.
2) Once you have that job, find something, anything, that you can do part-time, or as a volunteer, or as a contractor, that is remotely related to your professional specialty. Do a great job on this. Give it space on your resume.
3) Use that to find a full-time job -- anything -- in your professional area.
4) The next job you accept will be the one you want. Now that you are somewhat established, you have a greater ability to apply to jobs at a distance; your applications are more compelling because you are already settled where you are, which is evidence that you truly want the job you are applying for. If I am in Vancouver and have no job, and I apply for a job I am overqualified for in Regina, who will believe that I want to stay there?
And what do you do when you are applying for a professional job as a clerk at Safeway? You tell the person "I came to Canada to work -- that was the first job I found, and it supports my family. It's fine for now, but I don't want to do it forever." Here in Canada there is not the same prejudice against labour as there is in other parts of the world -- you are not ruined by working in a 'low status' job. Ultimately, coming to Canada is about success; and refusing to work unless you get the job that you want is a very restricted vision of 'success'. I think it is better to be busy with work -- which is Canadian experience, even if it is simple work -- than to spend 6 months or a year with no job at all. THAT is far more damaging on a resume than working in a grocery store -- where is the evidence that you even can work, in that case?
Obviously, your strategy should vary depending on the number of jobs in your professional area, and their geographic dispersion. My education is in public health, in which jobs are distributed fairly evenly, but thinly, across Canada, and there are significant local networks that are difficult to enter as an outsider.
