After 2 years' wait, the immigration office of Canada asked us to land and finalize our PR process and mrHKer had to find a job within 5 months during COVID...
Disclaimer: what worked for me may also work for you. I am just sharing what I believe were what were useful when I was applying for a job. Actually, my job search took 3 months if you discount the 2 months of getting ready to go to Canada.
I am not going to lie to you and say it was easy and you do x-y-z and bob's your uncle. Bob is not the average uncle and not everyone has that fabulous uncle. For 3 months though, I spent 1 hour every night after work, to do my job applications, with CV and cover letter, and writing the emails as well as filling the applications online job portals, eg Indeed.ca, jobbank.gc.ca, glassdoor, linkedin, ziprecruiter and not forgetting applying at the companies career websites too. From my experience, Software Engineering jobs were posted every week, about 10-20 and they were active for, say, 3 weeks. So,
My approach
When I applied for jobs, I prioritized the 10 jobs and started with the top 2 on monday, then the rest of the week, the least enviable (per my preference) 2s. So, Monday's got the top 2, Tuesday next 2 and so on. Spending 1 hour every night to research the company, match the CV and cover letter to the requirements... If you don't fit at all, leave it; if you fit partially, mention where your experience matches but don't beautify it too much, ie don't say you are an expert when you are really an intermediate
Same for filling the online applications and doing the evaluations there. You can still upload CVs and cover letters, but don't forget to change the names if you are copying and pasting, and proof read that you are matching to the requirements even most jobs look similar.
The keypoint is to show you are qualified for the job and you have the experience and skills and this means matching every requirement to your skillset and you may add other skills not mentioned but that could be useful (you'd find these in the job description for the role or for some of the projects described in there).
How it worked for me?
Ok, for 3 months, I filed many applications and reached 120 applications. I got 5 interviews only and 3 were in Vancouver and the 2 others were in Manitoba and Montreal. I only managed to get to 1 final interview and took a big paycut too (well, we were needing to land and finalize the PRs and only 1 of the companies, ie the one with the final round interview, was willing to wait for 2 months) but it was still very decent.
The interview process
In a nutshell, first round is with HR, second and third rounds are with your future boss and boss+teammates and final round is the offer once you have spoken to your boss' boss.
This may vary by industry and job roles: I have some friends from India and Philippines who had to do many more rounds, while others fewer.
Tips
- Customize your CV, cover letter, email and any 'Additional Info' in your job applications to the company you apply. They must feel you are solely applying to them.
- Keep your CV to 2 pages. If they are interested, they will discuss with you at the interview. They will ask for more details.
- During the interviews, the interviewers were generally friendly and will ask why you are leaving your home country. Be honest, but avoid too much information, eg I was asked frequently why I was taking a pay cut to immigrate and the succint answer is "We've been planning for 2.5 years or more and I want to settle in Canada with a job first". Well, you could provide several other reasons but bear in mind it is an interview.
- Update your Linkedin as your connections could endorse you!
- Minimize your copy and paste, because it's dangerous!
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