After 1 year living in Toronto, Canada many things are done. My family is busy going to Language courses, Day Care and I am busy having 2 jobs. One part time, fashion industry (I found first) and another full time, IT Company, Social Media Specialist. It is relevant to mention that back in Ukraine I didn’t have any of these experiences. My background was banking. This is one interesting thing about Canada where you can start from the scratch in a very unexpected field.  At the same time it is true to say that we are still in the process of integration in the local environment.

Some info about my job search process. I don’t write here about the part time activity within fashion industry (basically it is salesperson) as it was very easy, I just sent the resume (Canadian standard) and every time they called me the very next day. The interview questions for a particular fashion company you will easily find in the Internet (so that some research from your side is of cause assumed to succeed). But I want to share more about my second experience (full time job). The most challenging was absents of desire to work in general. J Therefore I spent half a year just getting to know the city better and having rest. I was trying to make up what would be the good job for me, however nothing worthy was coming to mind. And here is another thing. When you are constantly in the process of something (looking for a job, etc.) some occasional things happen to you which are not really occasional. I applied to a so called bridging program (there is a number of them in Canada, you will hear about them in every immigration service) which was supposed to connect me with a financial field again. Although this field was the place where I wanted to be the least, however, when you are in uncertainty for quite a time, you tend to come back to what you know the best. While doing the program I came across the vacancy (supplied by the program provider) in IT Company, which was different from what I was being prepared for. However, I understood at once that the vacancy was much better for me personally.  And I grabbed it. In my job search I didn’t send any singular resume until the time I was directly asked to do so by the employer. The job interview is a separate topic, maybe there are few differences from the process in Europe, however, the overall observation is the next. I would say for somebody with Russian, Ukrainian (may be former USSR area) background the whole integration process (cultural differences, job search) is easier than for people from Asia or Africa (who are significant share in Canada). Somehow there are more or less same cultural and business processes (with some differences of cause). Thus, in Canadian market former USSR specialists are a priory more successful. You just follow the common sense, plus apply your communication ethic and skills (the same you were using back in your first country). The overall impression is that the market is full of vacancies and sometimes there are less candidates than the job openings. The most important for the success is to know exactly what you want. That’s it. Bottom line.

One thing though, I found very different in Canada and I’d like to share it here. I don’t know why and whether the same is with everybody or it works for me only, but none of the pieces of advice I was getting here from different people worked for me. I mean all kind of pieces of advice, work, life, kids, whatever. Always at the end I understood that the suggestion was unsuitable for me. Even when people who were giving the advice were highly professional in the area of their consultancy it didn’t work for me. Some suggestions were even harmful. Thus, for example, when you get a consultancy from an Employment Service officer, inform them that you came to Canada just 2 weeks ago, and they are asking you what were you doing all this time and why came to them only now (making you to know, indirectly, that you are a kind of lazy bone, who has already wasted 2 weeks in Canada J). And you feel with your guts, something is wrong here (What the heck! Mind your own business J). By any means I call on you to ignore all the opinions and pieces of advice, but please give it a healthy degree of skepticism.

In case somebody has more specific questions I would be glad to be of any help. You can write me to 008bmw@ukr.net. Good luck and my best wishes to everybody.