I have made the move from India to Canada in March of 2018. I was going through a lot of questions like this before I moved here, so now I feel like I owe it to the community to give back my experience.
Firstly, my situation is a bit different, since I’ve done my masters in US and have about 8 years of working experience there, you may consider me to not be a stranger to North America. But honestly, I don’t believe that really matters.
Some background before I talk about my Canadian journey. I have a Bachelors degree in Computer science that I got in India, then I moved to US to do my Masters in Computer science. I work in the Microsoft Technology stack. (.net, azure, sql, angular... etc.).
The Canadian Journey
I landed in Toronto Pearson in mid March, on a Friday night. I got temporary paying guest accommodation through Airbnb. It was snowing flakes on the day I landed. I took a cab to my PG and crashed for the evening. Next morning, I walked to a nearby Tim Horton's to get a coffee and a croissant for breakfast (Oh i missed croissants in India). I spent the whole weekend speculating different scenarios that may playout in the following week.
Monday Morning comes, I upload my resume on to Linkedin, Indeed and Monstor. Fingers crossed, I sit there hoping my phone would start ringing. And 1 hour later, it starts, and it never stops. I got so many calls from recruiters trying to get me interviews for both full time and contract job opportunities. Within the first two days, I had almost 10 interviews lined up for that week and the following. I started attending interviews from Tuesday afternoon. Some were single round, and others were multi rounds. I got some feedback by Thursday evening from 3 companies (2 full time and 1 contract) that were willing to put out an offer. I spent the whole evening carefully deliberating the pros and cons of each one of those opportunities. By next morning (Friday), I picked a job and canceled all other interviews that were lined up for Friday and the following week.
I had one week gap between the time I signed the offer and the job start date. I hopped on a flight and went to Maryland (US) to catch up with old friends and colleagues there. I came back the following Friday, shopped a bit on Saturday and Sunday and went to work on Monday morning.
My next goal was to get a car/drivers license/apt etc. Now, 3 weeks later, I have all of them. But that's a different story for a different time. I'll spare you the details now since your concern is for job placement in Canada.
I hope this helps you. I hear a lot of people saying you'll need Canadian Experience to make it here, but that's not true at least for Computer Programming related fields. I hear its hard for people to find jobs in some fields in Canada. I'm not sure of it, but I personally feel if you're really good at what you do, and have good experience/education and communication skills to back it up, finding a job here in Toronto is a walk in the park.
That said, I’m obviously not discounting the hardship many people go through when they come to this great country. But my point is that there’s many factors at play here, and you cannot just consider someone’s success or failure to be a definitive indication of your own success/failure for your future life in Canada. I say if you’re confident you can make the move, make it. But burn no bridges back home. No matter how well you plan, you should always have a fallback in place. (I had one when I moved)
You can go on Job Search Canada | Indeed and look for jobs in your field before you land. It’ll give you an idea as to how the market is for your field in different cities. But my recommendation is to NOT submit your resume online until you land, because recruiters don’t take you seriously when you’re not physically present here in Canada.
My sister in law Canada Journey
God speed to you.
Thanks for Reading
. I am planning to apply PR for Canada.){kind=link}
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