WORKING IN
CANADA
MAIN BARRIER AND
OBSTACLES FOR IMMIGRANTS
According to surveys
and research studies among Canadian employers and newcomers, there are several
problems immigrants must face to enter the job market:
According to Canadian
employers, there are
several negative factors
in newcomer workers, among which these are the most outstanding:
● Communication and
language obstacles
● Non being
acquainted with the Canadian way of dealing with matters.
● Non having
diplomas or reliable job experience
● No licensing by
the Local Associations
● Lack of training
or academic upgrading
● Different
standards (unities, regulations, technical regulations, etc)
● Racism and
Discrimination
● Ignorance
● Difficulty in
certifying the first job experience
● Lack of Canadian
experience
● Lack of knowledge
of the local job market (companies, employers, etc)
● lack of knowledge
of the different assistance services available for the community
● Lack of knowledge
of the worker’s rights.
● Disinformation (
wrong or incomplete information from friends, relatives, community, etc.)
● Inability to carry out a successful
job interview
The main
obstacles for hiring newcomers are
● English !
English! English! ( writing. speaking, listening)
●
Lack of experience in the Canadian way of working
●
Many newcomers will be temporary workers who will move to different cities.
●
Lack of abilities to work in a team.
●
Frustration because of working in offices under their real capacity or degree.
●
Cultural difference (religion, costumes, etc)
●
More difficulty to integrate themselves into a work team
●
More difficulty to assess knowledge and
abilities.
On the other hand,
Canadian employers know that newcomers
have some advantages to be
employed. The most
outstanding are:
● Good Workers
● Respectful and
eager to work
● Loyal
● Usually very well
qualified (often over qualified)
● They add diversity
to the work place.
● New ideas
● Flexible in their
timetable
● They usually work
for lower salaries
● They may be useful
for the business or company because of their native language
- CRITICAL SKILLS REQUIRED OF THE CANADIAN WORKFORCE
Independently from
experience, or hard skills required for a certain craft, you should have some
other characteristics to work successfully in some job positions. These personal
abilities or soft skills are related to your personal communication skills,
problem solving capacity, positive attitude and the ability to work in a team.
In general terms, they could be defined as the personal abilities that will give
you employment possibilities, as they are the ones employers want in their
employees.
Through several studios
and research, the Canadian government has defined, classified and assessed 9
basic skills required for a worker to have in different degrees to enter the
job market successfully, which are highly valorised by Canadian employers when
they are to hire an applicant.
A.
Text Reading
Comprehension
Text reading
comprehension refers to understanding sentences and paragraphs. That includes
understanding notes, letters, memos, manuals, specifications, regulations or
technical requirements, books, reports, and newspapers. It also refers to the
understanding of forms, labels, printed and non-printed media (computer texts,
micro tags, etc), graph texts, tables and graph information. For example:
information to use a product, supervisors’ memos, detailed job orders, notes
form co-workers, training manuals, computer manuals, safety and security
industrial regulations, product specifications in plain, building and
electricity codes, reference books for the profession, technical magazines, etc.
B.
Documenta Use
Use of documents
related to the tasks implying a variety of information in the form of words,
numbers, icons, lines, colours, Shapes, etc. Also graph conventions, drawings
and plans. Examples: production graphs, content or comparative tables,
blueprints, signals, universal usage labels, forms filling out, Geography maps,
etc.
-
Writing
It includes writing
texts, filling out documents, both handwritten and computer typed. Example:
writing a memory minder note for a co-worker, filling application forms, making
a valorisation order or purchase order, etc.
-
Numeracy
It refers to the
various uses of numbers and the ability to think in quantitative terms. That
ability will be based on the ability to do and apply numeric calculations to
everyday life and at work, such as money calculations, writing and handling with
a budget, take measures with an instrument (verniers, metric tapes) and
arithmetic calculations, analysing numeric information, etc.
Other examples: Bank
operations, payroll, handling with time, and money, take measures to buy
furniture or floors, make calculations in foreign currency, calculate and deduct
taxes, calculate material or power consumptions, etc.
C.
Oral
Communication
It refers to the
ability to speak and interchange thoughts and information with other workers in
a work team. There are four levels, from basic interaction to extended use in a
variety of complex communicative situations. The level of oral communication has
been developed to be compatible with the one set by the
Canadian Language Benchmarks, English as a
Second Language for Adults, 1996.
The assessment is performed through some tests determining the level of English
“speaking” and “listening” of every candidate.
D.
Thinking
Skills
Thinking skills are
divided into 6 areas:
●
Problem Solving:
Seek, find, and implement the course of actions leading to the solution of a
problem.
●
Decision Making:
Choosing among different solutions available. Although decision making is part
of the problem solving process, the solution is not the decision making itself.
●
Critical Thought
●
Planning and Organising
tasks at Work
●
Significant Use of Memory
●
Searching and Finding Information:
It implies the use of diverse sources such as people, texts, Internet, computer
data, or Information Systems.
