Below if our latest submission for this week’s 24 hour newspaper: Provide new immigrants an employment opportunity.

Provide new immigrants an employment opportunity.

Last week I was partaking in a very well organized and enjoyable job fair. As expected the fair was well attended by various professionals looking for work, curious about career changes and an array of students who had completed their various designations or close to completion.

Although I was impressed with the attendees, I couldn’t help but notice the large groups of well dressed and highly educated new immigrants. These immigrant job seekers, majority of whom had permanent residency in Canada really caught my attention both in person and on paper.

There was one particular individual who had 16 years of experience in a related field, dressed professionally and communicated extremely well. I was dumbfounded that they had been in the country for 2 years but was constantly being passed over for work or not given an opportunity whatsoever. The individual was now looking for any opportunity and willing to take on a junior role just to get back into a field in which the had years of experience and held a professional designation and a masters degree.

Although, I have hired many excellent new immigrants for past employers and am aware of employers who do the same, I continue to hear stories of discrimination. It is unfortunate that this still exists with many individual employers in our multi-cultural city.

These individuals when given an opportunity rise to any employment challenge and work extremely hard. So my message to employers is this, give these highly skilled workers a chance to prove themselves. It is too often I hear of discrimination based assumptions such as: individual’s name, overseas work experience, truthfulness of references etc.

My advise to employers is to treat all job seekers equally and go into any decision knowing that by law, you have the right to “try before you buy” theory and hire an individual on a preliminary 3 month probationary period. Give them an opportunity to prove themselves.

Although this is a sensitive and somewhat controversial topic, I share this with you from my personal experience working with various employers and hearing stories from hundreds of newly migrated job seekers on a regular basis. Keep in mind, this is not the case for all employers, some of whom seek out new immigrant job seekers on a regular basis; so kudos to those who show equality.

After reading further on this topic, I am glad to hear that the federal government is spending millions trying to untangle the knot of foreign credentials. If this federal recognition continues, we shall soon see an increase of highly qualified new Canadian immigrants working in professional fields that align with their knowledge, skills and experience.

To my newly migrated readers I offer one big advise, either revise your resumes yourself or seek professional resume writing services that write a resume fit for North America. From our experience writing hundreds of resumes, this can be a good initial step selling your self on paper and getting noticed by employers.