Uniivaa Jobs in Canada Guide: Should you fear the credential assessment process?
Every year thousands of highly skilled international professionals get jobs in Canada. Take, for example, engineers. As of 2010, Statistics Canada (Zietsma, 2010) estimated that engineers account for over half of the numbers of professionally trained immigrants to Canada. This means that a very large number of foreign or internationally trained engineers are entering into Canada.
Yet, there seems to be a lot of stories about foreign doctors driving taxis or engineers working in factories. How can these stories be true? Are they the exception to the rule and is it, as many suggest and complain about, because of the credential assessment process?
As a result of these concerns, the Canadian government recently commissioned a report to look into foreign credential recognition for newcomers to Canada. The job to look into this issue was given to Environics Research, a highly reputable research firm in Canada, and the results are probably not what you have previously been lead to believe.
According to the Environics study published by the Canadian Press on September 8, 2014, when it came to recognition of foreign credentials it appears that the recognition of credentials was not seen as the core of the problem. Although the recognition process obviously presents challenges from both a time and money point of view, it was surmountable.
Where people did have problems was in getting a job in their field even if they did have “all their papers in order”. This makes a lot of sense, especially given the large amount of professionally trained international workers who are now deciding to enter Canada with an employer LMO that is essentially a pre-arranged job in Canada.
In essence, the challenge of coming to Canada as a professional does not appear to be about getting your credentials certified, but rather in having them recognized in the eyes of the employer.
As a professional, you should in no way immigrate to Canada without knowing how the credential assessment system really works. We will have more to say on this topic in another article as research has shown that the manner in which you attempt to get your credentials assessed has a very significant impact on your credentials being accepted by the various professional societies and especially by employers.
However, the question in this article is whether you should fear the credential assessment process in Canada. The answer is that it is not recognition from the credential assessment process but rather recognition from the employer that you really need to navigate if you want to start a new life in Canada.
If you are interested in working in Canada, please feel free to use our free Jobs in Canada Eligibility Tool to assess your chances of getting a job in Canada. Visit: www.uniivaa.com
Information mentioned in the article:
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-x/2010102/article/11121-eng.htm
http://www.scribd.com/doc/239080658/Foreign-Credentials-Report