Newcomers often become easy targets to fraud and scam since they may not be used to how banks, companies and government work in Canada.
In this webinar, the team from the RBC Meeting Place will share tips and strategies for protecting yourself and your information from cyber fraud. Topics include:
Recognizing client success, and the contributions of volunteers and employers, has been a staple each year at JVS Toronto’s Annual General Meeting (AGM). On September 30th, JVS Toronto presented its AGM Awards to six very deserving recipients.
Avi Pollock, JVS Toronto’s incoming Board Chair, mentioned that the awards ceremony is always his favourite part of the Annual General Meeting. “Whether they are being honoured as an employer who has made a commitment to use our services, or whether they are a client or a volunteer being honoured for making that commitment to better their lives or the lives of others, every recipient has trusted JVS Toronto in our ability to help them.”
This award recognizes a young entrepreneur who has completed one of JVS Toronto’s youth entrepreneurship programs, and successfully operating a full-time or a part-time basis business.
Zianne joined the Youth Entrepreneurship Program when she needed help after launching her cleaning business, Elite Housekeeping. Before joining the program, Zianne was looking for ways to find the capital to grow the business and a strategy to break into the commercial cleaning market.
Through the YEP program Zianne received coaching on how to develop a business plan while gaining crucial knowledge in management, finance and marketing. With the grant provided by YEP, Zianne was able to purchase the essential cleaning equipment and hire staff.
Zianne is now the owner of a successful business specializing in cleaning both residential and commercial properties. She is a true entrepreneur and we wish her only success in her future.
Although Canada is a big country most immigrants settle in the country’s biggest cities – Greater Toronto and Metro Vancouver areas. This has a big impact on cost of living and labour market which means settling in these cities comes at a significant cost.
It is important for new immigrants to understand that smaller cities in Canada have lower unemployment rates and can offer great job opportunities. Ageing population and other economic factors have created a great need for immigrant talent in these communities.
In this webinar, we bring you representatives from two such cities – London and Ottawa in Ontario. They will provide information on labour market and cost of living which are things new immigrants should definitely take into account when deciding in which community to build their lives.
Are your skills considered valuable by employers now and into the future? Do you know what careers are most valued? What skills do you need to add and how? Questions about job trends are frequently asked of employment and career counsellors, and answering these questions is never easy. Right now, as we face an even more unpredictable and fast changing economic landscape, those questions have increased and become even more fraught.
Some of us might think that these concerns come mostly from high school graduates, but often they come from career changers of all ages and stages, facing concerns about job instability in a changing labour market, and their ability to adapt to it and stay ahead.
Finding the data necessary to answer these questions isn’t easy. To get a sense of labour market trends, present and future projections in Canada, the federal government has put together a Job Trend Analysis website that draws from sources such as the five-yearly census, annual taxes, and unemployment insurance claims. This site is part of Employment and Social Development Canada’s Job Bank, and is worth exploring for anyone who is rethinking their career or wanting to learn more about potential jobs.
However, the site does not necessarily present the entire picture — the information tends to be a little behind the curve, as it takes time to compile and present the data; it’s also, of course, restricted to Canadian data, which is an important limitation at a time when careers and jobs are global and increasingly unbound by geographic limitations.
A new initiative by LinkedIn and Microsoft presents another useful perspective on this issue. Drawing on LinkedIn’s huge database of millions of users, companies, job postings, and skills on their platform, the career platform has compiled a list of the 10 most in-demand jobs in the current (2020) global market, which are most likely to continue to grow in the future.
Based on steady growth patterns in previous years, wages and whether the skills can be learnt online LinkedIn identified the following 10 jobs and skillsets:
Best of all, with the limitations of the current pandemic in mind, LinkedIn put together 10 sets of Learning Paths, based on these careers, to offer free online video-based training to users (free until March 2021), provided by industry-expert instructors. Upon completion of each path, users receive a certificate of completion, to share on their LinkedIn profile.
As we have mentioned in previous blogs, the focus is on a balance between hard and soft skills, including a focus on collaboration, change, diversity and inclusion. To that end, LinkedIn also provides a Master In-Demand Professional Soft Skills set of free online courses, including:
Think through your target jobs and read through descriptions of them in job postings to identify the most valuable skills for your field. Pick a couple (two to three, perhaps) of key skills and focus on them. Remember to mention them in interviews, preferably with specific example of where you have used them in your past.
Skills training is increasingly available online often at low cost or even free for those seeking an opportunity to enhance their skills. Multiple sources of training, such as colleges, universities and private schools are now offering the flexibility of multiple start dates and greater course choices, as detailed in a previous blog I wrote earlier this year.
Don’t forget to add these new skills to your resume, your LinkedIn profile and to mention them in cover letters, when relevant to a particular job.
Career counselling at JVS Toronto will help you identify your interests, skills, personality and values to build a clear picture of what will make you feel happy and fulfilled in your career. Find out more at jvstoronto.org/career-exploration
We are always happy to share our program participant’s success stories. This one is even more special: Yasmine participated in our program before immigrating to Canada and has recently joined the Canada InfoNet team.
My name is Yasmine and I took a risky decision and immigrated to Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. I arrived in July 2020, but I had been trying to gather information about Ontario, employment, the weather, accommodation, etc. for months before landing. After receiving my Confirmation of Permanent Residency, I signed up with different pre-arrival programs. Some were general like Planning for Canada (who referred me to JVS Toronto’s Canada InfoNet), and some were more specific to certain careers and industries.
After signing up with Canada InfoNet, I was matched with an Employment Specialist who was extremely helpful and informative. I had access to online courses that tackled job search skills and the workplace in Canada, and tools I needed for updating my resume to meet Canadian standards. I attended virtual job fairs and webinars organized by the program as well. All those interventions were crucial to creating a post-landing plan for me.
When I arrived in Canada, I started the long job-hunting journey. It’s usually tough in the beginning for a newcomer to find employment, but with a pandemic it was even more challenging. Between exploring the GTA and applying to jobs, I took up some freelance work with UpWork. My background is in Human Resources and Administration, so I tried using that to my advantage. This allowed me to utilize my skills and learn new ones while staying more positive during hard times.
My own experience made me realize that I wanted to help other newcomers who were going through similar experiences. I’ve always been passionate about giving back and doing meaningful work, so it was a no-brainer for me to start shifting my job search methods and focusing on the non-profit sector. I compiled a list of organizations I wanted to work for, and the pre-arrival agencies I used were on the top of that list. I regularly tracked their Careers pages and kept an eye out for anything that matched my skills and experience.
This strategy proved to work for me when I found the Online Mentoring Administrator position for the Canada InfoNet program posted on JVS Toronto’s website. I applied online and the rest is history. Now, I am both happy and proud to be working with one of the best services I personally used before immigrating to Canada. I believe that my success in landing a job with a leading non-profit organization could be attributed to using available resources prior to landing in Canada and being patient and flexible enough to change course when the current methods just don’t work.
Yasmine’s Employment Specialist from Canada InfoNet program shared that she was a very engaged and determined participant. She asked questions and clarifications when needed and successfully completed all the components that were outlined by the program. He states, “I was proud to have been Yasmine’s Employment Specialist, and now to see her join Canada InfoNet as a team member. I wish her continuous success in her career in Canada.”
Welcome to the team Yasmine!
Every individual experience in immigration and job seeking is different and with its own challenges, which is why, creating your personalized job search strategy is very important. If you have been approved for immigration, our Employment Specialists at Canada InfoNet can help you develop that strategy even before you come to Canada.
JVS Toronto is accredited under Imagine Canada’s national Standards Program dedicated to operational excellence.