Canadian Resume

It takes proper planning and the right approach to effectively apply for a job in Canada.

They’re not lying when they said there are plenty of job vacancies in Canada. Once you’re here, filtering through job postings and submitting your resume can be done with just a few clicks. There are also plenty of sites for job search like the Canadian Job Bank, Indeed to name a few.

The tough part is crafting a resume that’s attractive enough for Canadian employers to grant you an interview.

There are essential elements in a Canadian resume, such as:

1. Contact Info – full name, contact number, email address and physical address (city, province and zip code is fine).

2. Summary of Qualifications – a bird’s eye view of the length and depth of your work experience relevant to the job posting, technical and soft skills you possess to perform the job well.

3. Work Experience – relevant work experience ranging from the present up to the last 10 years. Helpful to include any internships, co-ops, or volunteer work in Canada for that ‘Canadian experience’ employers tend to look for.

4. Education, Licenses and/or Trainings – your latest education, relevant major trainings, and any foreign education with Canadian equivalency, if any.

5. References can be furnished upon request, unless you have a strong reference that can help with the application.

Canadian resumes are max 2 pages long, so make it count. For an international student like me who can only take on part-time jobs for the program duration, a 1-pager is enough.

Non-essential elements in a Canadian resume and should NOT be included are: a photo, age, birthdate, gender, civil status or other personal information that may lead to any discrimination with regards to the hiring process.

At the moment, there are still some aspects to ‘Canadian-ize’ my resume that I struggled with despite the various resume guides I’ve looked up in the last few days or so.

One of them is that the jobs currently in demand in the North Bay area are mostly healthcare-related while my work experience is largely in IT, Project Management and supervisory work.

Not that I shy away from taking on entry-level jobs. I just need to effectively highlight my transferrable and softskills that’ll fit the job postings.

This is a critical task worth spending time on, refining your Canadian resume so you increase your odds of getting a shot at that job when you find the right one worth pursuing.

Write, read, rephrase, repeat. Tedious, but necessary.