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Research Trip September / October 2006 - Job Search
The key to this, I've discovered is the same as everything else with this process ....research, research, research.
The first approach (and the main one) that I've taken is to use a list of contacts that someone ahead of me had built up. Not all of them were still valid but I did a lot of phoning and researching from the UK before arriving in Calgary. This way I had the first few days lined up with meetings, some with agencies, some with potential employers.
We arrived in Calgary on the Friday afternoon and my first meeting was scheduled for Tuesday (we were with Ian & Jayne from Canilink on the Monday doing house hunting and getting our SIN's sorted out). So on the Sunday afternoon we drove into the down-town area to take a look around as this was where most of my meetings were scheduled for.
It didn't take long to learn my way around the centre of town...it's not as big as you would think. To be honest I was very impressed with the layout. Each day I caught the LRT (C-train) from Shawnessy ($2.25 one way) which brought me right into the heart of things. From there I was usually able to take the +15 (marvellous invention) that enables you to walk pretty much everywhere you want to down-town while you are 15 feet above the ground and never go outside.
To cut a long story short ...... I wasn't able to secure a job while I was there. This was clearly what I was aiming for as this would have been a fantastic launch board for our new life in Calgary. However, it soon became clear that as we haven't yet sold the house we are not in a position to be able to commit to a date when we would be in Calgary on a permanent basis. This was clearly a stumbling block and as such my job-hunting trip soon turned into a networking trip.
Having said that, there was one organization that wanted to meet me for a second interview but as they wanted me to be able to travel for more than 50% of the time I didn't feel that it was appropriate. One of the reasons we're moving to Calgary is for a better quality of life for the four of us and for me to be away for half the time defeats the objective.
One thing to note is that I have heard of individuals both before my trip and after it who have secured job offers with companies before they are in a position to land as permanent residents in Calgary and in fact are also willing to help with the paperwork to push things through for them. So, if you are hoping to be able to secure a job before you are living permanently in Canada don't be disheartened by my experience as the jobs are still out there. In fact I suggest that securing a job offer to accelerate your application (and add to your points) is probably the best way of beating the long long wait that the Skilled Worker route has become.