Adjustment can be hard for immigrant professionals

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This article was published 17/07/2020 (1910 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you are new in Canada, finding a job is paramount to settling and integrating but many newcomers say employment applications they fill out ask for Canadian experience.

To get that experience, mentors and family members encourage them to engage in volunteer work to help them land their first paid jobs to get crucial Canadian experience.

Agencies such as Success Skills Centre help foreign professionals acquire skills and experience that will be valued in the Canadian employment market. 

Titilola Oluseyi-Oshin, whom friends call Titi, was fortunate to become a Success Skills Centre client and through their efforts got an internship at the Manitoba Human Rights Commission for a little over three months. She was among the last batch of clients Success helped before the federal government pulled its funding, forcing Success Skills Centre to close its doors as a free service.

Success had boasted a 90 per cent success rate of placing clients in jobs comparable to their professional standing, so the workers at the centre decided to continue the program as a fee-for-service social enterprise.

  Titi was a lawyer in Nigeria, her birth country, but due to difficult circumstances, she and her family decided to emigrate to Canada under the provincial nominee program in October 2019.

While Titi did not expect to start practising law right away in Canada, she believed her background would make it easier to find a job but discovered that her experience and qualifications were not as valued in the Canadian context. It was a culture shock. 

“My credentials do not appear to give me any advantage in Canada because even though I cannot practise law I expected a legal background would give me some standing in my job search, but not so. It seems as if I have to start from scratch,” Titi said.

Titi said her husband was able to find a job quicker because of his computer skills.

“Through Success Skills Centre, a place that helps skilled professionals to find jobs, I learned a lot. They are very professional and understands the immigrant situation very well. I am thankful for the help they gave me,” she said, adding that “the staff are mostly immigrants and they are very supportive because they have been through similar experience.”

Asked about her experience at the Human Rights Commission, Titi said it was very helpful but what would have been even more desirable is if it was a paid internship and lasted a little longer.

However, Titi feels she has now gained enough Canadian experience that she feels equipped to work in the mainstream.

“It is not that much different from how we work in Nigeria,” she said.

The transferable skills she took from the Commission include working within a team, sharpening her analytical skills, improved computer skills and working with professional lawyers. She also did a lot of photocopying, filing and observing the process of filing a complaint.

Mother of a baby daughter, Titi says she intends to become an accredited human resources consultant and will enrol in the program at Red River College in the near future.

Beatrice Watson is a community correspondent for Fort Rouge.