Education/training

Association removes job obstacles for immigrants

Working "below their potential" are not words the Chinese Professional Association of Canada (CPAC) wants to use to describe its members. The latest survey conducted by CPAC indicates that only 11.34% are employed in their trained professions; and 18% are employed in a weakly related field.
[ 2007-11-14 ]

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"The successful integration of internationally trained professionals is vital for Canada's economic development and is the answer to looming labour shortages," said Howard Shen, president of CPAC. "There is a big demand from the Chinese community for services that help to make them successful in Canada. Our association grew from 100 to 23,000 in only 15 years because of this need."

TWO KEY PROGRAMS


The association knows first-hand the obstacles that new immigrants face and has developed one of the strongest programs to assist internationally trained professionals in the country. The two key programs in CPAC's Career Centre are the Licensure Assistance Program, which assists members to obtain their Canadian license in engineering or health care. In the Mentoring Program, members are matched with mentors who are established professionals with similar backgrounds, and who can guide the prospective employee through their career goals and action plan to get there.

CPAC has found that there are three areas that new immigrants need assistance in: improving language skills, increasing their knowledge of the job market, and increasing opportunities to network with established professionals.

Like most newcomers, Harry Cheng set out to look for a job in engineering right after he arrived in Canada from Beijing in 2007. He was confident that his software engineering background, education, solid work experience and good English skills would land him a job. However, after four months of hard work, he remained jobless -- even though there were plenty of vacant software engineer jobs.

MENTOR



Cheng joined CPAC's Career Service Centre and was matched with a mentor who was a senior engineer with many years of experience in the industry, and more importantly, who was an immigrant himself and understood the challenges Harry faced.

"My mentor shared with me his job-searching experience and explained the cultural differences in Canada and the expectations of Canadian employers," said Cheng. "With his help, I had more knowledge about the labour market and Canadian workplace. What's more, I started to gain confidence in myself despite repeated failure, and successfully landed my first Canadian job as a software engineer one month after I was in the program."

Visit www.chineseprofessionals.ca for information.



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