In the world of Canadian immigration, being able to write a Canadian-style resume is one of the best ways to improve your professional personality and increase your chances of getting a job.
This document is more important than you might think at first, and it presents you to Canadian hiring managers and recruiters who might be interested in hiring you. It’s your chance to show off not only your hard skills, experience, and schooling, but also your personality and how well you might be able to adapt to the Canadian job market and its culture.
We have put together a list of things you should and shouldn’t do on your Canadian-style resume to make sure it meets Canadian standards:
Best Practices (The Dos’) On Canadian-style Resume
Clarity and ease of use are important.
Recruiters often get hundreds of resumes for a single job offering, but they only have a short amount of time to go through them all. So, sincerity is important to them. You will have plenty of chances to impress them with your words, but the resume is not the place to do that.
Give information in an easy-to-understand way so that hiring managers don’t miss important facts. Use simple, easy-to-understand language that doesn’t use jargon or unnecessary words.
Give information about how to reach you.
This should be changed and made easy to see. After all, employers can’t get in touch with you if they don’t know where to find you. Include your full name, phone number, email address, and a link to your business LinkedIn profile. This makes it easier to talk to each other.
Arrange Your Work Experience This Way.
As a general rule, you should list your most recent job experience first, then the one before that, and so on. This change to your work history gives your resume structure and puts your most recent experience, which is also your most important experience, at the top.
Employers would be able to see how far you’ve come in your job and how much you’ve changed over the years.
Write an outline of your work experience.
The first part of your resume should be a short, easy-to-understand summary of your work life. It is a short summary of your relevant skills, work experience, and job goals that goes at the beginning of your resume.
Try to make this part of your resume different for each job you apply for, since companies may want to know why you want to work for them.
It’s important to have soft skills
Yes, hard skills are usually the first thing a company looks for, whether it’s in a certain software, coding language, or editing platform. But the Canadian job market also puts a lot of value on soft skills like working in a team, being flexible, and being able to communicate.
You need to show that you are just as good at working with people as you are with technology.
Learn about SEO (search engine optimization).
Recruiters often use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to sort through the hundreds of CVs they receive, so they only see the most relevant ones.
To skip this part of the hiring process, you need to make your resume stand out by including keywords that are specific to the business and the job you want.
Can you speak different languages? Talk about it
Because Canada is a bilingual country, companies look for people who can speak both English and French.
If you know one or both, you should put that on your resume. It shows that you are ready to work with teammates who speak different languages and come from different places.
Have you helped out or volunteered Somewhere?
Employers like it when you give back to your community, so if you’ve done volunteer work that’s related to your job, you should list it on your profile.
Worst Practices (The Donts’) On Canadian-style Resume
Figure out what’s not important and don’t say it.
Personal information, like age, marriage status, or a picture of the person, has nothing to do with getting a job. Stick to information that is relevant to your professional image and leave out anything that will make your main selling points less appealing.
No need for fancy fonts
You should always use standard, professional fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, or Calibri, with a font size of no less than 11.
Even though other fonts may look interesting or attractive, Canadian companies usually don’t like these ways to stand out. The most important thing should be the information, not the way it looks.
Try to use personal names as little as possible.
“I,” “we,” “us,” and “my” should be used as little as possible. Instead, action verbs should be used. This makes the lines shorter and more professional-sounding.
How much do people make? Doesn’t belong on the resume
The salary is one of the most important things to think about when looking for a job, but it doesn’t belong on a resume. This is talked about later, when a contract is being worked out and job talks are happening.
Don’t write about hobbies that have nothing to do with the job you want.
Even though these things can tell a lot about who you are outside of work, only list hobbies that may be related to the job.
Reference letters (LORs) do not go on a resume.
A letter of Refrees should only be given out when asked for, not at the beginning of the hire process. At the end of your resume, you could say that LORs are available for the company to look at if they want to.
Use a Professional email address.
Employers make decisions about you based on everything they know about you, and that includes your e-mail address. It shows how well you do your job. A bad first impression could be made by handles that aren’t serious or relevant.
Don’t give up in the end
The resume is such an important part of the process of moving to Canada that you can’t just give up on it. Know that you are not the only one looking for work in Canada. This is something that everyone who moves to Canada must do.
If you have thought about the list of things you should and shouldn’t do, you are already well on your way to getting a job.
Your Canadian-style resume is the key to a successful job in Canada, and the more time you spend there and the more work experience you get, the better it will be.
