These days I have been reading a lot of Carl Jung Philosophy. One idea caught my attention. Jung tried to preach that “Life is not supposed to be happy or easy. If you only pursue happiness you are setting yourself up for disappointment.” You can only find true meaning and purpose in your life through heavy burden aka. Responsibility.
I always discourage my students from starting their paper with a quote. Here I am doing it myself but this philosophy is important for us to understand if we want to survive the competitive Canadian job market. Trust me there is no better time to come to Canada. There is a recession. They are desperate for money. They will let more people enter into this country. When the financial situation stabilizes they will be much more inward looking conservatives. Is it getting harder to get a job? Yes. Are you going to give up? No. Because by giving up you are fostering a person in your brain that you don’t want to live with. Enough with the intro let get to the point.
Why students are finding it unusually harder:
I try to tell everyone don’t do whatever everyone else is doing. Everyone is clustering around the university areas. Get your lazy bum up, ride a bus and look around. More jobs are available in smaller places.
Just remember you don’t need 100 jobs. You need only one.
Tips to set you apart from the crowd:
- Applying online might not work for initially surviving people. Print 100 CVs from your university grad room and go on job hunting in person.
- It is extremely important to go job hunting at the beginning of the day when shops are opening up. People are usually nicer at that time. Don’t go on the weekends. Usually managers are not available on the weekends. Ask to talk to the managers directly. In smaller shops managers are in charge of hiring new people.
- Hand them your Resume with a smile on your face. I can’t stress enough how important it is to wear a confident smile. Our Bangladeshi parents trained us to be creeps. We tend not to look into peoples’ eyes and smile and shake hands. Don’t be like that. Your charisma is more important than your CGPA. I get enraged when I see high CG creeps running around without knowing how to create social networks. I don’t know, read Dale Carnegie may be :/
- Talking about your social network. In Bangladesh you were wrapped under a thick blanket of social networks. Here you are exposed like a Zebra in African Savannah. The very first day you land your primary motivation should be creating your social network again. We human beings are genetically hardwired to live in a herd. Try to create genuine friends through empathy not to serve your purpose. Don’t confine yourself to your community only, volunteer, Meet other people. Send a connection request on LinkedIn. Offer to help people for no reason at all. Altruism creates the strongest networks.
- Last time I advised people to go pray and received backlash lol. Here I am saying it again: go to your religious congregation and meet people there. You will find better friends in mosques and libraries.
- Another Very important tip is tailor your CV and Cover Letter for each job application. I still have a folder full of CV and cover letter for each job I ever applied for. For a professional job go through the job posting and look for the key words. Try to implement them in your Cover Letter and CV. otherwise your application will get rejected by the bot filtering.
- There are huge YouTube channels to take interview preparations and write CV Cover letters. Please go through them. I learnt so much about the North American hiring process through them. There are youtube channels with real hiring managers. They will teach you what kind of answers they look for when they ask you a particular question.
- This is probably advice for the advanced jobs. Don’t just focus on finding any jobs. Focus on one particular area/industry/company. Create a job alert linked in. Apply as soon as you see the posting. Otherwise your application will not be considered. There is no point in applying 2 days after the job posting.
- Try to build connections with the hiring manager of your intended company on LinkedIn. Send connection requests to the employees. Express your interest to work with them but don’t just ask for a job. Try to think how you can add value to their company. We all are biased towards the people who are interested in our works.
- Last but not the least, be thankful for the opportunity. Leaving your motherland is forever stressful for us. Most of the people carry the Caveman DNA but you are one of those people who sailed across Java to reach Australia. I like to visit museums. Throughout history human had extremely hard lives. But they persisted through. You have no idea how much you can endure unless you have to. Enjoy the adventure. 🙂
Here is a Sample Cover Letter. I don’t help people to secure jobs in Canada. I only can help you with your student visa processing. Email me to book a session.
