Hi people
Havent been here for ages BUT need help again and Know you are all the best at answering them

Sorry its another job question but HELP !!!!
My hubby is 40 ex RAF after his 22years and now works for BAE Systems as a electrical supervisor.

We have no idea the best way to go about finding a job he has been offered contract work but thats not a "job offer" we really need to secure a job so we can be "fast tracked" as so far we are nearly a year and only through the first stage.
Unless there is a shortage of florists LOL we need to find him a job!

GOOD LUCK TO YOU ALL AN YOUR DREAM

Sorry, I don't know what an electrical supervisor is. I'm not trying to be obtuse. I genuinely don't know. Also, I'm not British, so I'm not all that familiar with abbreviations for names of British companies. A Google search told me that BAE was a combination of British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems.

Okay, that makes me think that your husband may be what Canadians call an electronics technician. If that is the case, I would guess Ontario might be his best bet, since it is Canada's manufacturing hub. There are some of those kinds of companies in Quebec too, but I don't know if you guys are fluent in French.

If your husband is actually an electrician, he could write the Red Seal exam and be recognized as an electrician in Canada. If that were the case, they would kidnap him in Alberta and you'd never see him again. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but the point is that there is an oil boom in Alberta, the oil boom has resulted in a construction boom, and people in the skilled trades are in high demand.

Anecdotal reports suggest that people in the skilled trades actually are in high demand all across Western Canada. Vancouver is getting ready for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and other regions have had their workers siphoned off by Alberta's oil industry.

If your husband is an electronics technician, I recommend that he reads the BE Wiki article entitled Finding Job Opportunities. There are several useful links there. One of them is to the Canadian government's Company Capabilities website. You can use that site to find out who the corporate players are in each sector and in each region.

The Finding Job Opportunities Wiki also has a link to Specialty Job Sites.

Then read all of the BE Wiki articles in the series on Job Hunting in Canada. Read everything about marketing yourself, the Canadian hiring culture, networking, turning your British CV into a Canadian resume, and the importance of the covering letter. Above all, be aware that the process involves a lot more phone calls than you may be used to in the UK.

If the two of you could do a recce trip to your target region, it would be helpful. In that case, I recommend the BE Wiki article entitled Scouting Trip.

There are a number of aviation related companies in BC. Conair have a maintenance base in Abbotsford. Also BC Institute of Technology offer Avionics & Structures courses and University College of the Fraser Valley offer structures, if teaching is of interest.

Here are the aerospace job postings from the job bank.
Have a look and see any of the job descriptions appropriate for
your husband's qualifications.
http://www.jobbank.gc.ca/JobResult_e...ent&Student=No
All the best.
Yoong

You are a star!!!!! Thank you

[Thank you Judy its lovely to know there are people like you to help I will get hunting!!!QUOTE=Judy in Calgary;5506396]Sorry, I don't know what an electrical supervisor is. I'm not trying to be obtuse. I genuinely don't know. Also, I'm not British, so I'm not all that familiar with abbreviations for names of British companies. A Google search told me that BAE was a combination of British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems.

Okay, that makes me think that your husband may be what Canadians call an electronics technician. If that is the case, I would guess Ontario might be his best bet, since it is Canada's manufacturing hub. There are some of those kinds of companies in Quebec too, but I don't know if you guys are fluent in French.

If your husband is actually an electrician, he could write the Red Seal exam and be recognized as an electrician in Canada. If that were the case, they would kidnap him in Alberta and you'd never see him again. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but the point is that there is an oil boom in Alberta, the oil boom has resulted in a construction boom, and people in the skilled trades are in high demand.

Anecdotal reports suggest that people in the skilled trades actually are in high demand all across Western Canada. Vancouver is getting ready for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and other regions have had their workers siphoned off by Alberta's oil industry.

If your husband is an electronics technician, I recommend that he reads the BE Wiki article entitled Finding Job Opportunities. There are several useful links there. One of them is to the Canadian government's Company Capabilities website. You can use that site to find out who the corporate players are in each sector and in each region.

The Finding Job Opportunities Wiki also has a link to Specialty Job Sites.

Then read all of the BE Wiki articles in the series on Job Hunting in Canada. Read everything about marketing yourself, the Canadian hiring culture, networking, turning your British CV into a Canadian resume, and the importance of the covering letter. Above all, be aware that the process involves a lot more phone calls than you may be used to in the UK.

If the two of you could do a recce trip to your target region, it would be helpful. In that case, I recommend the BE Wiki article entitled Scouting Trip.[/QUOTE]

We are going to Whistler for 2 weeks in Jan and have planned a few days to check out areas at the moment we like Vancover.

Little flower

Welcome to the forum, not seen your posts before, but is your husband classed as industrial ?

My hubby is a maintenance manager in the uk, was looking at ontario, but now opened our searc to alberta as well, due to wages etc.
The job spec he looks at is industrial electrician in canada, although our guys are supervisors and managers in the uk, the companys expect them to stand down afew steps when they arrive.
Also to work as an electrician judy is right he will need to be checked out and sit an exam for his licence.
Not sure on BC area, but i have links in alberta and ontario if you need them.

Good Luck

Gill

OK folks, here's the employment bombshell on being a UK trained person here in Canada. I am an electronics engineer of 23 years experience & have struggled hard to get established in my trade here even though I can wipe the floor with most of the incompetent jokers I have worked with in Canada. This is what I have figured out in 8 years. The one place which will really help you to adapt to the job market here is Job Skills (it's free!) - find your local office & sign up ASAP. They will help you with your search, interview skills, resume & job search, the methods used here are VERY different to those used in the UK!
1. Whatever they are, your UK qualifications are worthless here so you must start re-qualifying again from scratch by going to college, university or trade school. The course you choose may give you some exemptions or credits for what you have done & obtained up to now but generally they are considered to be worthless. You should seek foreign credential equivelency evaluation to get an exchange rate for your quals.
2. Lower your sights (& your sallary expectations)...A lot! Your foreign work experience is of very limited use here. You must work here to get Canadian employment experience. It is as difficult to get a start here as it was for the first job you had to crawl for when you left technical college or university. Consider the time as an aprenticeship - again! Look to join a company in a related field at the bottom of the feed trough & I mean the bottom. From there you can prove your worth from within & make friends with people who will help you progress. This is commonly termed "networking".
3. Your profession is regulated here & requires professional licensing. To get this you need to show time working here under the direct scrutinisation of a registered professional engineer. After a number of years you will be able to apply for a license which may involve some re-training but will require exams & sign off by the PEO engineer who oversees your work so make friends not enemies with the guy who watches over you! Typical times are 2 years for PEO & to get the DOD (avaiation engineering license) you will be looking at 9 years!!! (My Stepson is Canadian qualified & has 5 years so far working for Bombardier) BTW: Bombardier are the pits of the employment food chain for avaition engineering. They pay peanuts & there are no chances to progress within the company unless you are an imortal (it takes decades not years). They will be the easiest company for you to try & get into because of this as nobody ever stays with them long enough to progress properly & they know it.
4. Job Title: Jobs here are categorised on a NOC list (ministry of employment) so you must google it & look at the list to find the title(s) which most closely matches your skills set & use this to describe yourself to employers & job agents. This will stop the "don't know what that is" comments!
5. Keep plugging away at it! Canada is a great place but most Brits who come here struggle to make a living here because they fail to accept that they have to start at the bottom & work up.

Hi Gill Nice to meet you (well almost meet you!!!)

NO wonder you are called CRASHER DAI!!!!!

THANKS FOR BOTH OF YOUR POSTS ALTHOUGH DREAMS KEEP GETTING SMASHED

We so want to go we new my hubby would have to take a huge job cut as he hasnt got the insurances things but he has his RAF pension so not to bad but knowing how good and respected he is at work its horrible to think its worth nothing in canada we are applying through an agent so they have sorted the qualifications out ect.
Its just so hard waiting i am in the process of selling my florist shop so I am good to go just got to wait 5?? years.!!!!
Well I will just have to keep it all crossed

deleted

When you come here you should be able to get the pension payments to continue which would help you to get established. It is very difficult to get a Canadian employer to take into account what you have done or earned overseas. This is because there are so many people who come here from places like China where they have gained questionable degrees & questionable experience (from the actual capabilities these individuals display in the job they must be giving the quals out in rice packets!). Some job hunters get so desperate that they make whopping lies on their resumes & employers know this, so when your resume credentials are genuinely impressive it may sound like you are blagging. I have encountered so many incompetent, incapable & lazy engineers & technicians here it is like a keystone cops movie. The anoying thing is that they have better paper credentials than I do & have probably managed to lie their way into some job but have no clue where to start with the tasks which make this job up whereas I know what I am doing & could do these things like a lunchtime crossword puzzle while slurping my muligatawny soup!

When you prepare your resume it is often tempting to put down so much which you probably genuinely have & sound like a rocket scientist. (like loading bigger bullets because you keep missing when what you really need to do is use a smaller more accurate bullet & actually hit the target)Remember that less is more. Include just enough info to show you have each of the items listed (or make it sound like you do for the vague ones) in the vacancy buletin & very little more than that. Your resume has one purpose: To get an interview, NOTHING else. The 1st interview (there are normally two or more for a job here) has no other purpose other than to obtain the next interview. The last stage interview is where the nuts & bolts are negotiated. At this point you KNOW you are the best candidate so it's purpose is to establish a mutually acceptable renumeration package. It is normally difficult to entirely blow it at this stage by overpricing yourself unless you are outrageously high or indicate untactfully that it is not negotiable. After each stage of your application (3 days after sending in a resume, 1 day after each face to face interview or meeting) it is normal to make ONE short phone call to the primary contact be it the HR manager or if you struck a real raport with the hiring manager direct to that manager to say "thank you for the interviewers' time" & thereby indicating that you are still interested which is unlike the UK where it would be job hunting suicide to "pester" the company in this way.

Thanks for the great info, Crasher Dai, but just a few translations for people heading to parts of Canada other than Ontario.

• I did a Google search for Job Skills, and found that it was an organization in Ontario. Assistance for newcomers to Canada varies from province to province and from city to city. Newly arrived expats will need to find out about resources in their own communities.
  
  
• As I understand it, PEO stands for Professional Engineers Ontario. The professional engineering associations of other provinces have other names.
  
  
• DOD - Would you be willing to share what this actually stands for? A Google search came up with Department of Defense (or Defence), but I don't know if that's right.
  
  
• NOC = National Occupational Classification

Another point is take references from your employer explaining your duties and skills.

My husbands company have wrote trade reference and also personal reference for him (neally cried when i read the personal one )
Get all your paper work in order and back it up where needed.
Hubby when for a interview in ontario and the job was his, but sadly we wasnt in the position to except do to the house in the uk.
They have advise to keep in contact and advise when we land.

Due to wages and certain things we are bringing alberta into the search, but be honest with the employer, get the paper work in order and follow up where you can

Good luck
Gill

Although this statement applies to many occupations (particularly regulated) this doesn't necessarily apply to all - from what I've heard. For IT professions this doesn't apply. I have a friend who got a job in Calgary from the UK purely on the strength of his OpenVMS skills.