In April I'm taking a trip out to Alberta to see family for about a week from the UK. During my time here, I'm planning on spending a few days in Calgary (also thinking Edmonton for a day) hunting down software recruiting agencies and going in with a resume to talk about possible options my skills may have on the current job market. Most of my experience with recruiting agencies is in the UK and they can range from amazing (the exception) to outright lies about certain aspects of the job/company (fairly common).

Does anyone on this board have a good recruiting company they'd recommend I check out? If it helps, I'm primarily a .Net Developer currently working for a bank for the last few years, but I'm not set on working in the finance industry when I'm out.

Any help / advice on this would be appreciated.

I don't think you need a physical presence in Canada in order to find this sort of work but be aware that the pimp is lying to the client about you as much as to you about the client. The scam of the moment is for the consulting company to have one person with expertise in a subject, to have that person interviewed (by phone, most interviews are by phone because most recruits are abroad) and then to have someone else turn up to start work. I actually heard a manager recently say "but we can't fire him, he's moved here, he'd have to go back ..." even though the person in question was plainly not the one he was represented to be.

If you can, try and restrain the pimp from blitzing your resume. A common move is, you give the resume to the pimp, the pimp sends it to all the companies in Canada. You then find employment through another agency or directly. The pimp arrives wanting a commission, IME the employer just fires the person with the disputed fees and gets another.

Good luck, computing is a sleazy business.

Do you have a visa, work permit, or otherwise, that would allow you to work here legally?

Best way to get a job in Canada is networking and Linkedin is a great tool to use. There will be more job opportunities in Toronto than Alberta for software developers in finance. If you could get Salesforce experience, you would have an excellent chance of finding something here in Canada. P.s. I work in IT for a financial organisation.

Ottawa is your place for tech.