Blendin

Canada has adapted the UK system when it comes to accounting.

A designated accountant from Australia, Ireland, England should have no problem getting a Canadian designation.

US is a different matter.

david_oz

im thinking quite seriously about it... id like to have it just to have it

im not looking for another job right now (and probably wont be for the foreseeable future). but as we've discussed, it would make a hell of a difference if i was

d20awy

I'll chime in with my two cents worth...

Am an ACA been in Vancouver for 2 months and can honestly say the comments above are a fair representation of my experiences and the job Market for overseas accountants on short working visas.

We are at the bottom of the pile for recruiters, which is understandable. Although I have had 2 interviews through them, both have been fruitless :-(

In hindsight wish that we had perhaps looked at PR or even another country.

So..... Here's what happened.....Applied for a stack of jobs in the first month, got no reply. Did some admin temping work for $16 an hour for a few weeks. This actually wasn't too bad, and met some senior accountants/CFOs who put me in touch with some good contacts. Then randomly saw a 1 line job posting and am now working for an audit firm as a senior auditor on the north shore. It's only temporary for approx a month but at least it is decent money and the hallowed Canadian experience.

On the point of accepting a junior role - near impossible. There are plenty of people who are at that level so they rightly get first dibs.

So all in all I'm hardly aquiring a glowing Canadian resume. Just getting by at the moment. But love Vancouver and am determined to stay at least a year, fingers crossed I get a decent job and then would stay for 3-5 years hopefully but we'll see......

So to the OP - give it a crack but be prepared for times when all you have to do in a day is wake up, turn on your laptop, scour the Internet and fruitlessly ring recruiters and employers. It WILL make you want to go home! But the positives outweigh the negatives for me so far.

Ps my OH is also an accountant so not only can neither of us find work but we are also in competition!

TheGreenManalishi

Good point!

Ha ha - does bi-weekly mean fortnightly or twice weekly?? Even I'm lost on that one

Yes, and this is what makes me think the Canadian experience thing is quite unique, I've worked with a few aussies in London, and from what I understand the qualification crossover is a non-issue in the UK. Will definitely shout when/if I hit Calgary!!

Thanks for this! Although the requirement for getting designation seems to include one years worth of Canadian experience -

possess a minimum of two years (24 months) of relevant practical experience at the Career Stage 2 level of the CMA Competency Map, of which one year must be gained while employed in Canada.

Definitiely something to consider if going down the PR route



Lots of interesting stuff there and well done on finding your current role . I now feel more prepared for the process of landing and then spending potentially x weeks looking for work. It must be tough because those first weeks are when you would want to get out and explore rather than be pre-occupied with finding work and the anxiety that comes with it.

christmasoompa

I don't think anybody has yet mentioned, but don't forget that you don't have to enter on your Bunac visa when you first arrive in Canada.

So you can go in on a visitor visa, job hunt, and then once you've found work, go and activate your Bunac visa. That way you don't waste some of your one year open work permit on job hunting, and can work for the full year.

Good luck all.

TheGreenManalishi

Great advice!

DigitalGhost

I applied for the programme earlier this year and was accepted, although it actually took closer to 3 months for them to approve me and that was with a completely clear legal history and all of the paperwork exactly as requested so that may be something to bear in mind if you're looking to apply this Christmas and pretty much leave for Canada straight away. I was planning to leave in September 2010 but I'm half of a mixed-nationality relationship, my OH was approved as well from her country and wants to see her family before we go so we're going to visit them next month and then our plan is to leave for Canada in January as the visas have to be activated by the end of January and I am currently working as an IT contractor in the UK and the project I am working on ends this Christmas so January seems like the perfect time for a new start.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I really want to go anymore though. I was really up for it when I applied, however my girlfriend's application was cleared within a couple of weeks whereas, as I said, I had to wait for a few months to get mine sorted out and it gave me a little time to think. We have a great apartment here which we will need to give up when we go and I'm not sure if the opportunities are really there for us. I have professional IT qualifications and around 5 years of work experience in the industry and in Britain I really just have to put my CV out on a couple of websites when I'm looking for work and wait for the calls to come in but by all accounts that isn't the case over there and only being on a 12mo TWP certainly wouldn't make things any easier. My girlfriend really wants to go because she has recently finished her student career and is currently working as a waitress because it seems as though jobs are difficult to come by for recent grads with no experience, plus she has been in the UK for a long time and wants to try something new, but for me I'm not too sure.

I'm trying to keep my eye out on sites like this and see the opinions and experience of other people, especially those already there and in particular people who work for recruiters or other Bunac participants so that I can try to act in my own best interests but for the moment I think I've definitely got cold feet about the whole thing.

DigitalGhost

No, the way it worked (at least this year) was that we had to register before the quota was filled at the end of January but then they actually gave us until this month (I think) to get all of the paperwork, which pissed me off slightly if I'm honest because, like many, I ended up rushing around in January to get everything sorted and regularly calling ACPO to chase the status of my police cert, which incidentally did take the full 10 days by the way.

Originally they said that all of the paperwork had to be submitted to the London CHC by 31st January but then they just kept continuously extending the deadline. Basically, I suppose the point of this is that it works differently for us than for any other YMS country in that as long as you go through the initial online registration process you can then take your time to some extent over gathering the rest of the required paperwork where as all other nationalities go direct to the CHC in their respective country and have to send everything in at the same time in order to make the quota. Because Bunac, who are essentially a business at the end of the day, are taken out of the equation though they subsequently don't have to go through anywhere near as much as shit as we British do and it costs them a lot less at the same time.

JonboyE

I don't think you should assume employers don't get back to you because of your Australian CA. There could be many reasons. Most employers don't reply to applicants unless they want to interview them.

Even if it was, it is understandable. If you were in Australia and had the choice between two candidates for a position:

Candidate A seems to have all the right skills. They have a professional qualification that is regulated by your State or National body. A qualification that you know and understand. They have several years experience working with a firm on the other side of town. You know a senior person in that firm and give them a call and they have lots of good things to say about A. Candidate A has the legal right to work in Australia indefinitely and owns a home ten minutes drive away.

Candidate B also seems to have all the right skills. They are also professionally qualified but their regulatory body is in a foreign country. They tell you it is equivalent to the Australian qualification. Even if it is equivalent in terms of effort and intellectual ability to achieve, nothing says they have any experience of Australian tax or business law. Candidate B also has plenty of working experience but when you contact their former employers all you can get is confirmation they worked there between X and Y. B has a non-renewable working holiday visa and though they say they would like to stay on if you are prepared to do all the paperwork your government requires there is i) no guarantee the government will approve B and ii) B has no residential ties to Australia and might be spinning you a line.

Who do you offer the job to?

Imagine you have listed the job and had 100 responses. 70 are no hopes and there are 28 Candidate A and 2 Candidate B type replies. You need a shortlist of 5 so you need to start deciding some criteria to set aside 25 applications ...

JonboyE

Getting cold feet is natural. However:

a) opportunities like this don't come along everyday.
b) the point of BUNAC is that it gives you the chance to live in another country for a year and earn some money to keep you alive. It is not intended as a career development year.
c) even so, it can be good for your career. Some employers will look on it favorably. It shows initiative and a willingness to try new things. It shows you can succeed in different cultural environments. It will make you a more rounded and balanced person - something employers look for when selecting people for progression.
d) if staying in Canada is a potential option then a successful career can depend a lot on developing contacts within your industry. You can make lots of contacts within a year with little risk. If you decide to move on it was only ever a one year visa. Right?
e) your girlfriend will love it. The saying happy wife means a happy life applies equally to girlfriends.

I think you'll regret it if you don't give it a go.

david_oz

yeah i get it, i just dont think there is that kind of volume of applicants for jobs skilled enough that they need CA's. for my job, there was a shortlist of 2... i was one, and a canadian was the other. for the other job i got an offer for at suncor, i think i recall them telling me there was 1 other person as well. and this was in the middle of a recession

i completely understand that local candidates are valuable and sought after. i just think that non-local candidates are discounted way too easily in this country compared to austraila, nz and the uk.

also, my point about "canadian experience" being garbage is less about the situation you described above, and more about the idea that doing some odd job in an office somewhere, or at mcdonalds or safeway somehow gives you this "canadian experience" with which to get employers to take you seriously. i think its a shame that attitude exists at all, because it is clearly garbage.

i love this country, but finding a job here is (in my opinion) more difficult than it should be

DigitalGhost

Definitely appreciate your feedback man, completely understand what you're saying and you're probably right.

The thing is though that our situation is a little more complicated than usual in that we are of mixed citizenship and she is currently living with me in the UK on a temporary visa. If we leave then she will have no status here and thus leaving Canada in the event that things don't work out over there becomes a bit harder because I can't go to her country unless we're married and my skills improve in the language and we can't come back over here without a long and expensive process through the UK BIA which may also require her to go home temporarily for a while. Of course getting her to understand this is easier said than done and we have been looking at applying for UK FLR(M) status for her before we go to Canada but apparently the UK really doesn't like that.

To be honest, I am bored in my current job here and my current contract ends on Christmas Eve anyway as I am currently working on a project which has a deadline of 23rd December. The problem is that I never actually finished Uni and although I have become professionally certified in IT by a couple of different bodies I'm not sure if this will be enough to secure a decent job there and I'd rather not take a year out of the industry at this point if I can. I think I need to do a bit more reading up on the labour market there, we're thinking of Toronto as our destination at the moment by the way.

I know there's nothing worse than a missed opportunity though and honestly this has been bugging me ever since I got my approval notification through, I'm just not sure what to do at this point. We have a reasonably good life here and I'm a bit cautious about throwing that into the wind.

JonboyE

It certainly can be difficult.

When I worked for a largish company in the UK (one with HR manager and support staff) the first response to someone leaving was "call up the job agency". As a candidate all you had to do was register with an agency and wait for them to call you.

In Canada "call the agency" is the last resort for a job you cannot fill any other way. The first response tends to be "does anyone know anyone?" This is why it can be so frustrating for a newcomer.

There is another, and more subtle, attitude that comes into play. I noticed in the UK the "people like us" approach to recruiting. Hiring managers, especially line managers who haven't had this trained out of them, will employ people they feel they understand and communicate well with. It is understandable but inevitably it means they end up with people of a similar educational and social background as themselves. It is good for short-term productivity but not good for the long-term health of an organization.

I don't think Canada is any different to the UK in this respect. It is just that with so many immigrants in Canada the "people like us" thought process is morphed into "Canadian experience".

JonboyE

This does make a difference! Does the FLR(M) guarantee re-entry or is it just permission to stay?

Mrs. JonboyE and I HAD to get married as it was the only way we could stay together. It was over 30 years ago so I guess it counts as one of the better decisions I made. She then had Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK and had no issues re-entering the country after work trips and vacations. However, we were told that IDL could lapse if she spent an extended amount of time out of the UK.

Some foreigners manage to stay for an extended time in Japan (it's what the Pusan ferry is for) but there is the danger that every time you reenter and ask for another 90 days you may be refused. The more often you do it the more difficult it will be to convince the immigration officials that you are not working illegally in Japan.

I suppose you have to think of what will happen if you don't use your BUNAC visa. Will your girlfriend be able to say with you in the UK?

I can't recommend you throw caution to the wind as that is a decision you have to make for yourselves.

mattieuk

Hmm. To be honest I'm not sure about this. As a British citizen, currently working on a one year visa, I managed to get 'my foot in' at a local company (with around 50 employees), doing basic office type work (with some flexibility, as projects come up), with no 'real' experience behind me, and only a BA in Politics from England to pad out my resume. Within our company, I wuold hazard a guess at 30-40% of its employees being internationally based. Probably half of these are bi-lingual (definately helpful in this demographic, dealing with clients), and the others have transfered into our field of work, from completely different areas. As a result of this, I've been told that my growth within this company will be on a 'as oppertunities become availible' basis - which seems fine with me, seeing as I'd be scratching around for work back in Blighty anyway.

I think a large part of it, is expecting to not walk into a job doing what you were doing before. Canada (well....Vancouver) is definately not the 'land of plenty' that some people seem to assume when visiting/moving here, but is definately a professional sphere that is loyal to good old fashioned brown-nosing, and keeping in contact with any aquaintences you meet.