A_80

Hi,

A bit of background - I am single and currently living in London. I have no ties here and my parents have retired and moved to Malta. I work for an investment bank in London and have done so for the past two years. I work in middle office positon in trade support which is a decent job (some of the time!) I quite like living in London but I really dont want to be here once i enter my 30s (in four years time! ) Ive lived abroad for 4 out of the last 6 years and absolutely loved it so know I can up sticks and do it (so to speak)

Ive visited Toronto 4 times in the last 24 months as I have a lot of friends living there and fallen in love with the place. Ive started to look into moving there with the view to getting a job in Banking/finance (this is my first choice but would be prepared to go down another route if this proves to be impossible) Im trying to work out if it would be easier for me to go down the immigration route or do a masters in finance or business in Canada and hope to gain an offer of employment at the end of that. Im leaning towards the university route as although I have a couple of years experience I dont have any formal qualifications relating to banking/finance - I did politics and international relations at Uni...go figure!?

Just wonder if anyone can give any advice? Do these plans sounds reasonable? Although Toronto is the financial centre of Canada, Ive heard that jobs in Finance are quite hard to come by - Has anyone made it to Canada and secured a job in this field? Would appreciate any comments...

Thx.

A_80

Perhaps my previous post was a little too in depth!

what Id really like to find out is how effective University courses (in particular an MA/MsC) are as an 'in' into Canada. Is it fairly common to get sponsorship at the end of a course?

maggieg

To try and help you, you have a choice of a degree in the UK which eventually will assist you to get a job in Canada. It would have to be converted over, but it would assist you to get in and to get a job.


OR you can forget the degree, and apply to move here now without any formal qualifications...... then you would have to research jobs in banks etc and work your self up the system.

Do you have enough points to apply now. You could apply now, wait the four years for it to be process and whilst you are waiting go to Uni for the degree.

You probably need to discuss this with friends and family taking into account your own personal finances.... Can you afford to go to uni in the UK or move etc

maggieg

By sponsorship do you mean can you get sponsored to come over by a company on a temporary work permit. Yes it can be done, the company only needs to show they have advertised the job in Canada and that there is no one suitable and then they can offer you the job.

As to how easy it is in the current world economic recession..... From what I understand there are about to be thousands of financial people starting to collect the dole in the next few months. I saw on TV some leave the offices oF Lehman brothers only yesterday with thier boxes

A_80

Yeah, I saw all those guys coming out with their boxes on monday morning when I was walking to my office! Im ok though...for the moment!

Well, the reason I was thinking about going to Uni in Canada was that I thought it would give me a chance to look for jobs towards the end of the course and hopefully get a full time job offer. My thinking was this would speed up the process and give me the best chance of being taken on by a Canadian employer (as one of the things that comes up again and again on this forum is the difficulty of getting jobs). Also, I was also thinking about doing this in the UK anyway.

Like you say I can just look for jobs now...However, my company has a lot of offices in the US and asia but none in Canada