We are happy to announce the opening of our Facebook page @

http://www.facebook.com/IntegrationResourcesCanada

We are endeavoring to provide you with up to date labour market information and new immigration policies from a micro and macro perspective.

Our Facebook page will serve:

Human resource professionals

Communities

Internationally educated professionals both domestic and abroad

Mentors and mentees

Individuals seeking answers to their career transition challenges

Some of the information will be Sector specific, but will also have broader applications for most readers. Get current updates and become part of the discussion.

Everyone is welcome to join in, and it is free!!!

At the office we enjoyed reading this article. It may seem  inconsequential to many people, but when we are working with clients we encourage them to include commute time as part of their career decisions.

http://life.nationalpost.com/2012/04/09/kicking-the-commuting-habit/

You may not know it yet, but LinkedIn has facilitated the end of the adapted resume.

This is good news for a growing number employers and hiring managers who research and check potential hires in LinkedIn profiles.

Now when resumes and LinkedIn profiles do not match, this will indicate an adapted resume and hence the likelihood that the candidate is not the best fit.

This saves employer’s time in identifying and selecting the best candidates for interviews.  It may even be the end of resumes as we know them.

I know of at least three candidates who were contacted directly by employers through LinkedIn over the last month. Employers can filter their searches with key words to identify and select from the best talent pool, without showing their hand.

LinkedIn also saves hiring managers from having to sift through hundreds of resumes.  The site is effective for swiftly identifying candidates who can address organizational needs.

English translation below . . .

Je suis chirurgienne dentiste de profession je souhaiterai si possible venir au canada pour renforcer ma formation de dentiste . merci    . . . .  Camara

Bonjour Camara,

J’ai joint quelques liens qui permettront de mieux vous informer sur la dentisterie au Canada pour les professionnels formés à l’étranger. Celles-ci pourraient vous fournir un bon point de départ. Il est important que vous ayez une idée claire de ce qui pourrait être nécessaire avant que vous si vous décidez de venir au Canada.

Malheureusement, je n’ai limitée maîtrise du français, mais le traducteur barre de menu de Google fonctionne bien. Vous remarquerez que quelques-uns des sites que je vous ai fournis vous offrent la possibilité de lire les documents en français. J’ai remarqué que le site fournit des liens vers Wikipedia l’Université de Montréal et l’Université de Laval en tant que ressources possibles.

Si vous trouvez votre intérêt croissant je vous encourage à téléphoner à l’organe directeur qui supervise la dentisterie comme il peut y avoir de nouvelles initiatives qui vous serait utile, mais sont encore en développement. Beaucoup de secteur canadien de l’élaboration de nouvelles initiatives sont pour répondre à nos pénuries de compétences sans cesse croissantes.

http://www.cicic.ca/en/professions.aspx?sortcode=2.19.21&prof=3113

http://www.utoronto.ca/dentistry/admissions/qualifyingprogram/qualmain.html

http://nexuscanada.blogspot.com/2010/08/information-for-foreign-trained.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dentistry_in_Canada

Si je peux vous fournir toute autre information ou d’assistance s’il vous plaît faites le moi savoir.

sincèrement,

Bruce Switzer

Hi Camara,

I have attached a few links that will better inform you about dentistry in Canada for internationally educated professionals.  These might provide you with a good starting point.  It is important that you have a clear idea of what might be required before you if you decide to come to Canada.

Unfortunately I have limited French fluency, however the translator on Google’s menu bar works well.  You will notice that some of the sites I have provided you offer the option to read the documents in French. I noticed that the Wikipedia site provides links to the  Universite de Montreal and Universite de Laval as possible resources.

If you find your interest increasing I would encourage you to phone the governing body that oversees dentistry as there may be new initiatives that would benefit you but are still in development.  Many of Canada’s sector are developing new initiatives to address our increasing skill shortages.

If I can provide you with any other information or assistance please let me know.

Sincerely,

Bruce Switzer

What is the number one skill in cross-cultural communication competency?

I have been diligently developing my ability to communicate within multicultural class rooms and one on one coaching for years.

Much has been said on the skills needed.  Initially it is paramount that an effective communicator exercises two key skills.  The first is listening and the second is the ability to to ask for clarification.

These two skills represent the well oiled mechanics of good communications with family, friends, colleagues and community.

But to bring cross cultural communications to an effective working relationship – a level of trust, empathy and collaboration is the main challenge for most the first time around.  It is a felt skill and is dependent on simple human kindness. If I were to characterize simple human kindness, I would say it is:

1. unconditional
2. inclusive
3. respectful
4. generous

For any partnership to flourish there must be trust.  From my experience, real trust comes when the person you are communicating with understands that you have integrity and ‘you have their back’ till the end, not just the beginning.

The first significant realization any good mentors has is that a mentoring partnership is not dependent on knowledge expertise but rather on their willingness to tackle and collaborate a shared learning curve.

A good Career Coach can accelerate and ease the transition for professionals into a new and better career.  Wisely selected, a Career Coach can be worth their weight in gold.  Any associated costs are recouped by faster and more appropriate employment.

Thousands of unemployed professionals especially internationally educated professionals lose money to ineffective Career Coaches every year.  The following offers a simple guide to selecting a good Career Coach.

1. Stay away from Career Coaches that promote foot in the door strategies.  This demonstrates that they do not have the skills to determine your best market fit and you will end up underemployed.
2. Look for a Career Coach who is willing to work with you until you find a job that best fits your skills. Commitment and care provide better results than knowledge about job market.
3. Stay away from Career Coaches that adapt your skills to the job market.  Be sure that your coach’s lead strategy is to define your career objective first.  Remember this is about you.
4. Keep in mind that a good Career Coach will be willing to share your learning curve when doing research.  They likely know less about your field expertise than you.  The more they know about you the better they will be able to advise you.
5. Look for a professional coach with at least five years of experience. Check their referrals and recommendations on LinkedIn.
6. Stay away from coaches that only focus on your resume.  You’ll waste your money.
7. Use caution when a coach describes networking as their lead strategy.  Asking for favours seldom work.
8. Look for a coach the leads with a clear objective (yours) and promotes job fit and personal preferences as a method determining the viability of you objective.  Secondly be sure that they are committed to determining where you have the most to contribute – through research.  Nothing makes a hiring manager happier.
9. There is no single solution to finding a job.  Everyone is unique.  Finding a career coach that listens and perhaps more importantly asks questions to dispel your own ambiguity will give you a clear advantage.
10. Finally look for a Career Coach that will teach you how to make informed choices rather than providing information.  This will allow you upon retirement to look back at your own career with a sense of pride and gratitude for a life well lived.

I received the following email from a mentee this morning (below).  He had had an important interview yesterday.  I was amazed at how well suited he was for the position after reading the job description.  He exemplified all the requirements, with at least 20 years of in-depth experience.

I have posted his letter to highlight one of the key strategies for successful interviewing.

—–

Hi Bruce,

You know one of the real benefits of the research informational interviewing technique: Is that it keeps you razor sharp and ready to pounce on a job opportunity when it presents itself.

Thanks for keeping me on that track.

BMJ

—– Managing a research/information meeting is an art.  There is the introduction, request, the development of questions that are specific each meeting.  It is also important to understand the anatomy of a well run meeting including the closing question, and the follow up; the next day, and the following weeks.

(Practising interviews – Mentoring program in 2011 fall, Ottawa)

The biggest mistake and this always comes to light during our debriefings, is when a candidate asks for a job.  That one question firmly closes the door to most if not all future relationships with the individual being interviewed.

If I met you for the first time and  I asked you for a job, or even if you knew of one, what might you say to me?

A recent mentor had been sharing valuable information through email when she used the term protege.  In the past I have had lively discussions with other trainers regarding the subtlties in the definition of mentor, protege, protegee and mentee.  In the context of her use and applications of the term I believe her definition was correct.  She trains and mentors professionals directly related to her field of expertise.  In my response to her I address some of my own ambiguity and thoughts about the difference in meaning between protege and mentee.

_____________________________________

Thank you for your email – I found your use of Protégé or Protégée interesting, so I went and looked it up in Wikipedia.

(From Wikipedia↓)

Mentorship refers to a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps a less experienced or less knowledgeable person.

The person in receipt of mentorship may be referred to as a protégé (male), a protégée (female), an apprentice or, in recent years, a mentee.

“Mentoring” is a process that always involves communication and is relationship based, but its precise definition is elusive. One definition of the many that have been proposed, is

Mentoring is a process for the informal transmission of knowledge, social capital, and the psychosocial support perceived by the recipient as relevant to work, career, or professional development; mentoring entails informal communication, usually face-to-face and during a sustained period of time, between a person who is perceived to have greater relevant knowledge, wisdom, or experience (the mentor) and a person who is perceived to have less (the protégé)”.^[1]

____________________

I use Mentee; however I find both terms fall short, in adequately articulating what I have discovered in training over the last few years.  Most often mentees have more experience and education than the mentors do in their field of expertise. We were very fortunate to have a group with so much combined experience this time around.

In our scenario both mentor and protégée (I’ll use the term) learn the skills together.  What the mentors have is the ability to offer a cultural mirror on how Canadians view and approach the workplace and the community. What the mentors learn is just how smart the mentees are; dispelling the myth that internationally educated professionals do not have the competency or skills to work in Canada now.

What I liked about the information offered by Wikipedia is; ‘Mentoring is communication and relationship based’.  I assume, in comparison to formal teaching or providing information.

I once listed the steps to effective and strategic mentorship to a class and one of the candidates adroitly pointed out me that I had missed a very important step.  Step one, have a cup of tea.  Strategy works better if you establish trust.  Some cultures start with social dialogue before moving on to business.

Watching mentors and mentees enjoy and appreciate the discoveries made with each other over the last six weeks has been certainly one of the highlights of the program for myself and I think for all in attendance.

In the context of the mentor program I observed that most of the mentors learned as much from the mentees as the mentees learned in return. I certianly did..

Thanks again for your valuable contributions, now and thourghout the program, and thank  you for re-stimulating the protégée/mentee conundrum for me.

Mentoring is an equal learning partnerhip that builds skills, insights and inclusive communites.

The issue of whether to wear cologne or perfume in the workplace has been receiving a lot of response both in Canada and world-wide to our blogs.

If you are in sales, even though you are not in a public venue, the wearing of cologne/perfume  may be impacting on the bottom line.

I recently asked a sales person to meet with my husband. I had completed initial discussions with a company representative and was impressed by the potential savings and services. A few days later I asked my husband how his conversation had gone and was he interested in changing companies. He agreed that there were benefits but probably not enough to make the change. The clincher was that he found the sales person’s cologne strong and very distracting. Was it a deal breaker? Probably not. However, the strong scent became the focus as opposed to the product.

- Written by Naomi -