Newcomers Often Struggle to Find Good Jobs. This Job Fair Helps

May 12 is a clear-skied Tuesday in New Westminster’s downtown core, where a line outside the Anvil Centre wraps around the block. Despite the mid-spring heat, many of those in the queue are dressed to impress in suits, blazers and other office wear.

Some hold up their hands like visors to block out the sun. Others fan themselves with brightly coloured vinyl folders protecting thin stacks of freshly printed resumés.

Inside, hundreds of job seekers mill around roughly four dozen booths, which sport the names and logos of Metro Vancouver organizations including Canuck Place, Parq Casino and Arc'teryx. People shake hands, scan QR codes and exchange business cards.

The attendees have a few things in common. Many are relatively new to Canada. They’re all looking for work. And some are hoping to find it at this annual job fair put on by MOSAIC, a local immigrant services agency.

Today, about 50 employers expect to meet more than 3,000 job seekers registered for the fair. People like Candida Rajan, a human resources professional who moved to Canada four years ago.

Like many at the fair, Rajan earned her credentials and built her career abroad. She worked as a human resources manager for 15 years in the United Arab Emirates before moving to Canada, where she’s been on the job hunt for about six months.

“It's been a little demotivating, to be honest,” she said. “Everyone has a lot of candidates applying, so I'm hoping that this job fair helps.”

Rajan said she came to the job fair to meet other hiring managers and better understand what kinds of skills they’re looking for. Despite her extensive experience, Rajan said she’s been trying different things on her resumé to get recognized.

She started saying she previously worked in the UAE instead of Dubai, to see if hiring managers would recognize the country better than her previous city. She started applying for jobs she was overqualified for, and started getting more responses.

David Lee, MOSAIC’s director of employment, said Rajan’s experience is a common one. Despite often being experienced, well educated and overqualified, people who immigrate are often challenged to find jobs in their new countries — which can affect their income, career progression and general well-being.

A review study published February in the Journal of Applied Psychology identified several hurdles immigrants face in the job market — including getting employers to recognize their experience and education and adjusting to employment norms.

“It’s a really dire situation,” said human capital researcher Sima Sajjadiani, a co-author on the study. “We bring people and leave them on their own, instead of using this huge talent and capacity that we are bringing to the country.”

Higher unemployment and underemployment rates

In Canada, recently landed immigrants face disproportionately high unemployment rates.

For example, Statistics Canada data shows that last year, immigrants who had been in Canada for five years or less faced an unemployment rate of 10.6 per cent. That’s much higher than the unemployment rate of Canada’s total population, 6.8 per cent, and higher than the unemployment rate for immigrants who had come to Canada more than 10 years earlier, at 6.2 per cent.

Sajjadiani, an assistant professor of business at the University of British Columbia, said immigrants are also more likely to be underemployed — meaning that they are underpaid, are given fewer hours or are overqualified for their jobs.

Statistics Canada data shows that in 2021, about 26.7 per cent of immigrants who had arrived in Canada more than 10 years prior were overeducated for their work, compared with 17.1 per cent of Canadian-born workers aged 25 to 34.

“The question that was really bugging us was ‘Why?’” Sajjadiani said. “Why are we consistently seeing underemployment among immigrants, no matter what credentials they are bringing and what education they have?”

Sajjadiani and study co-authors used machine learning tools to review more than 13,000 research papers related to immigrants' employment and extract 572 papers related to their question. Their review identified several common hurdles that immigrants face while looking for jobs in their new countries.

According to Sajjadiani, immigrants often find it challenging to translate how their experience back home might stack up against credentials and experience earned in their new homes.

“Recruiters here look at the CVs, and they are looking for a very specific structure,” she said. “They do not know how to interpret a degree that is coming from a university in Iran, for example. What does it mean? How does it compare to UBC?”

The study also identified other common barriers. Immigrants are often under financial stress when they arrive in a new country, meaning they often cannot afford to wait for a job that matches their skill set. And many settle into social circles of immigrants of the same ethnicity, which can limit their connections in a diverse and largely Canadian-born workforce.

The effect, Sajjadiani said, is that immigrants often find themselves pushed into jobs for which they are overqualified and underpaid. That’s wasted potential, she said.

“Imagine someone who has a medical degree,” she said. “If they come here and contribute as a doctor, they are going to help with our broken medical system and also contribute more in taxes compared to if they take a survival job doing ride-sharing.”

She said spaces that aim to bridge the gap between employers and immigrants and push newcomers into diverse communities, like MOSAIC’s job fair, are important in breaking down those barriers.

MOSAIC estimates its job fair, now in its 14th year, has helped more than 25,000 newcomers and immigrants connect with more than 700 employers. For many attendees, the job fair is the culminating moment of months of job counselling and preparation.

MOSAIC holds workshops to help get newcomers acclimatized to Canadian employment norms, such as not including pictures on resumés, and to prepare them for the job search. It also connects many with WorkBC employment counselling.

Lee says having people meet face to face is a key part of having newcomers enter the workforce.

“It does make a difference for people to be in the same space, having a conversation face to face,” Lee said, “whether it's simply learning more about what an employer has to offer or meeting job applicants directly and getting a sense of the intangibles, like a person’s ability to work alongside other people.”

‘A chance for us to meet people we wouldn’t normally’

For many recruiters, the fair is a chance to ensure employers are finding a wide range of qualified applicants.

“It's a great chance to get out into the community and meet people who are looking to learn about opportunities, and to highlight an organization they may not have heard of that's really doing meaningful work,” said Danielle Brumin with Canuck Place Children’s Hospice.

Heading into the fair, the children’s hospice was looking to hire two graphic designers. Brumin, an employer branding and communications officer with the company, said the fair will be a great chance to expand their candidate search.

“It's a chance for us to meet people we wouldn't normally, so it's just a mutual benefit,” she said.

MOSAIC and Canuck Place have similar values, she adds — making it likely to find the right fit for her organization.

Others aim to help newcomers get Canadian credentials. Natalie Williams, manager of student recruitment at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said she has experienced first-hand what it’s like to find work after moving to Canada.

“When you first arrive here, you have all these hopes and dreams of securing a position at the same level as back home,” she said. “It doesn't always work out that way. Getting those Canadian credentials, and being able to get to the career that you're hoping — it's a lot slower than people might think.”

She said that while many newcomers already have lots of education and experience back home, it can often take some upskilling or retraining to help reorient job seekers for Canada.

Navid Meresht strides through the crowd decisively, carrying a couple of resumés and a laptop in his backpack. He arrived at the fair on a mission: to meet recruiters and hiring managers at three specific companies he knew would have booths set up.

“I was hoping to get connected,” he said. “I'm hoping to actually get an opportunity out of this event, either part time or full time.”

Meresht is a mechanical engineer specializing in energy projects and clean transportation. He got his master’s degree and worked for seven years in Iran before coming to Canada, where he enrolled at Simon Fraser University.

He’s grateful to have access to a fair where he could meet employers face to face, he said.

“It breaks the ice,” he said. “Most people are scared of how to present themselves, and here you can learn, practise and rehearse for interviews. And there might be some opportunities, who knows?”