Infocentre

Documenting your previous work experience is crucial to finding a job in Canada. While the official form of documentation may be an employment record, the actual documentation is much more extensive.

In addition to copies of your degrees, certificates and diplomas, including any in-house training you may have received, you will want to have a series of letters of reference that highlight all of your skills, talents and experience. If you have written any articles, or if you have been written about in any trade or professional journals, you will want to have copies of these as well, including translations if they are not in English or French. Basically, you need to assemble a documented portfolio of your accomplishments.

In addition to the material in your portfolio, you will discover that employers are not interested in what your responsibilities were but, rather, in what you accomplished.  This means that you need to document your accomplishments in terms of time and money saved/earned, material produced along with the effects of this material, new procedures implemented along with associated savings, etc. (for more on this, see our section on resumes).

Make sure that you are able to document and back up all of your claims of accomplishments. This documentation is crucial in establishing your credibility to Canadian employers.

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