Finding a job in Canada is tough, especially if you don’t have any Canadian experience or working status in the country. One of the most common questions we get is how to make a Canadian resume that will appeal to Canadian employers, so I sat down with Canadian recruiter Sepideh Biddle (Sepi for short) to ask for advice.
Keep reading to learn 4 tips Sepi recommends to making a Canadian resume that will stand out, and sign up below to get our free Canadian resume template too!
Tip #1: Do not include certain personal information
In Canada, companies are required to provide equal opportunities to all potential employees and candidates. This means there is certain information that they cannot know ahead of time, yet many foreign applicants include it in their resume.
Make sure you do NOT include the following on your Canadian resume:
- gender
- nationality
- date of birth
- marital status
- a picture of you
This is something Sepi sees a lot of from foreign resumes since it is common practice in other countries, but should not be included in a resume for Canadian companies. If you sign up below and get our free resume template, it’ll help you prepare a resume that is Canada friendly in this regard!
Tip #2: Keep it short & simple
Hiring managers and recruiters get a lot of resumes and applications any time they are trying to fill a position, which means they are very busy. Because of this, you need to make sure your resume is short and will grab their attention.
Sepi recommends that your resume is 2 pages, maximum, otherwise the person looking at it won’t even bother reading it all. Not only that, you should spend the most time on the summary at the top, as it’s the first thing they will read (and may be the only thing they read before deciding whether they should move on or not).
Make sure to sign up for the free template below to see how Sepi recommends formatting your Canadian resume with a proper summary.
Tip #3: Focus on more recent work experience
A big mistake people make is writing each job experience in extreme detail, which can take up a lot of room and go against Tip #2. To keep your resume short and simple, just focus on your most recent job experiences (within the last 3-5 years), and going into less detail (or no detail at all) for job experiences from a long time ago.
Especially if you’re a more experienced candidate, you can simply list your work experience from 5+ years ago with dates and title, and leave out any description or additional details. Instead, focus on listing your experiences, duties and other details for the most recent roles as that is what hiring managers care about the most.
If you don’t have many roles, you can put more information into each and also highlight the roles and duties you like the most.
Tip #4: Listing education and certifications
Another great way to save space on your resume is to leave out your high school. Especially if you have graduate degrees, lots of work experience and come from another country, the hiring manager won’t care which high school you came from.
Instead, and similar to Tip #3, focus on the more recent degrees or certifications that are most applicable.
Bonus tip:
Always save and send your resume as a PDF!
A common mistake to avoid:
One last suggestion that Sepi made (in the video above) is to limit the amount of outreach you do without any preparation. Many candidates will blindly reach out to dozens or even hundreds of employers with standard messages without even researching the company or roles available.
Not only will this likely not work, but you will cause yourself a lot of frustration and waste a lot of time. Instead, do research on the company and role, and have more meaningful outreach that will give you a better chance at success. And to learn more on exactly how to do it, check out our blog post here.
Hopefully you found this helpful! To get our free resume template, learn more about finding jobs in Canada and the immigration process, make sure to register for the free Visto portal here.
