Hello folks, just to encourage everyone, I thought to share my story below
I landed in Calgary February 2013 and spent a month settling my family down getting accommodation, the relevant registrations etc. once all that as done, I returned back home and planned to return permanently in December of 2013 to Calgary.
The cold weather, job search, child care and all made it so tough for my wife to cope, consequently there was a lot of pressure to return (first advice, you need a very strong spouse and/or a lot of money in the bank and a support group to execute this kind of plan i.e. leaving spouse and kid(s) abroad while staying back home, without you having so much problem)
After some months back home it was obvious I had to return earlier than the planned December date, so I started making plans to disengage from my place of work.
All this while, I started to collate list of companies that were core IT and particularly software development, as that was my core competence, started looking up the various job boards, kept contacts with the landed people and became very active on Linkedin, joining IT groups in Canada etc. I also worked on my resume several times, I did like 4 resume reviews through friends and firms offering resume review services (another critical point here, network and make sure your resume fits the so called Canadian standard basically get rid of that objective section and convert to professional summary, include achievement and not just a list of task performed etc)
I also got a software that routed phone numbers to my international number via VoIP, so I had a Canadian address and a Canadian number on my resume and started sending this out to company with vacancies for software developers, this got me a number of calls from hiring managers, I always made it a point of duty to let them know I was outside of Calgary at the moment but would return soon, most hiring managers were unwilling to proceed and would usually ask that I contact them when I'm finally in the country. A few scheduled phone interviews which held, but was not offered the jobs.
About June, a hiring manager posted a job in one of the LinkedIn groups I had joined, I contacted him about the role and found the company website to apply too, I and the hiring manager started a rapport from there, this eventually lead to a phone interview, 2 other organizations also held phone interviews with me about that time.
Fast forward to September, I finally returned to Calgary and had face to face interviews with 2 of the the 3 organizations, also registered with the major IT recruiters SI systems, Robert Half etc, a week after landing one of the 3 organizations offered me a contract role, another offered a permanent role, while the third is yet to provide feedback
So long story short, 3 weeks after returning I will be resuming work, not in the senior position I was anticipating but I can't complain about the offer.
In closing, I wish all the great folks on this forum success in your journey to and in Canada, hopefully you have been able to glean some info from my experience, thanks and keep the good news coming.
Guvcode
).
