MAKING YOUR INITIAL APPROACH

Replying to job advertisements

Let’s look first at replying directly to companies that are advertising for staff. How can you make your application stand out from the crowd?

Most important is a CV (or résumé) that really works. See the next section for some tips. Of almost equal importance is your covering letter. A CV is a fairly dry and blunt statement of your qualifications and experience, but in the covering letter your personality and enthusiasm should be apparent. Bear in mind, however, that a more formal style will probably be appropriate if you are replying to a personnel office in the UK; a lighter toned letter may be better suited if the application is to be mailed directly to a Canadian address.

Writing covering letters

Your covering letter should include information as to whether you have, or have applied for, your Canadian Permanent Resident Status or Employment Authorisation. This information is important for the employer, who needs some idea of when candidates will be available. Give some indication of when you hope to receive your Authorisation if you do not have it already.

What to include

Although the information will be in your CV, direct the prospective employer’s attention to any experience or training that is

particularly relevant to the position you are applying for. It doesn’t do any harm to blow your own trumpet a bit! The great British art of the understatement is not understood or appreciated by most Canadians who tend more to the ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it’ principle.

Employers usually appreciate a brief mention of how you came to know of the vacancy. Often they advertise in several publications and like to get an idea of which ones are working best for them.

References and certificates

References are not necessary at this point, although you will have mentioned in your CV that they are available on request. The same applies to educational certificates. However, you may feel that including these documents will add weight to your application, in which case it is perfectly appropriate to send copies at this point.

Providing contact numbers

Particularly if you are applying to a Canadian address, an email address and fax number can prove very useful. It could be to your advantage if an employer can reach you more quickly than another candidate. It is usually possible to ‘rent’ a fax address locally if you do not have a machine yourself. Look in Yellow Pages under Facsimile Bureaux and Secretarial Services.

More and more of this sort of communication is done via e-mail, so it definitely advantageous to have an e-mail address. Canadian companies and employers make extensive use of this facility.

Checking your covering letter

To sum up, you should try to include all of the following in your covering letter (whilst making it snappy and succinct!):

Emphasise your suitability for the job, pointing out relevant experience and qualifications in your CV.

• State why you want this particular job.
• Give some idea of your availability.
• Include telephone number and fax number and/or e-mail address if possible.
• State how you became aware of the vacancy or (in the case of a speculative letter) the company.
• Try to include something that gets just a bit of your personality across.

A final note about presentation. If anything this is even more important when applying to a Canadian employer than it is with a British application. Use good quality paper, and a printer that gives a dark and clean impression. If you do not have access to such equipment use a secretarial service. A small job such as cover letter and CV will not cost much.

Contacting agencies

Much of the above applies to contacting agencies as well. One of the major differences is that they are likely to send you a comprehensive application form before going any further. A note on these: they are tedious and filling them in soon becomes a boring, repetitive task. Worse than that, the information asked for is invariably on your CV anyway! Resist the temptation to ignore them or to write ‘See CV’ across the questions. Most agencies employ someone to input the data from these forms onto their database. That person is not employed to extract the data from your CV and, more importantly, might not put it in the form you want. So bite the bullet and fill in the forms as comprehensively as possible.

Once again, increased Internet use is making changes in this area. Many agencies now provide forms that can be filled in on-line, which makes the process a bit easier.

Do, however, beware of sending your CV and covering letter as e-mail attachments. Unfortunately, the incidence of computer viruses spread through the Internet is also on the increase, and some firms will simply not open attachments. Only send an attachment if invited to do so. If not, include your CV, etc. in the body of the e-mail. Otherwise it may never be seen.

Supplying references

An agency will probably also ask you at this stage for references. Although a name, address and telephone number might be sufficient for a UK-based agency it may not be appropriate for one based in Canada. Ask referees to write a reference for you in advance, addressed To Whom It May Concern. Send photocopies of these to the agencies, along with addresses, fax, e-mail and telephone numbers.

The covering letter

Once again your covering letter is very important. If you are replying to an advertisement for a specific job you can follow the guidelines above, with an additional note about being interested in any other similar vacancies. If, however, you are contacting an agency to register with them and to be considered for any jobs in your field you will want to give a good idea of your experience and what sort of jobs you are qualified for and interested in. You may have skills that apply in several fields: be sure to point this out in your letter.

WRITING ON SPEC

Yet one more way to cast your net wide is to write speculative letters to companies which might need your skills. Most of these cold contacts will elicit no response, but there is always the possibility that your letter and CV will arrive on the personnel officer’s desk on the very day that she despaired of ever finding the right person to fill that post which you were obviously born for.

Look for large companies that may require your expertise. If your field is administration your target area will obviously be pretty broad. If your skills are more specialised you will find fewer prospective employers to write to but will probably have a better chance of hooking one.

Using libraries for contacts

If you are able to get to London, a good place to find the names and addresses you want is the City Business Library, the address for which is given earlier in this chapter. They have the Yellow Pages for all cities and towns and you will find more addresses than you can ever want.

Any fairly large city library will having listings of Canadian companies. Ask the reference librarian – they are invariably helpful. In particular look out for the Canadian Key Business Directory, published by Dun and Bradstreet, which gives a profile of the top Canadian firms and includes names, addresses, telephone numbers, and the names and titles of executives who run each company. It also contains a useful geographical listing. Consult also the Canada Business Directory.

Contacting international companies

A good speculative approach is to contact British companies which have branches in Canada, as well as Canadian firms with branches in the UK. This removes the possible obstacle presented by the great distance between you and your prospective employer. This can be one of the best ways to find a job before applying for Employment Authorisation, thus greatly enhancing your chance of getting immigration approval. There is an excellent directory published by Dun and Bradstreet, Who Owns Whom, which gives you this information and which you should find in almost any reference library.

Following this tack of contacting international companies, you could try contacting the Chambers of Commerce listed in the address section that may provide you with lists of British companies in Canada and Canadian companies in Britain.

Writing the covering letter

When making speculative enquiries your covering letter is possibly more important than the CV itself. Follow the general rules stated above but emphasise the trumpet-blowing even more. You really are selling yourself, and doing it cold which, as any salesman will attest, is the hardest thing of all. You need to tailor your letter to the type of firm you are writing to as well as to the sort of job for which you are looking.