How to Draft a Canadian Resume, From a South African

25 April 2019

Bearing in mind I had not touched my CV resume in 13 years, I had a lot of catching up to do in terms of my research.

I took 2 solid days and nights to research how to draft a Canadian resume, falling for “free” websites that won’t release your document unless you insert your credit card details.

It took me 5 days to put everything on paper, and a further 3 months to continuously tweak my resume after each meeting with talent managers, COO's of law firms, managing directors, coaches, mentors, bank managers, presidents of banks, VPs, lawyers and more.

Let’s start with simple terminology

Resume – 2 pages in length, do not use as a heading on your resume.

CV – 5 pages plus in length, going into more detail for every position (never seen in Toronto).

Talent Acquisition Manager – I knew this title as HR Manager back home.

Counsel / Attorney / Solicitor / Barrister – they all have their own meaning, I used counsel.

I was called to the bar in Toronto = I was admitted as an attorney in Durban.

Sheriff – yes, I was asked what a sheriff was, if we weren’t in a food court while breezing over my resume, I would have sung him the song, I shot the sheriff.

Points that shouldn’t pop up

Not on your resume, interview, ever, as they are considered to be discriminatory: age; kids; health; physical features; measurements; origins; citizenship status; languages; marital status; sexuality; SIN (i.e. your tax number); credit score; social media.

My suggested route (pronounced rowt here) 

Don’t panic, there are only 2 million people entering Canada every year and competing with your resume.

Start with a rough draft of what you know and what is familiar to you.

Read over your resume with the below suggestions in mind.

Insert some power words where applicable, not too many and not too extravagant.

Cut back where possible, and no more than two pages, otherwise you’ll be out the “pot” as I call it.

One last glance with FANCS in mind (see below).

The above should result in your first solid draft for someone else to read and edit. By this time, you should be able to narrate your resume backwards (you will see).

Once satisfied, copy and paste content to your LinkedIn profile.

My suggestions on how to evolve your resume:

Setup

You need to go with what works for you, a functional or chronological resume. Chronological resumes are more popular with a few years behind you.

I’ve seen chronological resumes that look fantastic when every year the person is developing and studying, and is promoted, and promoted again. Yeah, that’s all lovely if that’s you, but the last thing you want is a gap for 10 years blatantly showing the employer you have been too lazy / busy / occupied with life, to formally develop yourself / your career.

The other aspect of set up and where I came short, is that the recruiter is not interested in your long stories, job descriptions over decades and numerous positions. They are looking for achievements. Try sum up 12.6 years of achievements when you could barely see the light of day as you were so deep in the work. It was tricky, but think of what will make you stand out.

Personal Information

This is where we start, with your name, email, phone, address, nothing more:

Renderinglight (BComm, LLB, SS) – yes BCom is spelt BComm here. This shows your qualifications off in the first second, keep your surname consistent if recently married;

joesoap@hotmail.com – people have advised not to use Hotmail, it shows your age, and Hotmail has a bad taste with most people as we were all hacked at some point, try use a Gmail address or something more professional;

Phone number – if in South Africa while on the hunt, use +27 before the number. Ensure that you state that you are eligible to work in Canada if you are seeking jobs while in SA, this should be after you name;

Address – initially I had Toronto, Ontario, Canada on my resume and I was advised that usually a full address is made available. For identity fraud reasons, I still omit the apartment number, and inserted the Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

An introduction and summary usually follows, containing those power words, explaining where you have been, what you have accomplished and what you are looking for, going forward. No more than 3 lines. This can also be used as your elevator pitch and introduction in LinkedIn.

Skills / Expertise

This is where you need to blow your own horn (which I find extremely difficult). If you do not know what your skills are, google "hard and soft skills", and make it a process of elimination. But this is what makes you shine!!

Soft skills are important here. People don’t get it. I had a banker tell me this week “we don’t care…” I was surprised by his use of words. Its common here with language barriers and culture differences. Examples would include, interpersonal skills, problem solving, analytical thinker, etc. 

See my resume skeleton below:

Social Media 

Don’t even bother looking through a decade of photos to see if they are appropriate (our interpretation of inappropriate may well be different). All you need to do, is limit the people who can see your profile and pictures. NOT public, only FRIENDS. Your employer shouldn’t really be your friend on Facebook, until you’re at least employed by them, and by then you should be in the safe zone.

I have the following suggestions for the purpose of each app, and I personally have one decent formal profile picture for all apps, just in case the lines cross:

Facebook – personal, family and friends, remove your employment details (this is a social space), talent managers have been known to cross check all social media platforms to check if all your details tie up. For those of you with new surnames, I used my maiden name as my surname, so if they googled me, Facebook shouldn’t come up in the first page.

Twitter – business, follow the news, other local attorneys, attorney associations, a tweeter who can educate / inform you of new hot topics / case law – I would create a different user for Canada, as I get confused when I breeze too fast which judge said what in what country.

Instagram – personal, is your profile pubic? I use it for friends, family, and the general public, nothing too personal goes up, again it is in my maiden name.

LinkedIn – strictly business, vital and needs its own blog! SA doesn’t know the meaning of LinkedIn profiles, Saffers (myself included) have no idea, until you arrive here. Whether you are headhunted by a recruitment company, like I was. Or you are at a networking event and this millennial says to you let me scan your LinkedIn bar-code (like a Checkers voucher), and within a second we were connected. Connecting with mentors, sponsors, people in the same industry, not friends, not family, business is business.

WhatsApp – personal, you will find Canadians don’t use this app, mostly friends and family from South Africa, but make sure your profile picture is decent, as a lot of foreigners use this app and it may be your talent manager taking a peek…

Blogs – try limit to members where possible, to ensure that you are preaching to the right crowd, you don’t want to be telling a potential employer how you want to live the van life and travel the USA, when they want you behind a desk 345 days of the year.

Google – business, often I receive video calls via Google Meet / Hangout via a link.

Skype – business, goes without saying, unless I call my gran on Skype prepaid, as she is not on WhatsApp or other social media platforms.

No one tells you things are automated here – the secret is…

You get apps for this, but you need to pay after a while. Let me explain…

They say you should change your resume for each job application according to the JD. Well I say, change your cover letter for each application. How can you possibly change your experience to suit their JD?

The recruitment systems here are 90% automated (you will notice site names like Taleo, Brassring, Brainhunter, Dayforce, Workforce, Bamboohr and Docebo), banks especially. Within the hour you can receive a rejection email. The unspoken rejection rule is that your resume and cover letter do not match the JD by at least 80%. Or your resume is 3 pages long, then you are out of the “pot” immediately. 
The secret is… and this only works if your resume is short enough (between 1 to 1.5 pages) drum roll… under each job application it mentions JD, qualifications needed, requirements, etc. Copy all of these requirements and paste them at the end of your resume, reformat what you have copied to your resume style, place ticks next to every requirement met, omit the requirements you do not meet. Make sense? That way you will get in the pot with their words on your resume! 

This is what it looked like for one of my job applications:

The 10 second eye catchers

Headings - they assist the reader, they are like commas in a sentence, use them.

Spelling and grammar - read it backwards if you need to.

Long-winded sentences - I was guilty of this, how else do you win over all those automated systems.

Small fonts - don’t go smaller than 11.

Dating your resume - its a no go, not in the header, footer, document name. When naming your resume its Name Surname Resume.

Location - I would not include any reference to "South Africa" in your resume (unless you are still there). There is a famous term called "Canadian Experience", and without this, it is difficult to secure a position. I was half way through an informal interview at an employment agency and only then did they realise realize I was not Canadian. Which I think is great. Last week I lost a project as I lacked Canadian Experience.  

References - do not list them, provide them at this stage, or state available on request. They will ask you when appropriate, you’ll see. If you want to be cheeky like I was, in an email application, just attach that written reference letter, why not.

Power words - this is what makes your resume sparkle for recruiters, you need to exploit those colourful colorful words. Use sites like monster or thesaurus.com.

Fonts - don’t go fancy, use stock standard windows aerial, times new roman (my preference is aerial narrow) as their printer and your printer settings could differ causing them to have a piece of art if not aligned. They suggest 1-inch margins, black and white only (I like a touch of colour color), 8.5x11 paper [remember paper size in SA vs. CA / USA is different].

Format

This is vital, imagine saying your skill is attention to detail and you cannot line up a column of words, or cap your all your sentences.

I had a checking rule for candidate attorneys law students before a legal letter / notice / pleading left the building - the acronym (I spent too many years studying) was FANCS which stood for:

Full stops - ensuring every sentence had a full stop, colon or semi colon (here a full stop is called a period);

Annexures, lets transform this to Alignment – you will not have annexures unless they ask you for them separately. Your alignment would generally be justified or to the left. I prefer justified, looks neater;

Numbering - check you’re not missing a number, and that they are aligned with each other;

Caps - check you have a cap on each line;

Spacing - check that the whole page is consistent (single or 1.5) as well as the lining up of the different sentences.

You cannot judge my formatting skills by this blog (please!), Word 95 for Windows was easier to use than this platform. 

Cover letter

I was one of those people who thought I would get away WITHOUT it, well it took me about 25 rejections to learn my lesson. Who has the time in 2019 to read a cover letter? Well a lovely automated recruitment system without emotional intelligence, that’s who.

Templates and Samples are available online, but my best was good old Microsoft word. Monster and resumetarget.ca were others I found. Again, be careful not to waste your time on inputting all your lovely data, to receive a credit card request and no resume /cover letter.

My approach to a cover letter was as follows:

Top sites

Jobs - LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, Monster, TLOMA.

Networking - Shapr is a great way to network with people in your field, it yielded plenty coffee meetings with great advice and introduction meetings to boost confidence levels and exercise that elevator pitch. Eventbrite holds job fairs every month, as well as banking / legal networking events, some free. Cold messaging people on LinkedIn became the norm for me, but there is a way to do it.

Recruitment firms - Generally, the feedback with Hays, Robert Half, other recruitment firms was non-responsive, whether it was a call, leaving a message, sending an email, knocking on their door. Robert Half offered me a senior legal recruiting position, and after I declined, I never heard back from them. If you email me your resume, I can refer you to legal recruiters I have met with in Toronto, where I received positive feedback.

Interview process

A quick note on this. When successful, you will receive an email to set up a telephonic interview, this discussion will hopefully take you to the next round, being an in-person interview or two at their office or a video call, whereafter they request references, degrees, etc. and you sign their contract. This process can take 3 to 6 months.

If unsuccessful, don’t expect a response or reason, in weeks to come you will receive the standard rejection email.

My system of keeping track of job applications

It is easy to apply for 20 jobs in a day, when no cover letter is required. You can lose track of what you apply for. My trick was to copy and paste the job application onto a word document and save it under a number, i.e. 51 Legal Manager PWC, this assists you with drafting your cover letter and later an interview as the advert disappears online.

Further I had an excel spreadsheet logging when I applied for what and how, i.e. a table with columns marked: Job Number | Position at Company | Date Applied | Referred by | Application URL.

If a company cold calls you, it is easy to call up the job advert and see when and how you applied for the position.

Conclusion

I hope that this will save you the 3 months it took me to gather, adapt, learn and accept. I wish you all the best with the drafting of your resume and job hunt. Before we landed, no one told us it would take at least 3 to 6 months to land a job here, but it is absolutely normal! April and August, it picks up.

Over 3 months and at date hereof, I have had 50+ coffees with amazing individuals, formally applied for 105 positions, sent and received 707 emails regarding jobs alone, and am waiting on the outcome of 2 interviews.

I strongly believe it is who you know here, and it is up to you to network, network, network.



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