Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - March 2010
An Ottawa course is helping to teach Canada’s newest IT workers the ins and outs of office etiquette in their new home.
Since 2008, Ottawa’s Chinese Community Service Centre has been assisting new arrivals in adapting their telephone skills, report-writing skills and, even their table manners to help them better integrate themselves into their Canadian offices. The courses even offer students work placement programs in the IT fields.
Though it was not immune to the recent recession, the IT field is one of Canada’s fastest growing industries, with no sign of slowing down in the near future. In fact, as the baby boomer population retires, more skilled IT workers are expected to be needed in Canada. The industry is growing worldwide, but each nation has its own way of operating.
"The environment here is looser, friendlier between colleagues. There's more chance for an employee to develop himself, to bring out ideas," says Gang Zhang who emigrated from Shanghai to Ottawa in 2008 and recently participated in the IT worker classes.
The program also benefits from contacts such as Regi Roy, who helps to coach students on the interview process. Roy, who himself immigrated to Canada from India in 1998, works at software company Titus and offers work placement positions to students in the program.
Roy says that the government could do more to assist immigrants and employers in the IT field, such as extending the subsidies offered to companies who hire recent graduates so that the financial incentive is there to hire newcomers as well.
Source: Ottawa Citizen
