By guest contributor, Heather Brown, Applicant Screener
As an Applicant Screener for the Career Bridge paid internship program, it’s really inspiring to know that over 1400 internationally qualified individuals have successfully gained professional Canadian work experience through our program. But, I’ve come to realize it’s not just the interns, however, who are benefiting from the program. Employers benefit too. It’s essentially a “win/win” situation, both for internationally qualified job seekers and for employers seeking quality, diverse talent with exceptional English or bilingual English/French communication skills.
Through my role as a screener, I get the privilege of meeting first hand, the talented and driven people who are seeking Canadian work experience through our program. Many of the professional newcomers who I meet, have been searching for opportunities that match their skills and experience, sometimes for months or even years with little success.
Our program standards are high and we only qualify those who achieve a high score in language and communication skills. Basically what this means is that the individuals that we qualify into the Career Bridge program have excellent business communications skills. We also have several other mandatory program qualification requirements which includes an education equivalency of at least a Canadian bachelor’s degree, minimum of three years full-time professional international work experience, eligibility to work in Canada and have immigrated to Canada within the last three years ensuring their recency of skills and experience. It is because of this comprehensive screening approach, that the Career Bridge program makes the process of hiring internationally qualified professionals an easy, smooth and risk-free experience for the organizations that we work with.
In a nutshell, our Career Bridge Program screening process works like this:
- Outreach: We outreach to employment agencies, institutions and settlement organizations to build a large pool of qualified, diverse registrants.
- Review Resumes: Our applicant screeners review 1000’s of applications and resumes each month, searching for pre-registrants with professional backgrounds, skills and experience that strongly match current or potential internships with our participating host employers.
- Pre-Screening Selection: If selected, applicants are then screened in an in-person interview to ensure that they have met the requirements of the program and they also have a high level of language ability which includes workplace and business communication skills.
- Pre-Screening Interview: This screening interview, which incorporates some behavioural techniques, is based on a proprietary and very carefully designed interview tool that incorporates both English or English and French language assessment if the applicant would like to apply to bilingual positions.
- Creation of a Quality, Diverse Talent Pool: For applicants who are successful in the pre-screening interview, they are then qualified into the Career Bridge Program and now have the opportunity to apply to the internship positions posted by our participating host employers.
Ultimately, we aim to meet the changing and evolving needs of our participating host employers to ensure we continue to provide value to them in meeting their recruitment goals. As a result of our unique approach, the Career Bridge program is one of the only programs in Canada to offer employers this level of careful screening in both of our country’s official languages, English and French. This ensures that our host employers are receiving suitable applicants for the internship positions they post on our job board, and as a result, employers are saving time, money and resources in their quest to find the best talent and fit for the job.