About a year ago, Dr. Marie Bountrogianni, the dean of Ryerson’s Chang School, wrote a piece in the Globe and Mail about the mal-employment of immigrants to Canada.
Bountrogianni reported that approximately 40 per cent of immigrants hold university degrees but only 24 per cent of foreign-educated and trained (compared to 62 per cent Canadian-born individuals) in regulated professions were working in their field. According to the former Ontario cabinet minister, a study found that after four years of living in Canada, 65 per cent of women and 70 per cent of men held jobs that required a lower level of education.
It’s estimated that immigrant mal-employment costs $20 billion in foregone earnings, due to lower productivity and higher turnover.
Much like her recent Huffington Post piece about the underemployment of people with disabilities, Bountrogianni offered solutions to increase the employment rate and decrease the mal-employment of immigrants. Among other resolutions, she suggested implementing workplace mentorship programs because they’re simple and inexpensive.
Ronald Jacinto (left)
Career Edge Alumnus, Internationally Qualified Professional, and Career Edge Intern of the Year (2014)
Career Edge provides paid internships to recent immigrants whom have arrived in Canada in the last three years. These work-integrated learning opportunities offer coaching/mentoring and Canadian work experience.
Rahim Vadsarya, senior financial analyst at Career Edge and program alumni, said many immigrants like Ronald Jacinto are forced into ‘survival jobs.’ After six months of dwindling savings and unsuccessful job applications, Ronald took on a survival gig and worked 12-hour shifts in Toronto factories. With experience in construction project management working on some of Dubai’s biggest developments, the deputy electrical manager didn’t anticipate experiencing this level of difficulty. But after completing his Career Edge internship at Spectra Engineering, his host employer was impressed and hired him full-time.
“If we had an army of Ronalds, we would probably be on top of the whole industry,” said his mentor/coach, Sean Cobham.
Four years later, Ronald remains at Spectra – presumably with no survival jobs on the horizon.