International Organization for Migration (IOM)

The FCRO’s work in recent years is intended not only to alleviate the informational
barriers associated with gaining credential recognition, but also to facilitate
immigrants and businesses in more quickly assessing foreign credentials. Future
policy measures have been designed to simplify the process of credential recognition,
which is currently the responsibility of over 400 different organizations across all
occupations and provinces, and the complications this has created for users of
the immigration system, particular SMEs and potential applicants. The FCRO
is currently developing a Pan-Canadian Framework for the Assessment and
Recognition of Foreign Qualifications to address this problem. This is a commitment
by federal and provincial governments to develop processes that will guarantee that
a potential immigrant will know within one year whether their qualifications will be
recognized; what, if anything, they must do to be qualified to work in their occupation
in Canada; and receive direction toward occupations that they are qualified to work
in. Note that the decentralized nature of professional licensing in Canada is not
going to change, but these processes will be designed so that newcomers to Canada
working in regulated occupations can be assessed and receive the information they
need to become licensed as quickly as possible.
Discrimination has also been identified as a challenge, but one that can be
remedied through awareness campaigns critical of intentionally and unintentionally
discriminatory practices. Discrimination is most likely to be a problem during the
recruitment process. Some research indicates that employers are less likely to invite
applicants for interview if they simply have a non-English name on their résumé;
Oreopolous (2009) conducted an analysis of a private data-set of 6,000 résumés,
and found that 11 per cent of highly skilled immigrants with non-English names
received a call back, while over 40 per cent of highly skilled immigrants with
English names received a call back. Likewise, Kukushkin and Watt (2009) found
that telephone interviews significantly damaged the prospects of being invited to
continue in the job process for immigrants from non-traditional source countries
where they would have been likely to have an accent. It is possible that this problem
can be alleviated with greater employer awareness; employers who learned of this
problem and stopped using telephone interviews no longer saw the discrepancy in
the proportion of immigrants who received second interviews.
Discrimination is usually manifested systemically, in the form of implicit biases
and conventions that create difficult hurdles for immigrants. The research in
this area has broadly concluded that employers must be open to departures from
conventions in recruiting, interviewing and hiring in order to avoid discrimination.
This includes less reliance on word-of-mouth advertising; advertising in ethnic
media; instituting culturally sensitive screening practices, such as omitting names
from résumés on the first screening; working with SPOs and other groups to put
in place mentoring and bridging programmes for recently hired immigrants; and
liaising with professional associations responsible for credential recognition while
training and assessing recently hired immigrants for competency (Kukushkin and
Watt, 2009). The many services available to employers to assist in implementing
immigrant-friendly recruiting processes are run by local SPOs, such as TRIEC
country studIes – CANADA
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