http://www.settlement.org/index.html
http://www.iccc.org
question:
do computer programmers / software engineers need to get some sort of validation of degree / professional certificate from canada in order to be eligible for employment
Thanks for any help

Nothing of that sort is required.

It is not an easy market right now in IT though, so it does help if you have additional qualifications like a MCSD or some DBA certification etc etc. It does not make a difference though if you have that from India or Canada. Its much cheaper to do in India.

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Are you there?

Blue Dear,

Kindly tell us are there mainly jobs in sofware development sector (programming) or these are software jobs (eg. web maintenance, DBA, Network Adminstrator, Saytem Admin, PayRoll and Mail order processing) in non-IT sector?? Where IT is a department in the company..

Also, tell us what are the other kind of jobs where there are more vaccancies???

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Enjoy Happiness -- Happy from India

Happy Darling ,

This is a tough one to answer. As such, its more a question of being in the right place at the right time, luck does play a role unfortunately. However, if you've got skills in all the new tools from Microsoft like .NET, C#, PocketPC sdk etc etc., you're pretty well off. A certification will definately boost your chances in these. Java is pretty hot as well. As far as databases go, ORACLE and SQL Server rule the day.

Sometimes though, its some obscure skill that gets you the job. To give you my example, I have about 9 yrs. of experience in the IT sector. I've mostly worked on Microsoft Platforms and both ORACLE and SQL Server from a development angle. At one of my jobs, we were somehow using a database called Pervasive, which isn't that popular or mainstream a database at all (most desis haven't heard of it). I hated using it, thinking it would never help me on my resume. As luck would have it, this company shut down and laid off everybody, that too during the big market slump.

I was then sending my resume around and believe it or not, I got the next job primarliy because of PERVASIVE experience. The client was looking for someone with Microsoft front-end and Pervasive back-end expeirnce and that was really difficult to find for them. They brought me on board right after the first interview which lasted about half an hour.

So my first point is, ALL your skills are important, you just have to highlight them differently on your resume according to the job requirement (tailoring your resume for the job spec.)

Secondly, I have interviewed candidates who claimed to have 8/12 years of Microsoft development experience on their resume. They can answer all the standard questions from a "VB in 21 days" book. But try asking them some simple Windows API / sub-classing or COM/DCOM questions, and they don't have a clue. They will answer standard Soft. Dev. Life Cycle questions, but ask them about new interesting coding tehcniques like Xtreme programming, and they're lost. Most won't know the full-form of TCP/IP. To me, if you are truly a programmer and have worked in the field for 10 years, you better have had the curiosity to check out stuff that was not just the STANDARD requirment, i.e. going into depth of whatever core language/platform you know and constantly keeping yourself updated on up-coming stuff.

So my second point is, whatever your skillset is, you should know it inside-out and around. It gives you enormous confidence in interviews when you know before even going into an interview that you know much more than the guy interviewing you.

A lot of people will give you the impressionthat its nearly impossible for new-comers to find jobs here in IT. I beg to differ. Although its no walk in the park, it is doable and I've seen lots of people do it. Talent + a never- give-up attitude and a pinch of luck is the recipe.

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Are you there?

Am wondering if the landed desis (with moolah) ever think of setting up shop themselves.
how difficult / easy is to set up business ? I keep on hearing of corruption in canada similar to india but it is largely second hand information and also a bit difficult to believe.
Also I talked to contacts in some well known desi IT companies (wipro , infosys , cognizant, satyam etc ) - none of these have sizeable presence in canada. The reason given was that they don't have enough business.
Isn't outsourcing catching up in canada? Even if there isn't much IT industry to speak about - there surely seem to be enough firms that can keep several companies in india alive.
are there any cultural issues ?

most of small businesses are with asian people, desis, chinese, philipino only.

even those businesses will earn you enoguh to feed yourself and your family but will never make you rich, canada is not like US.

there is no corruption at the common people's level. If you want to start business there is no big hassle.

thanks for the quick response. (and for the good news about lack of corruption)
would be glad to solicit any input on IT outsourcing also
As desis - the two big inherent advantages that can become viable businesses are
a) ethnic indian food
b) IT outsourcing.
The only other avenue that a person of my training (software engineer H1 etc) can do probably is to do MBA at a unv.
anything else?

PS:
of course lookinf for jobs for truck driving / security gurad is also an option - but am wondering if the living standard of a truck driver is better / worse than that of a software engineer in india