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Comment by robteix | Hacker News Reader

That’s exactly what happened to my wife. She’s highly qualified and had a lot of international experience in large, well-known companies (HP, Intel, HSBC). Here in Canada, she’s rarely been able to even get to an interview these past couple of years, and when she did, she was “over qualified.”

She now makes sandwiches at a local supermarket for minimal wage and all but lost all hope. Breaks my heart.

I was lucky to get a job pretty quickly though so there’s that.

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Interesting, what race is your wife?

I see you’re getting downvoted but it’s unfortunatedly a relevant question. In her case, however, that’s not the issue. She’s white with an “European-sounding name” so that’s not it.

I don’t think it’s racism or even xenophobia per se. It’s just companies want the “Canadian experience” on your resume. I hear similar stories from other immigrants here. After the first job, everything goes well. It’s just that getting that foot in the door is really difficult.

If your wife is a woman and you too are a woman, this would be puzzling. If you are a man, it becomes a lot less puzzling. "Race/culture"still trumps gender.

Oh man, that sounds pretty bad. Why didn't she try consulting/remote work in the U.S.?

She’s a project manager. It’s tough to do remotely so not many jobs available. That said, she did a couple of freelancing gigs for foreign companies last year. Not very steady or stable though and they don’t help her with the “Canadian experience” requirement.

She’s now learning to code to try and get a job in that. Coding is very in demand here (which explains how I got my first job here within a week of arriving)

Wow, that's a tough one. I'm in Vancouver myself and I don't think you can get a PM job here without strong personal connections. The job is much more about trust, confidence and network, than any specific skills, and that's not transferable between locations.

That said, if she held similar positions in Fortune 500 companies, maybe she should try using her network from previous places to get her foot in the door.

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