This article is a follow-up to my previous blog, “Trailing spouses: The challenge of coaching high-performance newcomers,” which introduced my topic for an in-person session at Cannexus24 in Ottawa. About 60 career practitioners at my session embraced the common idiom “Walk a mile in their shoes” by imagining themselves relocating to Brazil as the trailing spouse of a financially secure employee in a global Fortune 500 company.
The purpose of this session was to encourage career practitioners to step outside of our Canadian employment ecosystem and consider the lived experience of a newcomer. I am confident that this summary of their aggregated contributions will help any career professional better serve newcomers seeking employment in Canada’s job market.
In small groups, the 60 practitioners followed prompts to exchange experiences and ideas related to the experience of finding a job in a new country: use your current age, partnered with or without children, and the fact that you have limited or no Portuguese language skills (the official language of Brazil) to discuss the following questions:
- What would be your needs and priorities in the first six months?
- What challenges do you think you would face finding work?
Some practitioners had special insights because they could translate their experiences as newcomers to Canada into this Brazil scenario.
Needs and priorities
As you might imagine, short-term concerns for those without children included acquiring proper visas before or after arrival, learning local customs, culture, language and job market, as well as transferability of their education credentials and work experience to Brazil. For those with children, finding a job was secondary to concerns related to schools and new routines, finding a safe neighbourhood, food security, driving/road safety, telecommunications, healthcare, banking, paying bills and taxes.
Nuances were organized around psychological, social and relational concerns. For example, on a personal level, vulnerabilities factored high, such as the impact of loneliness or social isolation on mental health, or chronic exposure to political tensions, cultural norms, climate concerns and social disruptions that undermine safety and well-being. Is there a legal framework to protect individuals from age or minority discrimination, or accessibility provisions for disabled persons? How could they maintain eldercare or other obligations with family and friends in their country of origin? How would they find a religious or other support community? Participants also raised concerns about relationship strain or resentment toward the employed partner due to a loss of identity and purpose that was closely aligned with the trailing spouse’s former job.
“For those with children, finding a job was secondary to concerns related to schools and new routines, finding a safe neighbourhood, food security …”
For some individuals, finding a job in Brazil might be easy if they can work remotely with their current employer, transfer with their employer to Brazil, land a job with their partner’s employer or have expertise in very high demand, regardless of language skills. But most practitioners admitted that they would face significant challenges breaking into the local labour market.
Passive versus proactive job search
Practitioners simply did not know, for example, if Brazil had the same newcomer infrastructure as Canada involving settlement/immigrant services from government, non-profit and commercial providers. They also recognized the disparity in opportunities for those relocating to rural versus urban areas of Brazil.
Furthermore, due to the language barriers posed by learning Portuguese quickly and easily, practitioners recognized the significant limitations around organizing a conventional job search based on submitting resumes (showing no Brazilian education and work experience) to online job postings or using employment agencies and recruiters.
However, they discussed the advantage of compiling a list of the top 25 companies from their country of origin now operating in Brazil, as possible employers who might reward their existing language skills over their lack of proficiency in Portuguese. They also discussed the pros and cons of acquiring more education or credentials to increase their chances of gaining remote work and, perhaps, local employment.
Due to the complexities involved with finding work in Brazil, they focused on proactive job search tactics, especially connecting with others, to leverage a simple networking principle: that the average citizen knows or is acquainted with 250 people. They identified the importance of tapping into this “goodwill network” – the fact that most people want to help others who are competent and reliable.
They started with identifying individuals and organizations of their diaspora in Brazil, including family, current or former colleagues, ex-pat groups, embassies and consulates, industry and trade associations, cultural and professional associations, online Meetup and LinkedIn groups, and offline community/social networks, such as mom/parent/sports/hobby groups. They discussed the simple value to be gained from dinners with their partner’s colleagues or their neighbours, or teaching classes in their areas of interests, or volunteering with local organizations. Building rapport and deepening relationships to the point of being referred to or meeting someone who could hire them was the key to this proactive job search strategy.
A fresh perspective
Participants expressed to me their appreciation for learning how to better listen to newcomers, to acknowledge the many nuances that frame their relocation experience, and to affirm their dignity as individuals with specific needs and priorities. They also said that they expanded their understanding of the proactive job search and the many strategies and tactics that could be deployed on behalf of a newcomer’s goals to find rewarding work in Canada.
