City of Vancouver staff are mentoring a group of skilled immigrants in a new pilot project geared at helping newcomers navigate Vancouver’s business culture and find jobs that match their skill sets.
The Newcomer’s Mentorship Program, launched Wednesday, matches 19 city staff in the fields of engineering, finance and information technology with 19 new immigrant mentees.
“The idea behind the program is to address the situation that we all have heard about where we have skilled, knowledgeable, internationally trained, qualified individuals who are newcomers to Canada and they have skills, knowledge and energy that we need and they are still struggling to find employment commensurate with their abilities,” said Monica Kay, director of the City of Vancouver’s Equal Employment Opportunity Program.
“They have something that we need and we have something that they need, which is understanding and knowledge of business conventions, of networking, of relationship-building.”
CEO Thomas Tam of S.U.C.C.E.S.S., an immigrant-focused service organization which partnered with the city in creating the project, said the project should help new immigrants overcome the employment hurdle of not having Canadian work experience by connecting them with city staff employed at the managerial level of the mentee’s professional field. The staff members, he said, can connect their mentees with the right professional associations and give them up-to-date advice on finding local employment in that particular field.
Tam said he hopes the project will not only help new immigrants find new jobs, but help Canada realize the full benefits of its newcomers’ talents.
“Human capital is one of the major factors to harnessing [Canada’s] productivity,” he said.
“And at this moment in time, many of the professional new immigrants, they are under-employed; that means they suppose that they can make more money, and harness their productivity, but they are employed in a lower-level job and they make less money. And that affects the overall productivity of Canada.”