Careers.ca | Canadian Career Guide

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Job Seeker's Handbook is an introductory guide to help you explore the tools used to find work (job applications, cover letters, résumés, portfolios), explore the skills used to find work (networking, information interviewing, and interview skills), identify ways to stay positive and handle rejection, and much more.

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Advanced Techniques for Work Search is a publication to help you identify employability skills, update work search tools and skills, focus your search for work, and find relevant labour market information.

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Creating a New Future - Job Loss Workbook is a workbook designed to help you explore the nature of work transitions and their impact on you, consider your financial needs, investigate choices and challenges, plan and apply coping strategies, establish relationships with organizations that can help you find new work, adjust your work action plans/strategies to reflect your true self, and much more.

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Self-directed Job Search Program WorkSearch is a well-developed, highly interactive site that guides you through the basic steps of finding work and becoming employed. It even has a feature, called Map Your Route, that will ask you questions to customize your experience with the site.

Job Hunting Etiquette Quiz - Do you know all the rules and protocol for proper and polite job-hunting behaviour? Take this quiz and test your knowledge.

Radical Change in the World of Work is a workbook to help you understand how trends impact work opportunities, understand the changing nature of work, examine your personal characteristics and their impact on career decisions, identify your network to assist with your work search strategies, and more.

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Essential Workplace Skills Profiles of essential "generic" skills required for success in virtually any job including: communication, document use, writing, thinking, working with others, computers, numeracy, and more.

Skills Plus: Discovering Your Personal Career Assets is a publication to help you understand how your personal characteristics affect career decisions, explore personal management skills such as time management, problem solving, and organizational skills, identify your resources and determine which are most helpful to your career path, and much more.

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Transferable Skills Survey allows you to rate yourself on a 3-point scale for skills in various categories: communication, research & planning, human relations, organization, management & leadership, and work survival.

Information Interviewing The best way to find explore a career is to talk with someone who is actually doing that kind of work, or something similar. Here is a step-by-step guide.

Resume Tutor won't actually write the résumé for you but it will take you through a series of six interactive workbook exercises to help you get the job done.

200 sample Cover Letters Organized into topics (e.g., cold calls, clarify direction, seek part-time) this site offers tips and actual samples of relevant cover letters.

Monster.Com Virtual Interview provides a rotating selection of questions, with possible answers for each. Make your choice then see comments on each possible response.

Telephone Interviewing Etiquette - Are you doing all you can to help you succeed in phone interviews? Read this article and find out!

Career Fair Etiquette - How to get the most out of career fair situations by polishing your career fair etiquette.

Employment Tips for Job Seekers with Disabilities is a publication to help you consider how effective communication skills, behaviours, and attitudes can foster positive interactions when finding and keeping work, evaluate the impact of your health on your decisions, explore effective work search tools, interview strategies, and work alternatives, approach employers with a strong business case for hiring a person with a disability, and much more.

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Workopolis Campus has 1000's of full-time, part-time, and summer job listings, electronic résumé posting and much more.

Job Postings the web site for jobPostings magazine, published 6 times a year. It contains listings, organized by general area of study, of entry level positions open to university and college graduates across Canada.

Career Owl is a Canada-wide electronic hiring hall dedicated to easing the job finding problems of post secondary students and alumni (all those with at least some university, college or technical school education). CareerOwl is designed to enable students and alumni to obtain information conveniently about employment opportunities throughout Canada.

National Job Bank Search for jobs posted with Human Resource Development Canada's (HRDC), Canada-wide.

OntarioJobs.Com Search for jobs in Ontario. Links to other provincial sites in the CanJobs.Com network.

TorontoJobShop.Ca Quick and easy to use, with a variety of positions, at all levels, in the Greater Toronto Area.

HotJobs The Canadian version of a large and successful American job database. Includes all standard features.

Monster Board The Canadian version of the large and successful American job database. Includes all standard features plus many advice sections.

iJive.Com has its own job database as well as a city guide with links to employers, recruiters, job banks and more for each of more than 20 major Canadian urban centres.

Most daily newspapers have their careers sections online and, even better than the print versions, information is searchable by field of interest, company name or other key word:

Cool Jobs Canada is a site devoted to jobs in the tourism and hospitality sectors. Browse listings by province and employer type (resort, camp, etc.).

Job Postings Site for jobPostings magazine, with listings, organized by general area of study, of entry level positions open to university and college graduates across the U.S.

JobBank USA Do a "meta-search" which accesses several American job banks simultaneously.

Monster Board portal to region-specific Monster Board job sites, including: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Australia, Caribbean, Central America, Europe, Hong Kong, Mexico, Middle East, New Zealand, Singapore, South America, United Kingdom.

FlipDog Is a large job posting web site with listings for the U.S. but also over 50,000 international job listings, searchable by country.

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Federal Youth Employment Strategy Gateway to info on a wide range of federal government plans, programs and initiatives for youth (in 20's and below) employment, including full-time and summer programs.

Youth Opportunities in Ontario Gateway to info on a wide range of provincial programs for youth (in 20's and below) including: summer jobs, young entrepreneurs program, apprenticeship, public service internships and more.

Self-Employment: Is it for me? is a publication to help you understand how the changing workplace creates self-employment opportunities, determine the advantages and disadvantages of self-employment, learn about the kinds of self-employment options available, and much more.

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Brampton Small Business Enterprise Centre serves Brampton, Caledon and Orangeville with business consultation services, business plan review, name registration services, and much more to help you evaluate your prospects as an entrepreneur and actually get your business off the ground.

Self-Employment Development Initiatives Descriptions of various government programs to promote successful self-employment. Includes a special section covering initiatives for youth as well as an online resource area for people considering or actually undertaking self-employment.

Canadian Business Service Centre describes itself as a gateway to business information in Canada. It is most useful as a way of locating both federal and provincial programs to help business and entrepreneurial efforts.

Ontario Internship Program is a full time, paid professional work experience with the Ontario public service. It offers hands-on experience via up to three job assignments of 8 months duration, an opportunity to explore your career options while building your skills and portfolio, and a promising start to a career in the Ontario Public Service.

Career Edge Internship programs The program is aimed at graduates of university, college and high school who have finished their education but who lack career-related work experience. By completing a six-, nine-, or twelve-month paid internship in one of the program's Host Organizations, the Interns gain the skills and experience they need to become more marketable in the workplace.

Volunteering: How to build your career by helping others is a publication to help you discover how you can gain work skills, knowledge and attitudes through leisure activities and volunteer work, explore volunteering as a proactive job search and personal development strategy, identify relationships gained through volunteering that can help you find work, and much more.

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Students Working Abroad Program (SWAP) is a service for students wanting travel and work in Europe, Asia, the south Pacific, south Africa, and the USA. SWAP arranges travel, helps you settle in when you arrive, and supplies you with job and accommodation resources in each SWAP destination.

Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) CIDA is a leader in the fight against poverty and in efforts to make this a better world in which to live. Site has info on CIDA and its initiatives as well as on working in international development and on the International Youth Internship Program.

Youth International Internship Program is operated by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. It provides youth with a first international work experience that will further the objectives of Canada's foreign policy, specifically the promotion of prosperity and employment, the promotion of peace and global security, and the projection of Canadian values and culture abroad.

Working Abroad: Unravelling the Maze. Not job listings but detailed information and warnings from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade including documentation, health & safety, financial issues with references to additional resources.

Canadian Guide to Working and Living Overseas This is an information/promotion site for the book of the same name. The book is not online but even just looking over the contents, information and sample chapter will start to give you some perspective on what's involved in living and working abroad.

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White Pages Allows you to search the white pages telephone directory of every province, except Alberta, for businesses by name. Search results yield phone numbers and complete postal addresses.

Yellow Pages Allows you to search the yellow pages by company name, type of business, and/or location. Search results yield phone numbers, street address, location on a street map, and links to company web sites in some cases.

Toll-Free Numbers in Canada Search by company name or keyword (product, service, etc.) to find toll-free numbers for thousands of Canadian businesses. Searches can be limited by geographic area.

Businesses in Hamilton-Wentworth This employer directory for Ancaster, Dundas, Flamborough, Glanbrook, Hamilton and Stoney Creek can be searched by company name, keyword or industrial classification code.

Businesses in Brampton Keyword search the directory of the Brampton Board of Trade by keyword. Search results yield name, address and phone number plus name and title of contact person.

Who is (might be) hiring This page allows you to search the HRDC site by keyword and province to find employers who have hired your occupation in the recent past.

Canada's Top 100 Employers is a newly released Maclean's report based on a database of over 47,000 Canadian employers. Find out who they are and why they are great places to work.

50 Best Companies to work for is Report on Business magazine's annual ranking of Canada’s top employers by Hewitt Associates.

Canadian Corporate News Search for news releases about both public companies and non-public organizations by either keyword or company name. Or just browse the day's/week's releases to see who's in the news.

Canadian Annual Reports This free service contains listings, sorted by industry or alphabetically by company, of Annual Reports for hundreds of Canadian companies. You can order paper versions of the reports sent in the mail. Increasing numbers of reports are also available directly from the web site as PDF files. There is no charge for either service.

Public Company Snapshot, part of the GlobeInvestor site, allows you to input all or part of a company name and get an overview of the company's business and critical numbers.

Still can't find info on the company you are looking for? Try Canadian search engines like Google and Yahoo.

National Occupational Classification (NOC) This is a newly released version of the NOC with thousands of new job titles added... there are over 29,000 job titles in the index. Each lists example job titles, main duties, education & experience, and related occupations for each career cluster.

Occupational Profiles Information, indexed alphabetically or clustered into broad career sectors, on over 500 different job titles details: duties, working conditions, skills required, education & training, employment, salary, NOC code, and relevant associations/organizations to contact for more information. Newly updated, with advanced search options.

AboutMyJob.Com is a searchable collection of job stories detailing how people feel about their job and career choices. Keep in mind that these are personal reflections but the site is a great way to help you understand an occupation beyond the objective facts you find on other sites.

SalaryExpert.Com provides comprehensive salary data reports on hundreds of occupations in the U.S. and Canada. Ontario data can be reported combined or by region (Hamilton, London, Toronto, etc.)

Wages & Salaries across Canada This page allows you to search the Government of Canada site by keyword and province for wage and salary data.

Alberta Careers Update is a publication to help you understand the effects of the global economy, understand how social, demographic, technological, and environmental trends impact work opportunities, explore how trends affect work and work roles, and examine opportunities in 500 career clusters and 19 industrial sectors. The specifics are Alberta-based but, as a whole, the publication is of interest to anyone wanting to understand what affects work trends in Canada.

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National Occupational Outlooks Outlooks, earnings, and other useful statistics on hundreds of different job titles. Lists are organized by job title, as well as by NOC code and by general interest area. Newly updated and revised you can now compare up to 5 occupations.

Working in the 21st Century is an American site containing a good presentation with a macro perspective on where the labour market is headed. Keep in mind that there are social and demographic differences between the U.S. and Canada so this should be used as a a general guide.

Labour Force Survey Statistics Canada's monthly retrospective on what's up and what's down in employment across the country. Including (un)employment rates for various industries and work groups.

This section of the Career Links page is subdivided. Scroll down or select from:

CampusConnection run by Industry Canada, is a gateway site to education and learning opportunities. It includes a searchable database of course listings and distance education opportunities as well as info on prior learning assessment, credit recognition, and more.

CanLearn is a comprehensive "portal" site that contains original contents and connects you with Canadian resources for planning your post-secondary education. Includes planning & preparation, extensive financial aid & scholarship info, tuition fees databank, links to calendars, campus newspapers, and more.

Graduate Outlooks Job Futures allows you to look up hundreds of different fields of study and get national statistics on outlook, wages, employment sectors, program satisfaction, and much more.

Educational Testing Service is the administrator for a wide variety of academic and post-secondary admission tests including: SAT, GRE, GMAT, TOEFL, TOEIC, PRAXIS, AP, SLS & CLEP. Their site provides info on the tests, practice questions, and info on where, when and how to take them.

Program Locator Search this database of programs at Ontario's 25 colleges by keyword, program name, or area of study. (For Canada-wide program searches see the General Sources, above.)

Ontario College Application Service (OCAS) The OCAS site is your first stop for info on colleges on Ontario. Among other things, you can: search for programs at Ontario colleges by area of study or keyword, find out the program status, and even apply online.

General Information A thorough overview of education at colleges in Ontario, published by the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training.

Program Locator Select program criteria from menus and it searches for university programs across Canada, or just in the province you specify.

Ontario University Application Service (OUAC) Home Page The OUAC home page provides details on applying to undergraduate programs, medical programs, law programs, and teaching programs, at universities in Ontario. Now allows online applications.

Ontario's 20 Universities. (Includes Ontario College of Art & Design and Royal Military College, both of which are degree granting institutions.) Addresses, phone numbers, and links to the web site for each Ontario university.

Guide to applying to Ontario undergraduate programs The online version of INFO, a comprehensive guide printed each year. While, intended primarily for use by secondary students, the guide has much useful info including: admission criteria, residence, and much more.

College-University Transfer Guide Find out about collaborative programs, articulation agreements and credit transfer between Ontario universities and colleges. Whatever details you're looking for about transfer policies and agreements made between the province's colleges and universities, you can find using this guide, searchable by institution or geographic location.

The Globe and Mail's University Report Card Allows access independent ratings for Canadian universities on 65 categories including quality of education, course variety & availability, quality of students services, quality of technology, atmosphere, and much more. Requires you to register but is free and without obligation.

General Information A thorough overview of education at universities in Ontario, published by the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training.

Canadian Universities An alphabetical list of all Canadian universities with links to the web site for each.

Maclean's University Rankings Sometimes controversial but always of interest, this annual report on Canadian universities offers an informative, objective look complete with evaluations and comparative rankings of factors like prestige, student life, research quality and much more. The site offers sample reports and general university information. The complete rankings guide must be purchased online or at the newsstand.

General Information A thorough overview of education at private vocational schools in Ontario, published by the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training.

Private Vocational Schools and Career Colleges Listing of private vocational training in Canada, accompanied by program areas for each school and links to schools' web sites, if they have them.

Apprenticeship Questions, answers, information, and links about apprenticeship programs available for 45 industrial, motive power, service, and construction trades in Ontario.

Apprenticeship in Hamilton, Halton & Peel-Dufferin The apprenticesearch.com site provides information and facilitates the matching of prospective apprentices and employers within Halton, Peel-Dufferin regions.

High School Credit by Correspondence The Independent Learning Centre is operated directly by the Ministry of Education and Training. It offers credits at a secondary level (including OACs) by distance education.

Canadian Bureau for International Education Virtually everything you need to know about post-secondary education outside of Canada. Includes extensive links and annotated bibliography of Canadian print resources.

U.S.Programs & Institutions Home page for Peterson's Guides allows you to search for post-secondary programs and institutions by name, location, program type or length, and much more. Most listings have links to institutions' web sites.

Universities and Colleges around the World Not a program locator (like the US link above) but nevertheless a useful list of direct links to colleges and universities in over 175 countries.

Transworld Education The online presence of Transworld Education magazine, with information on studying in the U.S., Britain, Australia, and Asia. Also has a dedicated section on studying Media Arts & Design abroad.

Canada Student Loans Program Information on the Canada Student Loans Program, Canada Study Grants, and other federal government initiatives to help with financing your education.

Scholarships & Awards The Student Awards site is a database of available scholarships and student financial awards at post-secondary institutions across Canada.

Academic Credentials Evaluation Service Part of York University, this service evaluates credentials (for the purposes of both general employment and admission to post-secondary education) received from non-Canadian general and specialized secondary school studies, postsecondary vocational and technical training, and those received from universities and other institutions of higher learning.

World Education Services, a private non-profit organization under contract with the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training offers both document-by-document and course-by-course assessment of degrees, diplomas and academic certificates earned abroad, for equivalency in Ontario terms.

Comparative Education Service Affiliated with University of Toronto, this service provides testing and will assess foreign degrees and diplomas as they compare with Canadian equivalents. Page is unavailable but you may call for recorded telephone information: 416-978-2185.

Resources for Newcomers to Ontario. All kinds of resources for newcomers including employment, community & recreation, education, health, housing, language, literacy, social services, and more.

Foreign-trained Professionals & Tradespeople In order to work at a licensed trade or profession all foreign-trained professionals need a formal confirmation that their foreign credentials meet Canadian standards. This page has info and related links.

Career Planner - Choosing an Occupation is an easy reading workbook designed to help you identify and discover how your skills, interests, values and traits relate to work roles, research the tasks, knowledge, and attitudes needed in work categories, and develop action plans and problem solving strategies instep with your preferred future, all in the context of career planning as an ongoing process.

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Multiple Choices - Planning Your Career for the 21st Century is a guide to help you identify your positive assets and characteristics, consider a variety of work alternatives, explore the skills, knowledge and values related to specific industries, discover the difference between jobs, occupations, and roles, and much more all.

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U Waterloo Career Development Manual This award winning (really!) web site has become an Internet standard. Oriented to post-secondary students but useful to everyone, this interactive site takes you through self-assessment, occupational research, decision-making, employment contacts, job offers, and onwards.

WLU Career Planning Process If the U Waterloo site doesn't get you started, this site offers a more concise overview of the main elements in figuring out what to do with your life, from self-assessment to research, decision-making, and planning your next steps.

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Career Quizzes and Tools Part of the Monster.com site, this page links to surveys and self-tests that will help you gain further self-understanding.

What Can I do with a Degree In... From the University of Northern Carolina, reports on career possibilities and opportunities for over 40 different university degree majors.

Toronto Public Library's "Career Bookmarks" Billed as "more than a list of links", this site is organized into task-oriented sections that provide not only web links but also listings of print resources available at the Toronto Public Library (and, of course, many other public libraries and bookstores). Users can set up a profile and "keep" their favourite reference sources on file.