February 11, 2021
By Canadian Immigrant
Join a professional association to learn skills and network with people in your industry
You arrive in Canada already a skilled professional in your home country, but where do you start the path on your professional journey here? One of the most valuable things you can do is join a professional association or network.
Most professions will have one, including associations that oversee the certification of a licensed profession, like engineering. Or a professional group that brings people from the same industry that may be unlicensed, like marketing, together to network. There are also professional networks that cross professions and are instead based on sectors, skills, gender, age or even cultural groups.
Gabriela Medar, a Vancouver-based career development practitioner originally from Romania, says, “The main benefit of joining a professional association is getting to know the system and the people, familiarizing yourself with the language of the industry because in every country it’s different.”