Improve Your Resume to Get a Canadian Job Offer

A resume is your professional spokesperson. What is it saying about you? And how can you improve your resume to draw the attention of Canadian employers? In this article, we share top tips to improve your resume and find work in Canada in no time!

After a few necessary changes to your resume, you’ll be closer to securing a job in Canada. The trick to writing an exceptional Canadian resume is shifting the focus away from unnecessary, personal fluff to telling employers exactly how you can be an asset to their company.

A strong, skimmable, and interesting resume that differentiates you from the crowd is the golden recipe to find work in Canada.

The Perfect Canadian Resume Format


A resume should not be more than one or two pages long. If you have more than 10 years of work experience, you may be able to get away with three pages. The bottom line is to create a resume that is easily digestible and highlight your most important career information. Here is the perfect Canadian resume format to use to secure a job offer in Canada.

1. Canadian Resume: Contact information

Your name, contact number, email address, and residential address are the first bits of information that should be visible on your resume. In addition, include live links to your online resume that allows hiring managers to easily navigate your email address, online portfolio, a professional blog, and relevant social media accounts.

Your email address says a lot about you. For example, funkyjade@yahoo.com who is applying for a job in a company's accounts department may not be taken seriously. For this reason, avoid slang terms and nicknames. Instead, keep it professional by creating an email address that is a sum of your name and surname.

Good to know

Under the employment law in Canada, it’s not required to include your date of birth, gender, marital status, or parents’ names.

2. Canadian Resume: Professional Career Summary

The ideal professional career summary is four to five short sentences that describe your current or latest job title, experiences, and goals. It’s important to emphasize points that make you different, whether it’s personality, technical ability, managerial skills, team building, or some other talents related to the job you are applying for. Avoid generic descriptions like “honest and hardworking person” that doesn’t give any true insights into your professional history.

Begin by stating your job title, for example, “Knowledgeable Farm Worker with drive and experience...” makes it clear from the get-go what role you are applying for. If you’ve changed career paths, don’t include any skills or experience that’s irrelevant to the job you are currently applying for. Instead, create different resumes for different jobs.

Mention how many years of relevant experience you have, what type of experience this is, and your future ambitions. Keywords like “adaptability, cultural awareness, and global perspective” will show hiring managers that you will be able to adapt to a new country and culture.

Example of a Professional Career Summary

“Knowledgeable Farm Worker with drive and experience helping to carry out day-to-day tasks and long-term projects on farms. Adept in the use of farm equipment and machinery, and skilled in a variety of farming procedures. Skilled in soil preparation, irrigation processes, weeding, and pruning crops. Committed to serving as a positive, flexible, and adaptive team member.” - resume.io

3. Canadian Resume: Work Experience

Man working on a laptop

Name the company or companies you’ve worked for, include your job title and the duration you’ve worked in each role. Add four or five key duties and responsibilities of these roles, but don’t waste valuable space by going into too much detail since it's already common knowledge to your prospective employer.

This information is best presented in bullet points and short, concise sentences that are easily scannable.

What you do want to include are key achievements in each previous role, and/or projects you’ve worked on. The SPAR approach is widely used to highlight specific achievements, for example; the situation that led to a task/problem to the actions you had to take to deliver a promising outcome. The outcome or results are best quantified, in terms of monetary value (convert to Canadian dollars) or percentages. The same formula can be used to summarise successful projects.

Use the SPAR Formula to Work in Canada

Situation - Task/Problem - Action - Results

For example: "I worked as part of a team (Situation) to transform a disorganized, inefficient warehouse (Task/Problem) into a smooth-running operation by totally redesigning the layout (Action); this saved the company $250,000 in recovered stock (Results)." - The Working Centre

4. Canadian Resume: Education

Students in Canada

Your resume is not complete without referencing your educational background. Remember to convert all terms to the Canadian equivalent. For example, use terms like “high school” and “GPA” (Grade Point Average).

In order to work in Canada, you may have to provide an Educational Credential Assessment, which verifies that your education credentials are equivalent to the Canadian standard.

Additionally, the two major languages spoken in Canada are English and French. If you’ve done a language test in either to prove your proficiency, remember to include your results for your speaking, listening, writing, and reading abilities.

How to Live and Work in Canada

You have to be authorized by the Canadian Government to work in Canada. A valid work permit can give you the authorization you need to work in Canada temporarily, however, if you want to move to Canada, there are many immigration programs, streams, and pilots available for those who want to live and work in the country permanently.

The trick is finding a path to Canada which you are most eligible for. The easiest and most efficient way to do this is by completing a Canadian Eligibility Evaluation that is reviewed by Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultants (RCICs). If you want to know your best chances to immigrate to Canada, fill in the contact form below:


Express Entry Canada

Happy guy looking at you while sitting by workplace and working with software

Express Entry is the most popular immigration system used by the Canadian Government to speed up the immigration process for eligible candidates. The system manages online profiles for permanent residence by sending candidates with high Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) scores Invitations to Apply (ITA). Express Entry profiles are scored according to the CRS which measures the criteria listed below.

CRS Criteria Awards Points For:

  • Age
  • CLB Language proficiency (English and French)
  • Level of Education (In and outside Canada)
  • Work Experience (In and outside Canada)
  • Arranged employment
  • Provincial Nomination achieved
  • Sibling in Canada
  • Your spouse’s profile (if married)

To live and work in Canada, you must create an Express Entry online profile under the following three economic classes; Federal Skilled Worker Program, the Federal Trades Worker Program, and for those applicants who have worked in Canada before, can apply through the Canadian Experience Class.


How We Can Help You Work in Canada


Using the expert services of Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultants (RCICs) who are authorized and trusted by the Canadian Federal Government to handle your visa and immigration application, will make the entire process faster, simpler, stress-free and not to mention – more successful!

We handle the paperwork while you choose your dream job in Canada. All you have to do is complete our application form to receive your eligibility assessment today. It's just that simple.