Funny story I want to share. I hope this will help others.
The truth is Canada wasn't in my plans. Yes, I was looking for a job outside of my home country, to be more specific, I was looking forward to finding a job in France. The opportunity came without notice. I will explain it.
Some Story
Because of my day job as IT Researcher, especially with opensource (Linux and all that kind of stuff), I had to be subscribed to a countless number of mailing lists. Mailing lists are groups of mails where you subscribe and you exchange knowledge about specific software with other people. I usually was answering emails for about two hours a day, and of course, I asked questions as well. Mostly answering questions.
It was one day that in a proxy software mailing list, someone asked about how to speed up dial-up customers. Lucky for me, my thesis was about speeding the Internet experience up, so I had all that very fresh. I start answering many questions about that subject and a mail drove to some freelancer jobs. I remember I built a web portal where people could sign up, get their login and then with the modem they could connect to the Internet. The portal and configurations I did was a success that when the proxy server was down, people complained about the speed.
The time passed and I took many other freelance projects from this person, who really had a company behind him. I don't know exactly how it came to his mind, but he came to Mexico to meet me. So, I took some vacation days from my day job to be able to be a good host. Long story short, after some technical discussions we agreed I would work as a foreign employee and in a two-year term, he will run all the migration processes to bring me to Canada.
He kept his word. During two days, I had two jobs, my day job in my home country and the remote Canadian job. When the time arrived, I got my first work permit.
What Happened Behind the Story
Without knowing what was really happening at that time, there are some very interesting points:
- I was formally an employee of a Canadian Incorporation for two years, I got my stubs and I believe as a business they kept records of everything.
- I kept myself indispensable for the business, there was a point in time that if a server went down, nobody could recover (not because they didn't have the access), it was because the infrastructure was growing so fast with a lot of dependencies and servers that it was really hard to know where to look at.
- I didn't lose sight of my goal. I was always there and eager to do the job.
I am not sure exactly what LMIA exception (it was called LMO at that time) applied at that time:
- Employee transfer
- Technology person
There was no formal interview, instead:
- a show-off of talents along the time with a small enterprise. I have seen that small businesses are more likely to hire a person with a lot of talents in a specific area rather than big companies. Also, you can sell yourself in a better way directly to the CEO of the company. However, do not forget, that if an LMO/LMIA was required, not every small company would be willing to afford it. Fortunately for me, I found someone who was really needing my talents and there was no need for an LMO/LMIA.
The application went through really easy, I think it was about a month.
I think that's it. Let the Canadian dream be...