New to Canada

Canadian resume format in 60 seconds

A resume written for another country usually gets turned down here on format, before anyone reads the experience. The fixes are mechanical and take minutes. Here is the whole list, then scan the file to see what is left.

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What a Canadian resume leaves out, and what it keeps

step 1Take off the photo and the personal details. No photo, no date of birth, no marital status, no nationality, no religion. Canadian hiring is not supposed to weigh any of them, so a resume that volunteers them reads as one written for a different market.

step 2Put a Canadian number and a city at the top. Write the phone number as 416-555-0134. A city and province, such as Toronto, ON, is enough on its own. A full street address is not expected.

step 3Name the credential, the country and any assessment. Give the degree, the institution and where it is from. If you have had it assessed, put that on the same line, for example "B.Eng., University of Pune, India (WES: Canadian bachelor equivalency)".

step 4Two pages, one date format. Two pages is normal here. Pick one date format, such as Mar 2022 to Jun 2026, and use it everywhere.

step 5Name the currency on every amount. A figure from another country means little without its currency. A reader who has to guess at the size of a project assumes the smaller one.

What the AI rewrite does to a typical bullet

Handled a large portfolio of corporate clients

Managed 38 corporate accounts worth $4.2M a year in revenue and renewed 92% of them two years running

Every new account starts with 14 days of Pro, no card.

What the scan checks

The scan does not know which country you are applying in. It reads structure, wording and quantification, so it catches the half of this list that is easy to miss: the sections a resume parser cannot follow, the bullets with no numbers in them, the summary that says nothing. The personal details above are a five minute edit you make yourself.

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