A Newcomer's Framework for Requesting Informational Interviews in Canada
The reply lands at 4pm on a Wednesday: someone working in your field in Calgary has agreed to a twenty-minute call next week. You asked for advice, not a job, and that’s exactly why they said yes. Informational interviews newcomer canada strategy depends entirely on getting that distinction right from the first message.
Statistics Canada has found that 38.3% of recent immigrants who struggled to find work cited a lack of professional connections as the obstacle — this is the direct, low-cost answer to that specific number, and it’s worth having a repeatable framework for rather than winging it every time.
Step one: who to approach
Start with people one or two steps removed from your exact target, not the hiring manager for a role you want. Someone doing the job you’re aiming for, in the city you’re aiming for, is more useful than someone more senior but further from your day-to-day reality. Canadian professional associations for your occupation are a strong source of names — join even before you’re licensed, since many run member events and their own job boards. Alumni networks work both directions too: several Canadian universities have South African alumni chapters, and a number of SA universities have Canadian ones.
Step two: how to make the ask
On LinkedIn specifically, a personalised connection note is expected — a cold request with no context, or worse, an immediate ask, breaks the norm before the conversation even starts. Engage with a person’s posts first if you can, keep your own headline specific to your occupation and target city, and only then request a short call. Building 20 to 30 LinkedIn connections in your occupation and target city before you’ve even landed is a realistic, achievable goal from South Africa, and it means your first requests aren’t landing cold.
Step three: what to actually ask for
Twenty to thirty minutes is the norm, framed explicitly as a request for perspective, not a job. Good questions: what does a typical week actually look like in this role here, what surprised you moving into the Canadian version of this field, which professional bodies or events are worth my time, and who else should I be talking to. This is networking advice not jobs canada in its purest form — the moment you ask for a position, you’ve broken the format the other person agreed to.
Step four: what turns a contact off
Asking for a job, or anything that reads as fishing for one, is the single fastest way to burn the relationship. So is showing up unprepared, running long past the agreed time, or treating the call as a one-way information extraction with no thank-you afterward. A short note of appreciation, and letting them know later how the advice actually helped, is what keeps the door open for the next name they might pass your way.
The decision, simplified
If you’re asking someone to spend time explaining how something works, that’s a fit for this framework. If you’re asking them to get you hired, that’s a different, much bigger favour — save it for people who already know your work, and keep the informational interview exactly what it says it is.
More on building this network before you’ve even landed is covered elsewhere on our blog.