Hello everyone. How are you all? I am back with another video. Today I am in a park that, right now, looks covered in snow.
Today’s temperature is -5, so I thought, "Let’s go out and shoot a video. The topic is really important: "How I got my first IT job in Canada"
and this is a great new thing for me, and I thought that it was my duty to share this with you.
You’ve been following my journey since the start. So we will talk about how I got the job, what the job is, and the salary.
I will share a range, and you’ll be able to calculate. As per the terms of the company, we cannot disclose it,
but I’ll try to give you a figure so that it can be as transparent as possible. We’ll start from the beginning.
Make sure to like and subscribe to the channel. So let’s move on and talk about my journey.
So I moved to Canada in 2019. Technically, I landed in December 2018, but January 2019 was my intake.
I worked at Tim Hortons from April 1, 2019, to September 30, 2020. And I was also studying during this course.
I earned $14 per hour. I‘ll share the yearly figure with you.
So if we take 14 dollars per hour full-time, it totals $28,000. Even though I worked part-time there because I was a student.
But I am giving you an overall view with respect to a full-time job. As per 28,000, I worked for a year and a half there.
It was a great experience. I learned so much and enjoyed my time there. Then I moved to Winnipeg, and that’s when things got a little tricky.
As soon as I moved to Winnipeg, I got a job in a call center as a customer service representative. I worked for a month, and in that month,
the manager realized that I have more knowledge than the work I am doing currently. I gave a lot of input.
I must tell you that it is very important. We will talk about all the points at the end, but let’s continue the journey.
I was promoted to supervisor within a month. The post was vacant as everyone had resigned, and then I got promoted to supervisor.
I started in October, and I was promoted in November. My salary in October was 11 dollars, whereas in Toronto it was 14 dollars.
My salary at that time was about 13.5 dollars, which almost totals 27,000 dollars, so let’s imagine I started on that salary only, full time.
And when I got promoted, my salary was $32,000 per year. Which is not too much. This is the gross income.
We get taxes deducted as well. I am being very transparent here, so you can get an idea. I've made some mistakes as well,
which I will share with you, but let’s move on.
I worked for almost one and a half years in the supervisory/team lead position for a salary of $32,000.
Then, our manager resigned, and out of 2-3 supervisors, I was selected to be the site lead. That is a core operation's role.
I have been working in this field since the start. Operations include management positions, operating sites, and leading teams to handle everything.
I hadn’t worked in IT yet. But yes, aside from operations, I used to do some basic IT troubleshooting, which is not that great.
I worked for a year and a half. I did not change jobs because of my PNP. I couldn’t do that, right?
So I worked there, applied for PNP, received it, and then applied for PR.
Then I became quite active on LinkedIn. I was learning a lot about cloud certifications. And then I got a job offer from them.
I’ll explain to you how, Let’s take a moment to talk about today’s sponsors: Neo Financial.
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As I said, I started getting certifications. I was studying networking, so I started with the cloud.
I found cloud computing to be a good opportunity, so I took the AWS certification.
I always used to update my progress about what I learned today. So, the IT lead of my company, Answer Net,
whose office is in the US, noticed it all. So he messaged me. I also got 3–4 other offers, but I’ll tell you why I chose this.
As he approached me, I showed my interest, and we talked about interviews. We did 2–3 technical interviews.
Everything went well, and I got the job. Now, let's talk about salary progression.
So the salary at my manager level was increased from $32,000 to $42,000 when I was promoted to the site lead role.
And when I was earning this amount of $42,000, I thought it was a very decent amount. And to be honest, it might be very low for you guys,
and it might be very high for some people as well. But everyone has their own journey, and I am sharing mine.
So I progressed from 28000 to 30000 to 32000 to 42000. As they approached me, I had no clue what salary to expect.
Everything was okay for me. I thought of it as a good position in core IT. What I do is
handle the directories in the cloud. I support the 3500 user base, and our company has 30+ locations.
And this is my technical role. Now that it was time for salary negotiation, I tried to negotiate a bit. And when they offered it to me, I was beyond shocked.
For me, it was a dream, as I had not expected this much. And for the offer, you can calculate it by adding 50% more to 42000.
So, technically, I was getting 42000, and my salary increased by 50–55%. And let me be very clear: if you are planning to get into IT,
you won’t get a big offer. Maybe you’ll start with 35–40K if you have some years of experience.
Because I had two years of experience with promotions, I had been promoted three times in the past two years, and I was really good at it.
I was understanding things, operating them, and commanding. And that’s what they noticed when they approached me. I was okay with it.
The company is the same as the one in Winnipeg, but now the office is located in the US, so my office is in Pennsylvania,
and I am working from home 100% of the time.
I wanted to share this update with you all. I'll also share what I did for this.
And if you want to know in detail how to get into IT and secure a job, let me know. Now I have experience with what one should do to get a good IT job.
So, if you have just passed 12th grade and have no experience, I can tell you that a good IT job can get you 50–70 thousand.
Many people will disagree. There are some scenarios where you can earn a lot more, and there are some scenarios where you can earn as little as $35–40k.
But what I think a decent salary range is 50 to 70000. And what did I do for that?
Let's talk about that. You have seen the full journey from beginning to end; now let’s talk about what I did.
What I did was update LinkedIn with my new skills. I connected with all the people who were on a good level at the companies.
LinkedIn alone has the power of getting you an amazing job. So I used to learn on LinkedIn and post about it the same day.
And people started engaging and learning with me. And obviously, when your post gets good engagement, it reaches many people, including recruiters.
And I got 3–4 job offers with that. I denied them because of the salary here.
And I had worked for this company for over two years. I had woken up on some levels, and I was very confident about a few things.
That's what they learn as well. And during my two years of work, I also paid attention to something: to take ownership of your task
wherever you are working, own your work. And if you don’t get it, ask your seniors about it. And I am a person who will ask 50 times,
but I got the first managers, who helped them a lot. And they supported my decision to go into IT.
I was just at the site lead level, handing out 15–20 people and manning the whole site. But. I wanted to move.
They supported me, which didn't stop me from progressing. They told them to train the other people, and they'd handle everything else.
Ownership is important, and it is also important to respect yourself. Don’t dance in the background.
Bring out your personality in every task. And that’s what I've seen, and this helped them a lot.
So I thought of updating you a little. And you want a detailed, step-by-step video in IT, and almost all the fields have strategies
that I became aware of years ago that apply everywhere. I recommend working on LinkedIn.
If you don’t have a profile, make one today. Post it on LinkedIn, whatever you learn. And start connecting with people;
you never know from whom you'll get an opportunity. I don't even think about an IT job. I just studied because I loved IT.
But I'm learning a lot at operations. When you are at a high level, like heading the site, I was very active with my clients.
I was becoming good at communicating. I was taking command. I was learning a lot. I wasn’t corny about the salary.
But obviously, IT has a good pay rate of 50%. And yeah, I haven't stopped learning. I didn't stop working after getting recruited.
I think in IT, you learn every day, and that's how you progress.
The pay is high, but so is your learning curve. You have to learn about every new technology.
This was the update. Ask anything in the comments. And share this video with friends.
Subscribe to the channel and like the video. I will be more than happy to answer your questions.
And that’s it. We will meet in the next video. Take care. Bye. See you in the next video.