Apr 12, 2022
Posted by: Martha
Commercial
As a Canadian Tire product tester, you will have the opportunity to provide feedback on a variety of products that are sold by the company. This feedback will help Canadian Tire to improve the quality of their products and ensure that their customers are satisfied. In order to become a Canadian Tire product tester, you must be a Canadian resident and 18 years of age or older. You will also need to sign up for an account on the Canadian Tire website. Once you have created an account, you will be able to access a list of products that are available for testing.
This campaign aims to highlight the best product categories in the same season as ‘Tested for Life in Canada.’ Only products with an rating of at least four stars are permitted to be displayed. Since 1958, the associate loyalty program known as Canadian Tire money has been affiliated with Canadian Tire. The company’s headquarters are in Toronto, and its shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Canadian Tire Global is a new division within the Canadian Tire Group. This Canadian specialty store chain now operates 65 Party City locations across the country for $174 million. Canadiantire.ca, which is also available online, is an option. Canadian Tire leads the list of Canada’s top general merchandise retailers.
There is no set process to become a Canadian Tire tester in 2021. However, some ways to become involved with testing products for the company include becoming a product reviewer or tester for an online retailer that specializes in Canadian Tire products, or by participating in customer surveys and providing feedback about products purchased from Canadian Tire. Additionally, customers can sign up for the Canadian Tire email list to receive notifications about product testing opportunities.
Are you interested in working in a company that values quality? Do you want to help make life better in Canada? If so, what can you offer? If you want to work for Canadian Tire, you should apply.
Canadian Tire carries a high level of quality products that have an average rating of 4+ stars from Canada’s largest manufacturer of tested products. In Canada, the only products that earn the Tested for Life badge are those that are the best.
A company like Canadian Tire stands out from the crowd because of the quality of their team. It is simple to work with them because they work long hours. Furthermore, they provide excellent work experiences as well as a solid work ethic.
If you’re looking for a company that cares about quality, Canadian Tire might be the one for you.
Credit: www.lowestrates.ca
There is no specific process to becoming a Canadian Tire tester for life. However, there are a few things that you can do to increase your chances of being selected. First, make sure you are a Canadian Tire customer and are registered with the company. Second, be active on social media and in the Canadian Tire community.
Share your love for the brand and your excitement for testing new products. Finally, be patient and keep your eye on the Canadian Tire website and social media channels for announcements about new testing opportunities.
It is critical to test products in order to ensure that they meet Canadian standards. Canadian Tire proudly displays a Tested for Life in Canada logo on products that have been tested and rated by a panel of experts. The Canadian Tire Customer Panel allows us to improve our communication with our customers, increase consumer confidence about the products we sell, create brand ambassadors, and improve accuracy in our messages.
Credit: YouTube
There is no definitive answer to this question as it could refer to any number of tests or evaluations that Canadian Tire may conduct on its products or services. However, some possible examples could include quality control tests to ensure that products meet customer expectations, or performance tests to see how well a particular item functions under real-world conditions.
Whatever the specific nature of the test, it is likely that Canadian Tire is constantly striving to improve the quality and value of its offerings.
Through the Canadian Tire Customer Panel, we can improve consumer confidence in our products and create more brand ambassadors, as well as improve our personalization of our message to our customers.
There are many reasons to work at Canadian Tire! The company offers great benefits and opportunities for career growth. The work environment is friendly and team-oriented, and you can feel good about working for a company that is committed to giving back to the community. You can also take advantage of the company’s many discounts on products and services.
Because Canadian Tire is so important to the fabric of our country, we proudly proclaim that it is. We celebrate the arrival of spring, as well as the arrival of fall in Canada. We enjoy spending time fixing cars, as well as keeping track of hockey games.
No one has any idea how to fix a car because they have no idea what goes wrong with it. Researchers at Jumpstart recently completed a study to better understand how the pandemic is affecting Canadian access to sport. According to 68% of job seekers, Canadian Tire provides positive interview experiences. It is common for candidates to have a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5 (for those with the highest difficulty rating).
Canadian Tire’s commitment to providing exceptional work-life opportunities for its employees is something it takes very seriously. To that end, the company provides the Retail Education Scholarship, which provides financial assistance to three students each year to attend college.
Through the Retail Education Scholarship program, aspiring retail leaders gain valuable retail industry experience and develop the necessary skills. By attending Canada’s largest retail conference, these students gain access to the most up-to-date industry trends while also learning from some of the country’s best retail executives.
Our thanks go out to Canadian Tire for your dedication to the future of retail. Our thoughts are with these students as they embark on their postsecondary education.
They sell white tennis shoes as part of their product line.
In order to become a Canadian Tire product tester, you must sign up on their website. Once you have registered, you will be able to apply to test products. If you are selected to test a product, you will be sent the product to use for a period of time. After you have used the product, you will be asked to fill out a survey about your experience.
If your account is not working properly, you may need to reset your password. The following is a link to the checkout page that you can use if you’re logging into Mobile Apps. These are the easiest steps to take in order to learn a little more about Red Flag Deals.com. The basic concepts of logging in. You can find information about the program at the U.
S. Bureau of Oceans and Fisheries in Waterloo. In 2017, Canadian Tire will expand its tested for life program, Testing for Life in Canada, to include 7,000 real-life products. Customers have access to credible resources that will assist them in selecting products that have been thoroughly tested and reviewed by Canadian residents for the jobs and pleasures of living in Canada.
There are many ways to become a product tester in Canada. One way is to sign up with a company that offer product testing services. These companies will provide you with a list of products that you can test and provide feedback on. Another way is to become a product tester for a specific company. Many companies will have a link on their website where you can sign up to become a product tester.
As you experiment with new products and decide whether they fit into your daily life, here are some of the best online product testing sites in Canada. Although sampling is not guaranteed, it is worthwhile if you are one of the lucky few chosen.
Companies benefit from reviewing programs because it allows them to gain a better understanding of how their products are perceived by customers. Companies offer new or popular products to review programs in exchange for feedback, and the programs then distribute them to their members. Members receive free products to try at home and are encouraged to review and comment on the products in exchange for posts on social media. Join Influenster if you want to try out new products and review them. XY Stuff collects product reviews for men for its website.
UserTesting enables you to test apps and websites for a fee. Focus groups are sometimes willing to pay you $100 or more for just an hour of your time. You will be selected for an in-person focus group, and it will take place at a time and location that is convenient for you. In general, discussions are centered around a specific topic or product. Photos can also be collaged, brainstorming sessions can be held, and team collaborations can be held.
You will be compensated at the conclusion of the focus group. When a company releases new products, it will send them to its followers to try.
As part of the exchange, they may request that you post about them and use specific hashtags. You can get a free trial of the most recent products by participating in these activities. If you have any suggestions, please let us know where we could get free products to test. Please comment in the comments section below if you’d like to know why.
However, the industry also has a number of scams on its hands. The products do not provide feedback or are not available for testing; however, some people are compensated to review and survey products. It is their responsibility to put in the effort to earn money. Other people, on the other hand, are paid to conduct product tests, but they are not given the opportunity to provide honest feedback. They are given only a set of scripts that they must follow.
How do I check whether a job I am applying for is legit? It’s best to conduct a thorough search of the company you’re applying to. You can see if their website has a good reputation by visiting it. Check out their reviews. Which type of customer service is best to use? Finally, you should check to see if they have any product testing certifications. If you see these things, you can be certain that they are skilled and experienced.
In the last 7 years, I've been helping entrepreneurs who plan to launch their own businesses & start ups.
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Industry: Retail and ecommerce
Company Size: Enterprise
Role: Designer
Customer Type: B2C
Canadian Tire is a nearly $15 billion dollar Canadian retail company founded in 1922.
Today, the company sells a wide range of automotive, hardware, sports, leisure, and home products.
Adopted a customer-centric focus throughout the organization
Saved product development resources
Eliminated guesswork in product development
When Steve McGuire joined Canadian Tire as Associate Manager of Digital Usability and Optimization, the company already knew the value of customer perspective. The team was conducting research with UserTesting on an occasional basis with special projects, such as a site redesign.
McGuire knew that getting user feedback early in product development could significantly decrease the risk that comes with launching an update or a new feature. He wanted to start making UX research a standard part of the development process so that every new design or design change was validated before it launched. This would ensure a better experience for customers.
However, despite the size of the company, he didn’t have an internal UX research team. He had limited bandwidth to set up and review user tests but he knew there was a growing interest in the practice of UX across the organization. He needed a way to conduct continuous user testing without an internal UX Research and Strategy department at his disposal.
The movement toward creating customer-first experiences in the company was gaining momentum. As McGuire said, “The organization made a commitment to do more testing across a wide range of digital products and offerings.” McGuire’s colleagues supported the idea of evidence-based design as a way to mitigate risk and save time and resources on development.
He started by establishing what he named “The User Testing Crew”—a team of volunteers and UX advocates from different areas of the business, including Design, Content Creation, IT, and Strategy. They weren’t professional researchers, but team members who had a desire to come together and better understand customer perceptions of the digital products offered by Canadian Tire.
The objective was for group members to learn more about user experience, user testing, and evidence-based design. The desired outcome was to give them a greater understanding of how to implement customer insights to build exceptional digital products.
The team committed to meeting twice a week. Current design projects are tabled and user tests get written, reviewed and analyzed. A weekly report is generated from the Crew with recommendations for design changes based on the feedback from user tests.
They quickly learned how fast and easy it was to set up studies within the UserTesting platform. Each week, the group gathers to determine the criteria of a test requested for a digital product. Then, three team members will watch three videos each—taking notes along the way and harvesting relevant video clips. They meet later in the week to analyze the video reviews and look for patterns in user behavior from the test results. They use whiteboards to organize their findings and gain consensus among the group.
One person is designated to author the report. A report template was created so that key findings and recommendations are understood and easily consumed by stakeholders and executives.
While learning about the different aspects of user testing, team members are able to contribute to the design of products by providing evidence-based feedback to their project teams directly. Sharing the workload means that the team is self-managing with little oversight required and new members to the team can be integrated easily. This weekly commitment to user testing brings two benefits to the Canadian Tire team.
First, the research findings can quickly be implemented into the product to create a better user experience. Being able to validate and improve upon design ideas in prototyping or product enhancement phase allows the team to move fast and eliminate guesswork. “When you can validate your product with UserTesting, you’re confident to move forward with design recommendations because they are evidence-based,” stated McGuire.
Second, the excitement around improving the products and providing an optimized user experience spreads throughout the organization. Members of the team take their learnings from the research back to their own departments to share with their colleagues. Now, McGuire gets research ideas and requests from all across the company. “There’s a movement here towards implementing customer-first experiences and improving usability and UX in general,” said McGuire.
The organization now tests everything from their live products to their early-stage prototypes, and they even use UserTesting to record users speaking their thoughts aloud as they perform card sorting activities and surveys. Getting user feedback early and often throughout development has helped the team build effective, engaging products while saving time and resources on development.
McGuire said, “We have to take risks as product designers, but sometimes it doesn’t make sense to take on all the risk.
That’s essentially what designers do and stakeholders do if they don’t make efforts to validate their concepts and their ideas. If you can validate your ideas with users early and often, then you can minimize the amount of risk you have to take. It’s really just about coming together as an organization so we can better understand the needs and expectations of our customers.”
Steve McGuire
Manager of Digital Product Design & Research
"When you can validate your product with UserTesting, you’re confident to move forward with design recommendations because they are evidence-based."
Dmitry Shpakovsky is a Senior Software Engineer in Test at SurveyMonkey with 10 years of experience in the profession. Three years ago, he moved to Canada, where he continues to successfully develop in his specialty. Dmitry told DOU in detail about how difficult it is for a tester to relocate, how to speed up this process, what competencies you need to have in order to interest companies, and how to pass their interviews.
We also talked about why Ukrainian specialists are valued in Canada, why certification is needed, and whether testing has a future.
I was born in Kyiv. He studied at the gymnasium with an English-speaking bias, after which he entered the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute at the Faculty of Electronics. At some point, I concluded for myself that electronics is not very developed in Ukraine, so it will not be easy to find a job. So from the 4th year I went to the second higher degree in the specialty "Management and Marketing". I was drawn towards economic activity, it seemed that in this direction there were more interesting tasks, more prospects.
I can’t say that at the university they gave me specific subject knowledge, which later came in handy. My subjective opinion is that the university teaches you approaches, techniques and worldview: where to find information, how to interact with people, how to adapt some solutions to other tasks, and so on.
The only useful thing was a quality control course in management and marketing, the rest is not very applicable in practice.
My first jobs were related to digital marketing. I came to SEO in 2007, then worked in logistics for 1.5–2 years, realized that I was not so interested in it, and returned to search engine optimization of sites again. Promoted to SEO manager, then went to project coordinators.
My task was to coordinate a team of testers and a team of developers: tasks come from stakeholders, they need to be broken down into small subtasks, sent to developers. They make them, the testers check them, and I check after the testers.
That is, when I was a manager of search engine optimization and web analytics of sites, testing was part of my duties, because it was necessary to check that the tasks that I set were completed as required.
During this period, I realized that some regression checks take a lot of time and, more importantly, a large part of the human resource.
It's boring to test the same thing over and over again with your hands. Therefore, I started digging towards automation, writing some banal login / logout scripts, simple authorization tests, I was really interested in it. And he purposefully began to delve into it. I read something myself, then I checked what I read in practice. Later took JavaScript courses to understand the basics of the basics. My next position was QA Automation Engineer.
So I started working on automation in 2012. Although, in fact, I had to do the work of a tester before, so in total I already have 10 years of experience in this direction.
I worked as an automation tester in Ukraine for about 7 years. First, I received an interesting offer from a French company. It attracted me by the fact that the stakeholders are French, who speak fluent French and English, and the entire document flow was also in English. The company had its own search engine, its own social network, which they developed.
That is, very interesting challenges arose in front of me. And then he moved to the position of an automator in one of the largest outsourcing companies in Ukraine.
At that time, I had been thinking about moving for a long time, I wanted to try myself in foreign markets, work in a live environment, live in another country in order to gain experience and compare it with what I already have. At the same time, it should be a state — a mix of capitalism and socialism. For example, in the same States, it’s great with making money, but if, God forbid, something serious happens, in particular with health, then it completely falls on your shoulders and you end up with fabulous money. And I planned to move to a country where infrastructure things (education, medicine, etc.) are provided by the state.
I looked at Cyprus, Malta, Greece, Poland... Spain was also on the list: then the largest outsourcing players (EPAM, Ciklum, Luxoft) were just opening offices in Malaga. I was also interested in Canada.
How much are testers in demand abroad? I did not notice any differences by country, companies operate on an outsourcing model everywhere, having an end customer, most likely in Germany, Switzerland or the States. Of the fundamental differences, there were pros and cons in terms of taxes and what the state gives in return for them. Also important for me was the climate and preferably proximity to the ocean or the sea.
I can say that when I decided to move, I was driven not so much by monetary interest, but by the opportunity to get an examination of everyday life and interaction with people. And in terms of earnings, it seems to me that, taking into account taxes and the cost of living in Ukraine, it can be more profitable to live than with a higher salary abroad. But, unfortunately, there is a downside: poor infrastructure, lack of good guarantees from the state, constantly changing environment - you simply cannot calculate what the authorities will do in a few months.
Therefore, I wanted to find a more stable option with more understandable rules of the game.
In 2015, I passed the ISTQB certification to get official confirmation that I am serious about developing in testing. Having a permanent job, I periodically went to interviews to see what the companies are doing, what is new and interesting on the market now. I find the “see the world and show yourself” approach useful in order not to lose your knack.
So I got an interview with a niche company that is not very well known on the Ukrainian market — RevJet. This is a large marketing and advertising platform that allows companies to customize their advertising on the Internet much more efficiently, that is, it increases the conversion for customers many times over.
In principle, RevJet is focused on the Forbes top 100 companies, but now, as far as I know, they will change the strategy. Their headquarters is in California, and offices at that time were located in Ukraine, the Baltic states and Canada.
I was interested in the fact that, in addition to a competitive salary and interesting projects, they offered relocation to Canada. I liked this option, as the country is close to the USA, so it has more serious players, more new opportunities.
Also, I then had an offer to move to a lead position in the company where I worked, and an offer for a senior position in a smaller company operating in the Netherlands, with frequent business trips there. But in the end, I settled on a long-playing option. And he moved to RevJet to the position of Senior QA Automation Engineer.
View from the RevJet office in Kyiv
I established basic connections, delved deeper into responsibilities, took on several applications, and then, in parallel with work, began to process documents for relocation. The company, for its part, helped a lot, they had presentations on how to prepare documents, a separate person who dealt with this particular issue.
That is, I did not have to start everything from scratch.
The first year I delved more into all matters, and then I began to actively push the cart with documents, which took another year with a tail. How is everything going? If you go on a work permit - a work permit, then it is done faster (according to my observations, 3-6 months) and gives the right to work for a company. But if you quit or get fired, you need to urgently look for another job.
I chose another option - to go through the Express Entry program, which takes longer (from 6-9 months), but immediately gives a residence permit. For it, you need to pass a medical examination, as well as IELTS certification in English. Naturally, the more points you score in English, the better. So the first thing to do is to prepare.
You also need to translate all your diplomas, notarize them, scan them and send them to WES (World Education Services). This organization accepts a package of documents, then sends a request to the university: “Please confirm that this person has received a diploma from you” - and waits for a response.
If everything is fine, then they send you a confirmation that everything is OK, and write to Canada. For example: "This person really has two master's degrees", as it was in my case.
When you submit the entire package of documents, your indicators - age, IELTS, education, etc. - are converted into a total score and put on the general list by rating. Whoever has a higher rating is taken away from this list once a month and offered to move. Waiting to be chosen can take years. Of course, it all depends on how old you are, how well you passed the test in English, whether you have a PhD, which also adds points. But even with all this, you are still in a large pack of people who have a similar rating.
In the pool itself, you don't see the names of specialists, but you see their number and how many were selected last month and the month before last, that is, the average statistics. For example, in 2019, more than 300 thousand applications were sent to the system via Express Entry, and 85,300 were approved (more detailed information and even specific categories of professions can be found here).
To stand out from this list, there are two possibilities. The first is to receive an official offer from a company located in Canada and which is listed on the Canadian list of companies wishing to hire overseas employees (LMIA). It is not so easy for the organization itself. Because it must register with government agencies as a company that wants to hire specialists from abroad, and pay for it - a fixed amount for each vacancy.
In addition, put this vacancy first on the all-Canadian labor exchange, get confirmation “well, we cannot find a specialist here” and only then, on all these grounds, calmly call people from abroad.
The second opportunity is to receive a nomination from a province. All of Canada is a union of provinces. One of them may need some specialists: truckers, cooks, IT specialists... How is this done by a person who wants to move? You need to somehow establish a connection with the province.
For example, look at their website (and each province has its own website) for a list of professions that are required, and if you have experience in one of the vacancies, send a letter expressing your desire to participate in the program (expression of interest).
And after that, the province can write an official letter to the Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, saying that we need such and such specialists, we know that there is this person with suitable qualifications, and we would like to invite him to work.
I took the second path. Such a nomination gives a large number of points, so you immediately find yourself at the top of the list. 90% chance that you will be picked up the next month. And if not, then 99%, which will be taken away in a month.
This is also a long process: you send your packages of documents to the province so that they confirm all this and send the nomination. If they make a mistake in your name, specialty or somewhere else, you write a letter again, wait until they react, redo the nomination and send it again. That is, each submission pulls a chain of actions, so it may take time. But this is not a dead castle from which you cannot escape. If you constantly ping, then the process moves.
When a nomination arrives, you attach it to a package of documents, scan it, send it online to a common system that recalculates points.
So it's better to look for an option to get a nomination from a province or an official offer from a company so as not to hang on the list for years. They took me right the next month after I got into the pool.
View of Toronto from above
If we talk about who is easier to move: a developer or a tester, then, according to my observations, of course, the developer. Although now the line between automators-testers and developers is somewhat blurred, because in fact automators also write code that checks the work of the rest of the code. Therefore, in the West they are regarded as the same developers. And what is called QA Automation Engineer in Ukraine, in America, Canada is called Software Development Engineer in Test, emphasizing that this is the same developer, only in the direction of testing.
Yes, many companies take developers first, but the trend is changing. When I moved three years ago, it was harder, and now more and more testers are relocating. This is especially evident in times of crisis and pandemic. True, Manual QA is still a little more difficult to move than Automation.
But here, again, it is worth considering that companies usually need more developers and fewer testers, including automators, so, of course, developers will still be taken by percentage.
In general, there is always a need for good qualified specialists, especially in large product companies. Therefore, they will try to take as much as the recruitment processes will allow them to take. And demand is constantly growing.
True, it should also be taken into account that companies want to take on senior level people so that the specialist is already with expertise, prepared and can quickly integrate into the project, take responsibility, solve problems so that it does not take long to prepare, teach, answer for a long time to his questions.
That is, they are looking for the most effective guys.
Is there a difference in demand for testers abroad and in Ukraine? I would not say. The only thing is that in the West they are trying to direct testing more towards automation and even transfer Manual QA to automation. No one is saying that manual testing will disappear somewhere or that it will no longer be necessary. No, it will always be.
There will always be some more complex scripts that simply do not make sense to automate, because it is long, expensive, and so on. But at the same time, they understand that the more regression is covered by automation, the greater the savings. Also, people will burn out less from constant repetitive monotonous work and they will have more time to test some complex and interesting cases.
In Ukraine, it seems to me, Manual QA expertise is still strong. Many companies say: “We don’t need automation yet, we have four people sitting, testing with their hands, they can handle it.
” Although, as we can see, all the experience from the States is gradually flowing further to Europe, Ukraine. Probably to Ukraine even faster than to the rest of Europe. I think that the situation will develop approximately in such a way that the result will be a percentage of about 60% automation and 40% manual testing.
In general, those of our specialists who travel to Canada are in great demand here. First, they often have good English. Naturally, imperfect, with an accent, but normally understood English.
Second, good technical expertise. And, thirdly, and most importantly, excellent basic worldview concepts on development approaches, how to check bugs, what criticality, what priorities, that is, technical thinking. This is exactly what universities give at their core. Specialists gain deep knowledge with experience in the Ukrainian market, but they get the core of critical thinking at a university. And this helps to work successfully for Western companies.
What kind of experience do you need to have to be enough to move? As I have already said, most likely, there should be a Senior Level, then the person will be of interest to companies.
It is believed that, starting from this grade, a specialist is a completely autonomous fighter. At least in Ukraine.
In addition, in Ukraine everyone is used to the fact that there is Junior, Middle, Senior, and then Lead. In the States and Canada it's a little different: they have Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 and then Senior. And at the Senior grade, they already want leadership skills, that is, that the specialist has some experience in managing a team. I would say this: the Canadian or American Senior level is like Lead in Ukraine.
Office of one of the largest Electronic Arts game development companies in Halifax, Canada
I moved to Canada in September 2017. Upon arrival, I received a residence permit for five years, and soon I will be able to apply for citizenship. According to the current rules, in order to qualify for it, a person must stay in the country for at least three years. Those days when you fly out of the country on vacation or to visit family, friends in Ukraine, of course, are deducted.
Therefore, you need to count all your departures and arrivals and minus the total. They also want three tax returns as evidence that you worked in the country for three years.
In addition, a person must pass exams in English and Canadian History. If you have IELTS, present it even if it has expired. It is believed that if you were able to pass it before moving, then in Canada, according to sound logic, your knowledge of English has definitely not worsened, but rather, on the contrary, has improved significantly. If there is no such certificate, you need to take courses and pass an exam for a certain score. Plus an exam on knowledge of the history of Canada. There is a manual for this, in my opinion, at 80–90 pages to prepare for and pass tests. If everything is fine on all counts, then you go through the process of obtaining citizenship.
As for adaptation, issues that needed to be resolved upon arrival, I was lucky: the company had already opened an office in Canada, many Ukrainian guys from those who interviewed me, with whom I worked closely and was friends, managed to move at that time.
Therefore, they helped me a lot: everyone tried to support, ride around the neighborhood, show cool places, advise in which part of the city it is better to rent housing, and in which not. It was a warm welcome. Therefore, although the adaptation process was not super easy, it was greatly facilitated by all-round friendly support.
RevJet is a huge platform with many modules. Therefore, we had a distribution: each automator was responsible for a certain number of modules, their automation, maintaining the quality level and expanding coverage with autotests.
In Ukraine, I held the position of Senior QA Automation Engineer, that is, I had a set of these modules, I also did full manual testing, wrote test cases, automation, added a test framework where extensions were needed, communicated with other automators. Plus, we continued to interview people, because the growth was active, we hired both Manual QA and Automation QA.
Then after 2–2.5 years already in Canada, I became a QA Automation Engineering Lead and was responsible for the entire automation team, for continuing the development of the test framework, for eliminating problems that the guys had, for global process improvement, increasing efficiency, and also performed duties as an automator.
That is, I still had those sections of the site for which I was responsible initially, I continued to commit the code, write automation and perform Team Leadership tasks.
I also didn’t have to adapt in terms of work: everything was within the same team and one company. Yes, with the move, I began to work in a different time zone, but all processes and all projects remained the same.
In total, I worked at RevJet for more than three and a half years. Then I started going through various interviews again. With a residence permit (Permanent Residency) you can look for a job in a free mode, stay in the country is in no way tied to an employer. But the fact that you don’t have an infinite amount of money and they constantly go to life is very stimulating to find a new job as soon as possible.
In Ukraine, interviews are usually less about life, more about some technical nuances: "Here's a ready-made problem, solve it." Not so in Canada.
In principle, there can be two types of interview. The first one is more simple. First, screening from a recruiter, then with a person for about an hour, 1-3 team representatives talk about life, check their worldview, language, general approaches to solving problems, developing software, and engineering practices.
The second type is more multistage, it is better to talk about it in more detail. Everything, as in the first case, begins with a screening from a recruiter. This is a general call, often on a mobile phone, to talk about life, goals, what you want, your skills and past experience. The recruiter, in turn, talks about the company. You discuss the approximate level of salary and decide whether to continue communication. Sometimes the recruiter still discusses something with the team, clarifies some requirements for the vacancy itself, if the candidate’s competencies are suitable, but not 100%. For example, he should ask if the team wants testing exactly in the direction voiced by the specialist.
After that, in some companies, such an interview stage as homework with a technical project is possible. It is usually postulated that it should take, for example, five hours. But most often, people who watch it later understand that in a good way there are 15 hours of work here, so that everything is beautiful, looks complete, or at least working.
Plus it is necessary to prepare the correct presentation. Such homework is given in order to cut off people who are not very motivated, or those who are motivated, but wrote in the resume not what they really know how to do. That is, technical interviewers are not overloaded in this way: they first look at the completed task, and then decide whether they want to continue to communicate with this person.
Many speak out against such a stage. I tend to think that a test task is worth doing if a really interesting task came across and you would do it even just for yourself to practice. Otherwise, you can invite interviewers to look at your GitHub and have an hour-long coding session.
The next stage will be an interview, which can last four hours. It often consists of five sessions of 45 minutes with different interviewers. Usually this is someone from the team you are talking to, or from this domain unit, then the team manager, as well as representatives of the Customer relations, Product directions, and someone from the Directors who is generally responsible for the entire direction.
Each of these specialists can give a task to be solved on the board or just talk about life. But in any case, one of them, most likely a Senior specialist from a technical domain, will always test the candidate's coding skills. That is, there can be very different questions.
The procedure usually consists of two sessions, then a 10-15 minute break and three more sessions. But a person will always be asked between sessions if everything is fine, maybe bring some water or you need to take a breath for 5 minutes. That is, the interviewers themselves regulate this, first introduce themselves, and then offer a short break.
But, according to my observations, most often the candidate refuses to take a break: if you have already entered this stream, then you want to quickly talk to everyone, solve problems and purposefully complete the process.
Four hours of interview with active conversations is not easy. But I understand why this form was chosen. This is the responsibility sharing approach. That is, they want the maximum number of people who will interact with a specialist to look at him, at approaches, and figure out whether it will be comfortable to work with him. At the same time, a person will also see who they will have to work with, form an opinion about the employees, and understand whether it will be interesting for him to work for the company.
Each of the interviewers then writes their feedback, then they get together and decide whether to make an offer to the specialist. That is, it’s not like one person wants to see you in this company and says: “We must hire him” - and you are accepted.
There is a collective decision. And it allows you to significantly increase the chances that everything will be fine. Because it is unlikely that five interviewers at once made a mistake in assessing a person.
Then the specialist will either receive an offer, or he will be told that at the moment the company wants to look at another candidate, or they will refuse at all. In the first case, the person is already talking to HR about compensation and everything else.
Engineering building at the University of Waterloo (one of Canada's top technical universities)
It should also be said that in the Canadian IT market everything does not work as fast as in Ukraine. In Ukraine, you can change jobs in 1-2 weeks - here you have three offers, you sit and choose. In Canada, things are much slower. I would say this: three months, you have two offers, you sit and choose. Here, all processes are not so fast, recruiters work more relaxed.
For example, the first stage of the interview passed, and the next one was scheduled in two to three weeks. But in principle, if you have a head on your shoulders, you have hands, then you will not sit without work.
After RevJet, I had several multi-stage interviews with terms of reference. During one of the interviews, I talked so much that after it I almost completely lost my voice and I wheezed for the next three days.
In just three months, I received three offers. But one company quickly fell off, they were pressed for time, and they chose another candidate, since I needed more time to analyze all the proposals.
As a result, the choice was not super difficult. It is difficult for non-public companies to compete with public ones. Smaller organizations and startups are trying to lure employees simply with a high base salary. And large public companies have a lower basic salary, but they have annual bonuses, a higher level of insurance, shareholdings, so they are much higher than the market for startups that do not have all these processes and bonus systems set up.
They may offer shares, but those are worth nothing until the company goes public.
So, I had a choice between a small company and a large international one. It is logical that I chose the second one. And for 1.5 years now I have been working at SurveyMonkey, which deals with surveys. They have a whole range of applications that help collect feedback, comments, conduct various surveys, process grants, and more. For example, if you want to submit a tender, you can use one of SurveyMonkey's products to make it easier for people to apply and for you to process their bids.
I work as a Senior Software Engineer in Test in the integrations team, I am responsible for test frameworks and automation of testing of all external integrations with partner companies, for API endpoints through which you can get some information and through which our integrations work with other companies . The main work falls on new features, fixing some edge cases, expanding the current functionality and finalizing the existing one.
I like SurveyMonkey more than RevJet, because here, plus or minus, strategies for motivating staff have been worked out. Let's say that almost all companies in Canada give 15 days off a year, which is much less than we are used to in Ukraine, and does not add joy.
But public companies can offer 20 days a year. They also have various initiatives for additional motivation. For example, due to covid and a difficult psychological situation (people are now very burnt out due to quarantine), they can still give 5, 10, 15, 20 days off, just for people to try to recover and rest. Now, due to the pandemic, all employees of our company are recommended to work remotely until the summer of 2021.
SurveyMonkey office. Image Source: Ottawa Business Journal
In Canada everything is basically more human and relaxed. People don’t overtime as hard as in Ukraine, but devote time to their families and their hobbies.
Therefore, many at 5–6 pm close their laptop and go home.
You could even say that recycling is not very welcome. Of course, being asked to work overtime is one thing. But this rarely happens, very rarely. And if you overtime on your own initiative, it is regarded as follows: perhaps you do not work so efficiently during the working day, you cannot get ready and therefore you have to stay up late?
Although there is a nuance: if, in addition to your main duties, you take on something else or you want to get some kind of expertise in another direction and therefore you recycle, then okay. So you spend your personal time to improve.
Even in Ukraine, vacancies often prescribe stress resistance, productivity under tough loads... In Canada, companies, on the contrary, indicate a good work-life balance as the reason why it is worth working for them. This is emphasized: "We are trying to get people to recover, we are not squeezing the juice out of them." And this approach makes sense.
Because often specialists who overtime a lot, as a result, burn out much faster and their productivity is significantly reduced. And work-life balance helps you recover better and work evenly.
The career development options for a tester in Canada are the same as in Ukraine - you can choose a technical branch or a managerial branch. In the first case, after Senior you become Staff. At a Senior position, a person is responsible, roughly speaking, for expertise in his team, and at Staff, for expertise in the entire company in some specific domain zones, knowledge. Other teams come to him for advice, because Staff can help, improve something.
After that comes Principal Engineer - a specialist with 15 years of experience, he reports not to Engineering Managers, but directly to CTO or one of the directors. Basically, Principal Engineers are engaged in long-term development strategies, architecture and mentoring of other engineers.
The second development option is to become a manager.
Then your path will look like this: Engineering Manager, Senior Engineering Manager, Engineering Director, Senior Engineering Director, Vice President of Engineering and then CTO.
In Ukraine, according to my observations, there is practically no clearly defined hierarchy in terms of levels, specific positions and requirements for them (everything often rests only on the number of years of experience). In Canada, large public companies have tables describing the requirements for each level.
Plus in Ukraine, large outsourcing companies have technical committees that are responsible for increasing. Let's say if you want to get promoted from Junior to Middle, then your Engineering Manager can do it, but if you want Senior and higher, then you have to go through a committee from a group of engineers who will evaluate your skills and draw conclusions about whether you have grown to this level.
In Canada, this works in a similar way for large companies. But it may be that it is your Engineering Director who will write the request and reason why you should be promoted.
And this will be considered by the board of directors, in addition to other issues that they need to resolve. I didn’t see a technical committee as such, because usually in the request there are at least a few references to people with whom you worked, whom you helped solve some problems and who want to confirm your level and support a promotion.
Does certification affect the increase? In a sense, yes. For example, I myself passed the certification and I can say that it is appreciated both in Ukraine and abroad. It shows that you are not just a master of all things and know a little something everywhere, but an accomplished specialist who has seriously chosen a direction for himself and continues to improve in it.
In Ukraine, certification often brings salary increases. In the States and Canada, it may be listed as a requirement for a job, but in most cases, certification simply gives extra points and sets the specialist apart from the rest of the candidates.
This can also affect the salary, as in Ukraine, but then a person needs to receive certification within the company.
When setting goals for the year, the specialist says: "I would like to get certified." And if he does this successfully, then at the end of the year, when the salary is being reviewed, he already has at least one serious goal that he set and achieved, and this is a reason to increase his salary.
Are Ukrainian specialists valued in Canada? Yes, here they often occupy senior positions, most of the responsibility of the team rests on them, they are respected for the “said and done” approach. Our specialists, of course, differ from Canadian colleagues. For example, they worry more, they have more active involvement, but at the same time, the level of burnout is higher.
Therefore, it is necessary to carefully control that such employees rest, recover, otherwise they begin to get upset, mope, which reduces the level of productivity. Canadians, on the other hand, are more measured, they take everything not so close to their hearts. I won’t say that they are less responsible, they just can’t dive into some problems so deeply, and therefore they burn out less.
I had experience of mentoring specialists in Ukraine. Now I also periodically help the guys to switch to automation or improve their skills in it. Usually there are people in the testing department who are mainly engaged in manual testing, but want to move into automation. After all, this leads to an increase in wages and qualifications.
And it's good when there is someone in the team who has the ability and desire to pull these guys up or at least pick up literature for them, explain what you should pay attention to, how to improve your skills. And after they process the materials, discuss them and analyze them in practice. This is rather not training, but a lively dialogue with concrete examples from life, with setting goals, help in how, where to achieve them ... That is, such a development of people.
In Canada at Senior Level, mentoring is part of your job. That is, if your team has specialists who are lower in level and want to develop in a technical direction, then part of your duties is to mentor them.
In Ukraine, I had to do this outside of working hours. For some reason, in our country there is an opinion that growth and improvement is your personal matter and you need to allocate personal time for this. In Canada, everything is different: a certain percentage of the working day can be allocated for mentoring and development, for a mentor it is about 10%.
Comparing my experience of mentoring in Ukraine and Canada, I will also say about the difference in reporting and perception of criticism. In Ukrainian mentoring or code review, you can say: “This is done very badly, so redo it, because it doesn’t suit at all.” In Canada, you must be more courteous, polite, and follow the rules of good manners. It is considered unacceptable to say that someone's work is done badly. Therefore, in such cases, turns are used like: “This is good, but it would be possible to improve this and do it like this. Then it would be absolutely wonderful.”
If you say in Canada: "That's shit", you can seriously offend a person, which can lead to serious consequences.
A specialist can go to the HR department, and then you will have a conversation on how to improve soft skills and not put pressure on your employees. And if you seriously offend someone, you can be fired.
It is also worth considering here that different cultures are mixed in Canada. And this means that everyone has some differences. And such politeness, courtesy is a universal approach to anyone. Then, in the process of communication, you can study a little deeper the characteristics of a particular person and adapt your approach depending on the specifics of his nationality and personality.
Now I am finishing writing a book - a practical guide to the TestCafe test framework ( at the time of the publication of the article, the book was already out on Amazon - rev. ). It is intended for people who have already tried something in automation and JavaScript. There are about 160 pages in it, where the main methods of how to use this framework are considered, interesting nuances are described and a small set of tests is built that test the finished website so that you can directly copy the code, try to run it and make sure that everything works.
That is, this is a manual for those who do not want to spend a lot of time rereading tons of documentation. You can simply open a book where everything is already collected, structured, read it and get down to business.
Plus, I have a blog where I periodically share my notes about testing and technologies.
Today you may come across the opinion that testers are no longer needed, so QA are moving to developers. Yes, I have seen this approach in several Canadian companies. They believe that developers should test everything themselves, but they have the resources for this - a significantly larger development staff. At the same time, it’s hard for me to say how effectively they maintain quality.
In general, I do not agree with this opinion. I'll explain why. Testing is ideologically done in order to take the load off the developer. Of course, your developers can write code and then test it, but it will take many times longer, so all new features, additions, extensions will be released to production much more slowly.
If that suits you, no problem. Your developers can do everything, even without Project Managers they can deal with task setting, distribution and everything else.
However, in most cases, companies want to optimize this process, release more features faster, so testers come to the rescue, who relieve the load and are responsible for reducing quality risks. The process is faster, the features are more stable.
It should also be taken into account that there will always be such a thing as a mindset, mindset. Developers are usually more focused on doing things. Testers - to break something or check that it can withstand certain loads, scenarios. Therefore, it is difficult or even impossible at some level to switch from one type of thinking to another. It seems to me that the profession of a tester will definitely never go anywhere, it makes sense and perspective, because it makes development more efficient and faster.
As far as comparing Canada and Ukraine, I think in principle testing develops in the same way, because all the main trends come from the States.
Canada is close to the States geographically, and Ukraine is ideologically close. Many companies open offices in Ukraine due to the good level of developers and testers. Therefore, the directions of development of testing are similar.
The only thing I would emphasize is that expertise is a little stronger in Ukraine, because there are more conferences, events, meetups, there are many testing and development communities. And this is a good competitive advantage. In Canada, this is still in the process of development, so there are not enough such events. Although now with online access this is a small problem. You can always connect to some webinar and listen to a fresh direction for the development of Selenium, for example.
I continue to grow, improve in the technical direction, management is not particularly interesting to me. Naturally, I carry out leadership tasks, because without this I can’t even get into the technical branch. But I approach it more as helping people, optimizing their processes, than as an HR function, motivation, discussing salaries.
..
So I plan to continue developing in test automation, building frameworks, expanding the current functionality, open source activity. In principle, and now I am actively involved in Selenium, Protractor, WebdriverIO, TestCafe, Cucumber - the main repositories of JavaScript test frameworks. Plus, I would love to speak at some conferences, but so far everything has slowed down a bit due to covid.
Do I want to stay in Canada? Yes, I don’t plan to change anything in this either. I continue to see perspectives here.
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Topics: QA, Canada, relocation, testing
When choosing a profession, students are guided by several points - their own hobbies, the prospects and relevance of the specialty, wages. Education in Canada adds another factor to this list - the opportunity to stay in the country and get the opportunity to immigrate extraordinary.
All these requirements are met by the specialty Registered Nurses, which has been a leader in the list of scarce professions for many years. Certified nurses are so in demand that the corresponding diploma guarantees almost one hundred percent employment, and not only in Canada.
Data from the Canadian Nursing Association indicates that over 100,000 nurses were missing from the healthcare market in 2012. Universities and colleges did not train enough staff, relying on immigrants and foreign students.
Over time, the situation only worsened as active nurses retired and there was no one to replace them. Figures for Vancouver show a staff outflow of up to 1,000 nurses per year against a background of 650-750 young professionals graduating. The annual shortage was already up to 250 qualified nurses per year.
Amid the economic crisis, the situation temporarily improved as Canadian nurses of retirement age put off their well-deserved rest and continued to work.
But as soon as the economies of Canada and other countries stabilized, a new massive exodus of medical personnel began.
In Canadian healthcare, there are 4 specialized areas of work for nurses:
Those who have chosen research activities or want to work in a narrow medical specialty will need to additionally obtain a master's or doctoral degree. When it comes to the Registered Nurse Associates degree, this is an American term that emphasizes an intermediate professional level: higher than LPN with a post-college diploma, but lower in level than RN with BScN. 
The level of income in any of the cases is not absolute and depends on many things - on the length of service, the chosen place of work, the province of Canada.
Registered Nurse is the direction most in demand among foreign students.
There are two ways to achieve the goal:
Medical departments of colleges and universities are officially called medical schools. Entry requirements are different everywhere, but there are usually no mandatory entrance tests.
Applicants only need to present a certificate of secondary education and confirm the knowledge of mathematics at the level of 11th grade of a Canadian school and at the level of 12th grade of such subjects as:
Canada has adopted the practice of loans, which can be taken at the end of school. For future doctors, these are "thirty" in chemistry, biology and foreign. You should not be afraid, since the "thirties" are equivalent to the results of Russian secondary education, and when entering college, foreign students often count the results of the certificate.
If the choice fell on a retraining course, then you will need to provide not only the required documents, but also a diploma and TOEFL results. In advance, you should take care of the translation and apostille of all prepared papers. You don’t have to worry about admission: admission is held twice a year, and the competition is less than for regular programs.
The duration of the Registered Nurse course depends on the chosen level:
It is normal practice in Canada for students to continue their studies up to the BSN level and work at the same time after receiving a PN.
MSN is not for everyone. Only if there is a desire to become a nurse manager or teach later at the university.
Canadian medical colleges International students with medical backgrounds and work experience are welcome at OMNI College in Richmond. The educational institution is quite unique, and not only because it teaches foreigners from all over the world. All college teachers must practice, work in their specialties. This allows them to give real knowledge to students, share experience. The OMNI curriculum is reviewed annually, adjusting to the latest trends in world medicine. This makes it possible to train the highly sought-after specialists that Canadian hospitals need so much.
Many colleges partner with universities for medical programs. When evaluating the options for admission, it is worth evaluating all the possibilities and offers of Canadian education.
Canadian Business College and Toronto, Scarborough, Mississauga campuses recruiting for programs:
Everest College of Business, Technology and Health Care.
Toronto College Park, Scarborough, Ottawa West, Ottawa East campuses offer programs:
Campuses Mississauga, Brampton, Sudbury, Ottawa East, North York, Barrie, Kitchener, Newmarket, Windsor work with students on programs:
Evergreen College - on Toronto and Mississauga campuses:
KLC College: Healthcare, Business, Education invites you to Campus Richmond Hill for the development of medical programs:
Newmarket Campus Canadian Beauty College trains in the Medical Aesthetics program.
TriOS College - Scarborough, Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Oshawa, Hamilton, Kitchener, London, Windsor campuses - providing medical education:
And additionally at Toronto Campus and London Campus:
Mississauga Campus National Academy of Health and Business invites medical students:
Oxford College of Arts, Business and Technology waiting for future nurses at Campus Scarborough at:
PTC Willis College of Business, Health and Technology and Barrie College campuses, Bracebridge, Sault Ste.
Marie and Thunderbay are recruiting for medical areas:
Trillium College invites to campuses Toronto and Oshawa, Yonge St. and Church St., Burlington and Peterborough and is recruiting for
And if you enroll in Burlington Campus , then you can additionally choose:
At Academy of Learning Career and Business College - Toronto and Bay and Bloor - you can get training in the following areas:
Herzing College (Campus Toronto) invites Medical Office Administrator and Sutherland-Chan (Campus Toronto) trains:
Grade Learning - Toronto Central, Downsview, Weston, Etobicoke, Scarborough, East, Rexdale, Oshawa, Stoney Creek campuses - Medical and Clinical Office Assistant
Medix School - on the Toronto, Scarborough, Brampton campuses - trains for nurses in the directions:
Campus Toronto and Citi College offer Medical Office Assistant training.
Tyndale University College (Campus Toronto) trains in Psychology.
CTS Canadian Career College accepts international students at Campus Barrie, North Bay, Sudbury for training on:
George Brown College (School of Nursing) offers several levels of nursing education:
Algonquin College trains:
Assiniboine Community College invites to:
Public Health/Community is available at Athabasca University and Critical Care, Cardiology or Emergency at British Columbia Institute of Technology .
