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As the title says I am a chemical engineering master’s student who wants to move with my fiancé to Canada when I graduate due to a myriad of reasons .
So she can be closer to her family and I also like and heard good stuff about Canada apart from the cold.
I just wanted to know if there are any chemical engineers that lived in Canada on TL.
What’s the salary for a master student with little experience how hard would it be for me to find a job and where are the places typically located for these jobs?
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What province will you be moving to?
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I'm almost through studying to be an electrical engineer. I would say for chemical you would have a lot better chance of finding a job/ a good paying job in western Canada. Alberta probably being the best, and Ontario the next best. I haven't been to either of those places, despite living in eastern Canada (maritimes) my whole life. These are just the places I heard would have jobs for chemical from other students in Co-op and graduating etc.
Nova Scotia (where I live) recently has got a billion dollar ship building 25 year contract to start soon, which will boom the economy in many ways. I don't think it would affect chemical engineering too much.
I would say most jobs would take experience over your schooling, but once you get your foot in the door for a company your masters will become more important as you get further in your career. I have no idea what the salaries would be, I would say starting out, without masters degree, 50-60k, growing up to 120k+ with masters. (just guessing, only source is things I seen on website n such)
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Hurr durr. Civil engineering student here in Montreal. I can't say for sure, since it's not my field, but I have a bunch of friends getting offers left and right to go work in Alberta, Fort Murray in the tar sand industry with Imperial Oil or Suncor. They are actually hiring a ton of mechanical, mining and civil engineers too with higher than average engineer salaries (>100k). In Montreal, the average salary for an engineer on the island is 94k, and there are A LOT of jobs for civil engineers here, but I don't know about chemical, especially after one of the refineries closed a couple of years ago.
TL;DR I'm pretty sure you could get a job pretty quickly in Alberta if you decide to work in the oil industry.
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Not a chemical engineer (I'm in infrastructure), but as a young engineer in Canada (Ontario) here are some quick thoughts:
- job prospects for engineers are not too bright in this province (Ontario) at the moment - many recent graduates are having a tough time finding a proper one (several friends from Chem - none are employed) - majority of interviews are earned through personal connections, not shiny resumes - typical starting salary for engineers with a bachelor's degree is between 45k and 55k, CAD - typical starting salary for engineers with a master's degree is between 50k and 75k, CAD - largest demand for new engineers in the fields of infrastructure/energy/environmental is in the province of Alberta
Again, those are from my personal experiences and limited knowledge, not official statistics. So don't take them for absolute facts!
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Calgary25954 Posts
Canada is big dude. What field and province are you moving to? I can answer any oil and gas questions in Alberta but I don't know shit about any other field and province.
Edit: Also, you know you can't just move here and legally get a job, right? Have you looked into the immigration process? You might be able to get a working holiday visa to tide you over for a year until you're married.
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On March 30 2012 23:17 OpticalShot wrote: Not a chemical engineer (I'm in infrastructure), but as a young engineer in Canada (Ontario) here are some quick thoughts:
- job prospects for engineers are not too bright in this province (Ontario) at the moment - many recent graduates are having a tough time finding a proper one (several friends from Chem - none are employed) - majority of interviews are earned through personal connections, not shiny resumes - typical starting salary for engineers with a bachelor's degree is between 45k and 55k, CAD - typical starting salary for engineers with a master's degree is between 50k and 75k, CAD - largest demand for new engineers in the fields of infrastructure/energy/environmental is in the province of Alberta
Again, those are from my personal experiences and limited knowledge, not official statistics. So don't take them for absolute facts! Wow that seems a bit low :/ in Australia recent mech bachelor's degree grad's start on about 63k with some of the mining jobs offering 90k for 7 days on 7 off and companies like BHP offering 110k for recent electrical grads.
Edit: While searching for a job as a grad I found that more than anything experience was the most important, so being a masters student and having little experience could work against you
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On March 30 2012 23:27 mcmartini wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2012 23:17 OpticalShot wrote: Not a chemical engineer (I'm in infrastructure), but as a young engineer in Canada (Ontario) here are some quick thoughts:
- job prospects for engineers are not too bright in this province (Ontario) at the moment - many recent graduates are having a tough time finding a proper one (several friends from Chem - none are employed) - majority of interviews are earned through personal connections, not shiny resumes - typical starting salary for engineers with a bachelor's degree is between 45k and 55k, CAD - typical starting salary for engineers with a master's degree is between 50k and 75k, CAD - largest demand for new engineers in the fields of infrastructure/energy/environmental is in the province of Alberta
Again, those are from my personal experiences and limited knowledge, not official statistics. So don't take them for absolute facts! Wow that seems a bit low :/ in Australia recent mech bachelor's degree grad's start on about 63k with some of the mining jobs offering 90k for 7 days on 7 off and companies like BHP offering 110k for recent electrical grads. Edit: While searching for a job as a grad I found that more than anything experience was the most important, so being a masters student and having little experience could work against you
but isn't everything in australia wicked expensive ?
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On March 30 2012 23:31 ~_~ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2012 23:27 mcmartini wrote:On March 30 2012 23:17 OpticalShot wrote: Not a chemical engineer (I'm in infrastructure), but as a young engineer in Canada (Ontario) here are some quick thoughts:
- job prospects for engineers are not too bright in this province (Ontario) at the moment - many recent graduates are having a tough time finding a proper one (several friends from Chem - none are employed) - majority of interviews are earned through personal connections, not shiny resumes - typical starting salary for engineers with a bachelor's degree is between 45k and 55k, CAD - typical starting salary for engineers with a master's degree is between 50k and 75k, CAD - largest demand for new engineers in the fields of infrastructure/energy/environmental is in the province of Alberta
Again, those are from my personal experiences and limited knowledge, not official statistics. So don't take them for absolute facts! Wow that seems a bit low :/ in Australia recent mech bachelor's degree grad's start on about 63k with some of the mining jobs offering 90k for 7 days on 7 off and companies like BHP offering 110k for recent electrical grads. Edit: While searching for a job as a grad I found that more than anything experience was the most important, so being a masters student and having little experience could work against you but isn't everything in australia wicked expensive ? I don't know about wicked expensive but I haven't been overseas since i was 17....my gf's dad who visited from Canada did think everything was overpriced though lol so may be correct.
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On March 30 2012 23:26 Chill wrote: Canada is big dude. What field and province are you moving to? I can answer any oil and gas questions in Alberta but I don't know shit about any other field and province.
Edit: Also, you know you can't just move here and legally get a job, right? Have you looked into the immigration process? You might be able to get a working holiday visa to tide you over for a year until you're married.
yh my fiance is canadian and the process is what i am going to look into for the next couple of weeks scince we made up our mind of moving there and set a a 2 year target to complete the move (we live in the uk i am from england) .
the field i am moving into to is Petroleum and Reservoir .
i have done a year placement with BP but this was more Instrumentation and Control and not really the field i am looking to go into so that might work against me. how is the job oppretunites in Alberta and what would i need to do to secure a job in that field?
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Calgary25954 Posts
The job opportunities in Alberta are good. We're in a bit of an upswing right now and a lot of companies are losing people are looking for new engineers. I know Shell specifically are looking for resevoir engineers right now.
I think staying on the resevoir side as opposed to the EIC side is a good idea.
Sign up with APEGGA as soon as you can so you can put that on your resume. I don't think you need to do anything special to secure a job. Just start looking at the big websites and getting your resume out there. Try to contact some headhunters if you can find any contacts as they seem to have a lot of roles to fill these days.
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Listen to Chill about chemical engineering. It is the truth.
To OpticalShot, why do you think opportunities are not too bright for Ontario? Everyone I know had no trouble landing a full time position out of graduation. I would generally agree that it is hard for civil and mechanical engineers to land an intern job, but full time should be ok.
I agree with many of the posts above. If you are in that field area, Alberta is the place to go to. Ontario is limited with the opportunity in my opinion, many of the chemical engineers I know are just researching or have moved to other provinces/overseas. There are a few working in OPG but I am unsure if he is really doing a chemical engineering related work.
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On March 31 2012 00:27 Chill wrote: Sign up with APEGGA as soon as you can so you can put that on your resume.
Just a small note, APEGGA is now APEGA (1 G instead of 2). They sort of rebranded Geologists and Geophysicists as Geoscientists.
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Calgary25954 Posts
On March 31 2012 00:30 ExceeD_DreaM wrote: To OpticalShot, why do you think opportunities are not too bright for Ontario? Everyone I know had no trouble landing a full time position out of graduation. I would generally agree that it is hard for civil and mechanical engineers to land an intern job, but full time should be ok.
I agree with many of the posts above. If you are in that field area, Alberta is the place to go to. Ontario is limited with the opportunity in my opinion, many of the chemical engineers I know are just researching or have moved to other provinces/overseas. There are a few working in OPG but I am unsure if he is really doing a chemical engineering related work. Agreed. There are opportunities everywhere in Canada right now in every field of engineering. Best thing for the OP to do is narrow down specifically what he wants to do and use that to determine where and what he looks for. Then, once you've chosen where you're looking, you can broaden back out to look for all CE jobs in that are and field.
If you've already committed to resevoir jobs in Alberta, you should probably start looking in Calgary and shouldn't have too much difficulty getting a response to your resume.
Start looking into what it takes to become a P.Eng and EIT in Alberta and do that immediately. If you aren't an EIT (or at least aware of what it takes to become on) it will make things harder than they need to be.
Edit: Here's the EIT stuff: http://www.apegga.org/Applicants/Engineers/mit.html
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Calgary25954 Posts
On March 31 2012 00:42 Kovaz wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2012 00:27 Chill wrote: Sign up with APEGGA as soon as you can so you can put that on your resume. Just a small note, APEGGA is now APEGA (1 G instead of 2). They sort of rebranded Geologists and Geophysicists as Geoscientists. Lol really? When did that happen?
Wow thanks.
hahah wow i just went to the website and everything is the same but one G is missing from the logo. wow wow wow
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On March 31 2012 00:30 ExceeD_DreaM wrote: Listen to Chill about chemical engineering. It is the truth.
To OpticalShot, why do you think opportunities are not too bright for Ontario? Everyone I know had no trouble landing a full time position out of graduation. I would generally agree that it is hard for civil and mechanical engineers to land an intern job, but full time should be ok.
I agree with many of the posts above. If you are in that field area, Alberta is the place to go to. Ontario is limited with the opportunity in my opinion, many of the chemical engineers I know are just researching or have moved to other provinces/overseas. There are a few working in OPG but I am unsure if he is really doing a chemical engineering related work. Bolded part: exactly. I don't think Ontario has a good job market for chemical engineers unless they've specialized in environmental engineering / renewable energy stuff. Many that choose to do Masters degree are not because they love research, but because they couldn't find the job opportunities they were looking for.
If you paid attention to the recently announced Ontario 5-year (Liberal) budget, there are no aggressive job creation strategies (hence the big "no" from the Conservatives). I am biased towards the infrastructure projects due to the nature of my career, and from what I've heard the expert forecasts say there will be a decreasing number of new public infrastructure projects in the province. From that, I'm going to vaguely guess that related engineering fields will be hit as well.
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I thought you were talking about engineering in general my bad. Yea, it seems most research jobs are because of constraints rather than wants. I've honestly lost all hopes on our government and especially liberals in Ontario. I gave up following anything when McGuinty was reelected. I am already sick and disgusted by the green energy policy in the province, and recent TTC voting loss for Ford just finished it. I can't believe these fucktards are voting for LRT instead of subway. Toronto has to be the only city in the world which prefers to not advance in technology and transportation.
Anyway, in my opinion, it will all balance out because there are huge, I mean it, huge amount of people retiring the next 5 to 10 years. It will require influx of many new engineers, and with the new tough immigration policy, we will really have to live off inbred engineers, so I don't think it will look too bad.
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My brother works as a Petroleum Engineer for a firm in Calgary, it took him 4 months to find the job he wanted but he was picky.
Some people have recommended Fort McMurray or other northern alberta areas, I would really recommend avoiding them if you want to enjoy Canada. They're tradesman cities and there's not a lot to do. I spent a couple months working in Fort Mac and while the money is great, the quality of life is not.
Edmonton and Calgary are your basic big cities, if you're from London they'll feel "the same but different". Red Deer, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat are the ~100,000 mid-size cities that would probably be nice to live in as well.
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Engineering an ontario to some it up in 1 quick sentence
, coming from waterloo, "Canadas most prestigious engineering school"
Its not what you know, but unfortunatly who you know, I made buddy buddy with a manager during 1 of my co-ops and if it wasent for him my hiring curve wud've been a lot longer/ a lottttt more stressful. Alberta/BC are (1)beautiful provinces and (2)its apparent they're lots of opportunites out there, the price of living is intense tho ( I dont kno this forsure but apparently some atm's charge you 4.50$ to take your money out ) I could be wrong haha
I wish you the best of luck DISHU, always happy to welcome engineers to canada
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