At a recent workshop, 10 immigrant women were asked about the jobs they’d found in Calgary.

They’d arrived in Canada with professional backgrounds. Some were doctors, others accountants or engineers. All arrived picturing a better life.

But all 10 found themselves doing the same jobs. They’d become cleaners — sweeping floors and scrubbing toilets.

Now, through a new program called My Shadow and Me, these women are being given a chance to find their way back into their chosen professions.

Shannon Oatway, Business Edge
Rojas chats with three-year-old Mikael Ardizzone at Alberta Children's Hospital.

“We’ve seen an increasing amount of women who are highly educated professionals who have applied for jobs but are having trouble,” says Edna Sutherland, executive director of the Calgary Immigrant Women’s Association (CIWA), which offers the program.

“A lot were told they didn’t get the job because they didn’t have any Canadian work experience.”

My Shadow and Me, in its second year and surviving on short-term funding, places these women with mentors in the workplace on a volunteer basis.

It’s not a job-placement program, but a way for women to make connections, learn how to navigate through the Canadian work system, earn a job reference, and perhaps get a foot in the door with a company that may offer work down the road.

“It’s not a job-placement program because we don’t want to set the women up to fail,” explains Sutherland, who has 12 women in the project and hopes more Calgary organizations will step forward and act as sponsors.

“We are not looking at people who aren’t qualified,” she says. “I certainly wouldn’t want to be treated by a doctor who wasn’t capable.”

Helping make a case for the program is Belkys Rojas, a Venezuelan-trained doctor who spends five days a week at the Alberta Children’s Hospital shadowing staff.

Rojas became a Canadian citizen last September and lives here with her husband, an engineer. Unlike many of her friends who landed jobs as cleaners, she’s stocked shelves in a clothing store.

“Working in the hospital is beautiful . . . it has been good for my esteem,” says Rojas, who is confident she will pass the medical exams and complete the steps required to restore her licence to practice.

“Much that happens inside (the hospital) is the same as Venezuela,” says Rojas, who reads English well and has taken a 10-week course run by CIWA to help women reduce their accents.

Bonnie Osoff-Bultz, a clinical social worker with the neuro-motor clinic and past chair of the hospital’s multiculturalism committee, is Rojas’s biggest booster.

“She brings expertise,” explains Osoff-Bultz. “She was a family doctor and an anesthesiologist. She has worked with families and children in controlling chronic pain . . . and had a university appointment in Venezuela.”

A large benefit for Rojas, and a second woman also being sponsored at the hospital, is to learn the nuances of a Canadian hospital.

“We speak in a lot of initials, abbreviations and double entendres,” says Osoff-Bultz.

Currently, it takes a time-consuming 60 or 70 contacts to place 10 women. The program runs for eight weeks — although Rojas’s stay has been extended at the Children’s so she can learn more. There’s also a shorter version that lasts three weeks.

“The mini version is for women who are polished and have a good resume and just need to catch a break . . . get a reference,” says Sutherland.

She calls the 19-year-old association a one-stop centre for newcomers. Located in a cozy office at the west end of downtown, #300 750 11th St., it has a staff of 57 and provides dozens of services for women, youth and children.

The association helps women looking for work in a number of ways — providing free classes in English as a Second Language, providing free day care, teaching them how to dress, prepare resumes, learn to network and be prepared for interviews.

Cultural variations are many, and women must learn to fit in.

For example, some women have to learn to look superiors in the eye; others have to learn to change their tone of voice, higher or lower; some have never been asked a behavioural question in an interview; and others have never worked in a male-dominated environment.

“I remember one of my first interviews and they asked me what my five strengths were,” recalls Sutherland who emigrated here from Scotland 25 years ago. “I’d only ever been asked about my academic qualifications and they were asking me to toot my own horn. It was something that you just didn’t do.”

Sutherland believes there’s never been a better time for immigrant professional women.

Companies need skilled workers, she says. In a global economy, it’s even better to have someone who speaks two or three languages.

“It’s just a matter of finding the right matches,” she says. “It’s just not right that they’re cleaning floors.”