Calgary BR Tech wrapped up 2025 on December 15th at the Platform Innovation Centre with our last meetup of the year, and with a talk that hit close to home for almost everyone in the room: how to position yourself professionally in Canada.
A Night of Announcements
Before the talk, Anderson opened the evening with news. CBRT now has a proper team, and Fernando, Rafael and Emily were called up front for a round of applause. The community’s new website went live that same night, featuring testimonials from people in Calgary’s tech scene who work with Brazilian professionals every day, and an Instagram account is getting ready for a busier 2026. Anderson also thanked Platform Calgary for renewing its support with the venue, and Rodrigo and the Gaia Construction team for sponsoring the evening.
The Recruiter’s Point of View
Then the floor went to Andreia Velazquez, an HR professional with more than 20 years of experience who arrived in Canada in 2016 and has since worked with hundreds of Brazilians on their job search. She was upfront that her own start in the Canadian market wasn’t easy, and that this was exactly what pushed her to understand where the gap really is.
Marker in hand and sketching on the board as she went, Andreia walked through the recruiter’s side of the table: why a résumé gets only a few seconds of attention, why Brazilian job titles and years of experience don’t translate one-to-one, and why you need to be able to say clearly who you are, what results you deliver and what you’re looking for. She covered the difference between soft skills and behaviour, why career changers should be careful about how they present their past roles, the role of keywords and LinkedIn presence, and a simple rule of thumb: if twenty applications bring no response, stop and adjust instead of pushing harder. On networking, her message was direct: “networking gives you access”, not the job itself.
A Lively Q&A
The audience didn’t wait for the end to jump in. Questions came throughout the talk, many of them from people in the middle of career transitions: a former lawyer moving into software development, a bootcamp graduate who had spent a year applying with little to show for it, a business analyst wondering whether to keep her legal background on LinkedIn, and a project manager trying to present three different career paths at once. Andreia answered each one with concrete suggestions, and the last questions turned to how Canadian companies view contractor arrangements.
The night closed with thanks to the sponsors, snacks courtesy of Gaia Construction, and the networking that always follows, a fitting end to a year that saw the community grow in every sense.
If you’re navigating your own job search in Canada, the full recording is just below.
▶ Watch the recording
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