Hiring a Foreign National

Academic foreign workers are hired for academic positions at the university and become employees in roles such as Faculty, Academic Teaching Staff (ATS), and Trust/Research Academic Staff (TRAS). Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) deems an academic position to be at least 50% teaching and/or research. 

Non-academic foreign workers are hired for positions at the university with less than 50% of teaching and research as part of their job duties. They become university employees in positions such as Administrative Professional Officers, Deans and support Staff (in other words management, financial, administrative, etc.).

Temporary foreign workers have the same rights and workplace protections as Canadians and permanent residents.

For work permits based on a Labour Market Impact Assessment, learn more at Temporary Foreign Workers .

Academic workers
Academic foreign workers are hired for academic positions at the university and become employees in roles such as Faculty, Academic Teaching Staff (ATS), and Trust/Research Academic Staff (TRAS). Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) deems an academic position to be at least 50% teaching and/or research.

Visit additional steps to design and evaluate the position.

All job postings in advertisements must be identical.

View our advertising tip sheet .

Non-academic workers

• Plan to advertise in at least three places to qualified Canadians and permanent residents:
  • You must advertise on the Government of Canada’s Job Bank . If you choose not to advertise on the Canada Job Bank, you must provide a written rationale with your LMIA application. A rationale template can be found in the guidelines for completing LMIA .
  • 2 of the 3 ads must be consistent with the occupation (targets an audience that has the appropriate education, professional experience or skill level required for the occupation).
  • 2 of the 3 ads must be national in scope - Canadians and permanent residents must have the capacity to search advertisements for work locations across Canada in a single site, as opposed to referring to individual or regional sub-sites.
  • All three ads must be posted for four consecutive weeks concurrently in the three-month period prior to applying for an LMIA.
  • At least 1 of the 3 recruitment activities must be ongoing until the date a positive or negative LMIA has been issued.

• Plan to advertise to qualified Canadian citizens and permanent residents in at least three places: the U of A careers website and two occupation-specific publications that are national in scope for 30 days.
• Re-advertising is not required to renew a Labour Market Impact Assessment for a tenure-track position.
• Employment and Social Development Canada will not accept advertisements that are over one year old.
• Advertising records for tenure-track positions must be retained permanently.

Maintain records of your recruitment campaign. You must demonstrate that you have made efforts to recruit qualified Canadians and permanent residents. Provide a copy of the advertisement and information to support where, when and for how long the position was advertised.

• Send a copy of the Guidelines for Immigrating to Canada to the new hire.
• Encourage them to visit the Life in Canada page.
• Review our onboarding resources for supervisors.
• Invite your candidate to get to know their rights while working in Canada.