POEA and online job applications for Canada

The POEA is a government agency tasked to monitor and oversee, the employment of our countries Overseas Filipino Workers - OFW.

I have, of late, written numerous articles about the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration POEA, to educate my readers that there is a website that they can regularly vesit to gain news and insights about working overseas. POEA and online Job applications for Canada, is written to make the readers aware of the various online employment scams in the internet and how by visiting th POEA website the reader will be aware about them.


If you have received an invitation for an online Job application for Canada, you should read the email message carefully and determine if the offer is for real or it is just one of the on-line job scams that has been circulating around the World Wide Web.

There are certain similarities in these scams that you can easily spot such as:

1. The use of a free email address. These adds will normally be sent using either google or yahoo or other free email subscriptions. Remember that a big company who requires so many workers would normally have their own domains and uses a company email address.

2. Very high Salary offers for low skilled jobs. The minimum wage for Canada is only approximately Cn$8.00 per hour. If you multiply this for 40 hours a week time 4 weeks, you will end up with Cn$ 1,280.00 per month. Yet these Job offers would normally claim that they will pay $4000 to $5000 for a low skilled job such as cleaner or factory worker.

3. The request for payment for so called Visa processing Fees coursed through Western Union or Postal money order. Again Big companies have their bank accounts. Where to put up this accounts they were required certain documents to prove the existence of their companies. You should also know that under the laws of the Philippines and Canada, most of the recruitment cost will be shouldered by the employer not the employee. You may read POEA guidelines.

Although, this individuals who engage in Job Scams are sometimes very clever, they would sometimes use the website details of other existing companies to make it appear that they are members of the organization.

That is why the first thing that you should do is to ask for the contact information of the company:

1. Website
2. Telephone number
3. Company representative

And always ask what the payment is for. I would like to repeat, most of the provinces of Canada prohibits the charging of any fees for the worker.

The POEA has a section in their website where they publish scams that they have already encountered. They have guidelines that you can read to easily catch individuals who pose as an employer you may read the Top 10 internet scams.

There are also sample letters that they have compiled for you to read.


I am not saying that all online Job applications for Canada or should I say Online Job offers are all scams, but it pays to be careful.