The ethos of hospitality is deeply woven into the hearts of the Canadian people. But, immigration to the Great White North is not without its potential challenges. When an immigrant or businessperson considers moving to Canada, they have to go through a myriad of legal processes that often put them in a tough spot. Functioning as an immigration consulting specialist since 2013, that’s where Alexene Immigration & Employment Services can help.

Alexene Immigration & Employment Services excels in providing individual and corporate clients with standard and professional immigration consulting services. Through its comprehensive portfolio—built on three major pillars: integrity, service, and excellence—the company streamlines and simplifies the Canadian immigration process for its clients. By constantly exceeding clients’ expectations, Alexene Immigration & Employment Services positions itself as a leader in the immigration consulting space and builds a brand that will be a partner of choice for clients in Saskatchewan.

In an interview with Manage HR, Arlene Ruiz, the founder of Alexene Immigration & Employment Services, shares her insights on how the company leverages its expertise to provide exceptional immigration services to clients.

Can you tell us the story behind Alexene Immigration & Employment Services?

What led to the inception of Alexene Immigration & Employment Services is my personal experience when I immigrated to Canada back in 1994. Having gone through the immigration processes myself and understanding the complexities of the system, I saw an unmet need in the space—to handhold immigrants through the process with proper guidance. I then founded Alexene Immigration & Employment Services in Saskatchewan by translating integrity, service, and excellence into the business. For me, it was not just a business but an opportunity to serve the community, primarily in the Saskatchewan Province.

As a licensed Canadian Immigration Consultant and a member of The College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants (CICC) and The Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants (CAPIC), I positioned Alexene Immigration & Employment Services to serve a wide range of national and international clients. Be it individual or corporate clients, we help people from all walks of life. Our clientele spans various nations, including the Philippines, Mexico, Nigeria, Jamaica, India, and Bangladesh.

What are the persistent challenges that your clients face today?

One of the biggest challenges that most employers in Canada face is the lack of qualified and suitable talent to help their businesses thrive. This has been a persistent issue for over a decade and has escalated post-pandemic. At Alexene Immigration & Employment Services, we specialize in connecting employers with the right talents, helping them enhance their business operations. Our goal is to equip businesses with a suitable workforce so that they can grow their businesses without worrying about a frequent turnaround. By serving as a reliable head hunter for our clients, we also eliminate the challenges businesses face pertaining to retaining their talents.

When we typically collaborate with corporate clients, our team always tries to gain a holistic understanding of their business, talent needs, and challenges. As a result, we gather a complete picture of their requirements to then figure out the best possible way to assist them. By leveraging our national and global networks, we connect them with the best employees so that they can focus on their other core areas of business. Rather than worrying about their talent acquisition and retention strategies, our clients can simply work on their core operations.

Can you elaborate on some of the services that Alexene Immigration & Employment Services offer?

Our services typically range from the beginning of the talent acquisition to employee retention and experience. We establish ourselves as an end-to-end service provider in the Canadian immigration space, enabling clients to comply with Service Canada regulations. We start by helping our corporate clients with the advertising process. It then extends to assisting them in the selection and pre-screening of candidates, conducting preliminary interviews, and checking their references. By doing this, we save companies a lot of time that they generally spend on short-listing the best-qualified applicants to fill their vacancies.
For instance, an employer advertising for a food service supervisor position will typically receive many resumes. Sifting through these tons of applications is a tedious task, and we help our clients eliminate this strenuous job with our unrivaled preliminary screening capabilities. We screen all the applicants so that employers can sidestep from checking the piled-up resumes, where many of them are not even meeting the qualification benchmark. Our team then presents them with the final results that our clients can leverage to make informed decisions quickly.

Moving ahead, we assist them with the preparation of forms and submissions. We gather the information, fill out the applications, and send them to Service Canada. Dedicated to ensuring transparency throughout the engagement process, we guide our clients through the process—from step-by-step procedures to average processing time. By helping them with all these services and providing them with timely information, we assist clients with better decision-making, which is really a value addition to their operations. Our job as a consultant is to help clients file a perfect application and eliminate all the challenges associated with immigration.

With our unique service delivery model, we establish ourselves as a go-to partner in the Canadian immigration space, serving a broad clientele.

Could you cite a customer success story?

We recently collaborated with a business owner who was availing immigration services from one of our competitors for several years. Irrespective of how hard they tried, the client was still struggling to grow his business as they were facing a huge labor shortage issue. The business owner then approached us to solve the crucial challenge they were facing—finding the right talent for their organization. We leveraged our comprehensive service portfolio and industry expertise to help them find the right candidates to fill their job vacancies quickly.

Rather than consider this as another business deal, we see it as an opportunity to foster a long-term relationship with the client. Unlike many others in the market, we continue to engage with the client even after completing their immigration process, trying to figure out ways to enhance their operations and employee retention strategies. It also helps us retain our clients. Post immigration, we can help their employees with work permits, permanent residency, sponsoring family members, and finally, Canadian citizenship. In one instance, we have helped a Temporary Foreign Worker couple reunite with their son after several years.

How have you differentiated yourself in the industry?

What makes us different from others is our ability to deliver value-added services to our clients. We provide pickup services to immigrants who do not have someone to support them on their arrival in Canada. This is a blessing to most employers, as it allows them to sidestep from picking up their new employees. In addition, we help immigrants find suitable but affordable accommodation, even before they arrive. Our other value-added services include setting up bank accounts and helping them with Social Insurance Number (SIN) and Saskatchewan Health Card—all provided free of cost.

We always go above and beyond to address our clients’ varying needs and provide the best possible experience for them. We do this by upholding our core values.