📝 French is one of Canada’s 2 official languages and is spoken by 22.8% of the total population (“The Canadian Francophonie by the numbers”, 2019).
All Federal institutions in Canada are bilingual. Moreover, many private organizations are in need of French speakers if they operate in French-speaking areas or if they have national teams. So how will you approach a search for a French-speaking professional?
There are three main pools of French-speaking population:
- French-speaking Canadians (French as their first language)
- French-speaking new Canadians (French as their first language)
- Bilingual Canadians (French is the second language learnt or acquired through studies or other experiences).
First of all, re-assess the geography of the search. Unsurprisingly, the majority of Francophones (85.4%) live in Quebec. French is also the mother tongue of 32% of the population of New Brunswick (Nouveau–Brunswick).
✍🏻 Note that the major French-speaking areas in New Brunswick are Campellton-Miramichi, Moncton-Richibucto, and Edmundston-Woodstock. Here is the infographic of the French presence in New Brunswick.
As I mentioned, French-speaking new Canadians are a great resource. If you need to map down the French-speaking countries, here is the list by WorldData.
Lastly, graduates of French schools and French immersion schools are expected to be francophones. If we have a look at Ontario, there are 455 French-speaking schools. Additionally, there are plenty of schools with immersion programs. Immersion suggests that students learn French as a subject and it is the language of instruction in two or more subjects.
A full list of Ontario French schools is here (for immersion schools, please select the French program as FSL-Immersion. If students learn French only as a subject, it may not be enough to acquire fluency).
Here are some practical ways to capture the digital footprint of French speakers on LinkedIn:
- Use your search keywords in French. That may sound the most obvious way, but the least effective, in my opinion. Most LinkedIn profiles will be in English or in a mix of both. Still, enriching your results would be helpful. Even if you don’t speak French, arm yourself with Google translate and check similar postings on Jobillico to have a grasp of how your position can be described in French.
- Search by language. If you want to avoid too many false positives, add French AROUND 2 “Native or bilingual proficiency” to your LinkedIn X-ray search. AROUND is an operator and must be capitalized. It will help anchor your search around the language field and it will return the results of all individuals who ranked their knowledge of French as native or bilingual proficiency:
site:ca.linkedin.com/in French AROUND 2 "native or bilingual"- Use natural language queries. By natural language, we mean any word combination that individuals tend to use to describe themselves. For instance, “I am a * native French“, or “French native” (the latter returns better results).
- Scrape the lists of French schools or universities and use them in your X-ray search or directly apply them to LinkedIn search fields.
Et voilà!
