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Musashi and Daniel Godos: Driven to succeed

June 4, 2014


“I am now a Sales & Purchasing Associate at Musashi Auto Parts Canada. They have provided me with great training. I am extremely happy to be part of this team of professionals and I look forward to the future with a big smile on my face.
I came to Canada for love and not everything has been easy here for me. However, I can now say that eventually there is light at the end of the tunnel. It has been worth it.”

So says Daniel Godos, a young native of Spain with a beaming smile and gentle, friendly nature. He moved to Canada in 2006 after graduating from a university in the United States and meeting the woman who is now his wife during spring break.

Godos struggled for several years to find meaningful work and completed a Master of Business Administration degree at Wilfrid Laurier University to improve his chances of doing so. In December 2013, he luckily heard about and participated in a bus tour of Wellington County companies who were hiring internationally trained professionals (ITPs). The event, which drew almost twenty people with varying backgrounds, was organized by the Guelph-Wellington Local Immigration Partnership, the County of Wellington, and the Workforce Planning Board of Waterloo Wellington Dufferin. Godos was particularly interested in visiting Musashi, an international automotive parts manufacturer with a production facility in Arthur, North Wellington.

We at the GWLIP were thrilled to find out that he had indeed succeeded in finding a “job with great potential” at Musashi, a company he was not aware of before the tour took place.

For Scott Greshuk, Senior Manager (Engineering, Maintenance, Tool & Die, Research & Development, Design) at Musashi, hiring Daniel was “almost a no-brainer”, given his previous sales and marketing experience, and his education at Laurier, which included studying various aspects of the automotive industry.

Mai Vang, Manager of Human Resources at Musashi, says that Musashi is actively looking at ways to attract newcomers to the company. But Greshuk mentioned several forward-thinking activities with which he has been involved: cultural training courses provided by Honda; connecting with Canadian universities to source graduates from technical programs; and offering English as a Second Language courses onsite during work time for particular employees.

Ultimately, Greshuk says, companies should “make sure that they are hiring the right skill sets they need to get what they want done, and then deal with the nationality differences and cultural biases afterwards.”

For Daniel Godos, the journey as a recent immigrant has presented both opportunities and challenges, and there’s much that other new immigrants can learn from him. “Be positive,” he says. It’s the only way to deal with hurdles during the immigration process, bad jobs, and the inevitable painful feelings that come from being separated from relatives and life-long friends. He also says that “networking is key,” and the bus tour was a perfect example of a networking opportunity that allowed him to connect with a Musashi staffer. “Without networking, you can’t go anywhere.” And perhaps most crucial, “always improve your language skills and resumé.”

We wish both Daniel Godos and Musashi the best in the future. Let’s hope the bus tour can get rolling again.

Guelph-Wellington Local Immigration Partnership

Guelph-Wellington Local Immigration Partnership