Definitions for job seekers

We have defined here some of the common terms found on CRA job posters.

If you have questions about working for the Canada Revenue Agency, or about the content of a job poster, please send a message to the email address listed at the bottom of the Notice of Job Opportunity that interests you.

Please note the CRA does not accept unsolicited résumés or applications. We invite you to regularly monitor the CRA Careers website for employment opportunities and apply to the jobs that interest you.

Appoint

To appoint means to be offered a job. There are several appointment subtypes which only apply to federal public service employees, such as, acting, promotion, and lateral.

Appointment type

There are several appointment subtypes:

Perm: Permanent. An offer of employment for an indeterminate amount of time, meaning there is no end date indicated on the offer of employment.
Temp: Temporary. An offer of employment for a definite amount of time, meaning there is an end date indicated on the offer of employment.
Student: Only students enrolled in a recognized Canadian academic institution as full-time secondary or postsecondary students, or those enrolled on a part-time basis due to disability, can apply.
Anticipatory: There is no current vacancy, however it is expected that there will be one or more vacancies in the future.

Assessment

Standardized assessment tools
Standardized assessment tools are developed by experts to meet high professional standards to ensure that the assessments are valid, reliable and fair. They are designed to be administered in a consistent manner to a large number of test-takers on a regular basis. Managers can use standardized assessment tools from the CRA , the Public Service Commission (PSC) or the private sector to evaluate various skills and abilities. Most of these tools are available as online tests and monitored by certified test administrators, some can also be administered in an unsupervised context. Results obtained from these tests are often portable to other staffing processes and jobs in the CRA. This means that you do not need to be tested again for the same qualification if you have already received the required score or level.

Semi-standardized assessment tools
Semi-standardized assessment tools are developed by experts to meet high professional standards to ensure that the assessments are valid, reliable and fair. They are designed to be administered in a consistent manner to a large number of test-takers on a regular basis, but are administered and scored by individual hiring boards for specific staffing processes. As a consequence, the results from these tests are not portable to other staffing processes. Many of these tools can be administered in an unsupervised context.

Locally developed tools
Locally developed tools (LDT) are created by the staffing board for the purpose of assessing knowledge, technical skills and/or qualifications needed for a specific staffing process. Commonly used examples include written tests, interviews and reference checks. The results obtained from these tools are not portable to other staffing processes.

Closing date

The last day and latest hour for you to submit your application and all other required documents.

Foreign education validation

If you attended an educational institution outside of Canada, you must get your degrees, diplomas and other credentials assessed against Canadian educational standards. This will enable you to prove Canadian equivalency when you apply for a job at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). The CRA will accept any foreign educational credentials as long as a recognized credential assessment service says they are equivalent to Canadian standards.

For more information on the assessment of educational, professional, and occupational credentials and for information on Canadian organizations that can assess your credentials, and to submit an online inquiry, please visit the Canadian Information Centre for International Credentials (CICIC) at www.cicic.ca. You can also reach them at 416-962-9725.

Group and level

Classification of the CRA's various jobs that takes into consideration the duties and responsibilities of a position.
Group (or occupational group): A collection of jobs involving similar kinds of work and requiring similar skills.
Level: A numerical ranking of a position within its occupational group based on the work description. For example, an SP-04 is the fourth level of the Services and Programs (SP) occupational group.

Language

The official language requirement of a position.

At the CRA, as in the Public Service of Canada, all positions are identified as either unilingual (English or French) or bilingual (English and French); bilingual positions have a linguistic profile, such as BBB or CBC.

Location

Where a job is located. This may be indicated on the job poster as a specific address or it may be the city and province, or multiple cities and provinces, depending on where the positions are being staffed.

Pool

A group of qualified candidates, established following an advertised staffing process, who may be eligible for appointment.

Hiring managers may create a pool if they anticipate a need to staff more positions in the future, and they may also allow other managers to use the pool to staff similar positions.

If a pool is created, the hiring manager must tell you if you have been put in the pool, the effective date of the pool, and the duration of the pool; however, if you have not been placed in a pool, the manager is not obligated to advise you of this.

In some situations, a pool may not be created. If that is the case, the staffing process ends once appointments have been made.

Preferred status

This is a temporary status that allows individuals to be considered before other candidates in a staffing process. Permanent CRA employees, and members of the Canadian Armed Forces released for medical reasons, may qualify for Preferred Status under certain conditions. The Public Service Commission has a similar status, which is called priority status.

Region/Branch

A region is a geographic area within the CRA, such as the Atlantic region or the Prairie region. There are five regions at the CRA.
A branch is a way of dividing the CRA by business lines and program focus. There are 14 branches in the CRA, including the Human Resources Branch and the Compliance Programs Branch.

Requirements and conditions

Essential staffing requirement
A knowledge, skill, qualification, or ability that is necessary to perform the work of the position, based on current and future business requirements and must be assessed during the staffing process.

Asset staffing requirement
A knowledge, skill, qualification, or ability that is considered desirable, or enhances the ability to perform the work and which may or may not be assessed during the staffing process, depending on current and future business needs of the hiring manager.

Minimum staffing requirement
A mandatory staffing requirement for all positions being staffed. The minimum staffing requirements are: education, language, performance level and security status/clearance.

Conditions of employment
These are work-related requirements that the candidate must meet prior to being appointed and throughout the duration of their employment with the CRA. If an employee is not able to maintain a condition of employment, their employment may be terminated. Using security clearance as an example, a candidate must obtain the required level of security clearance before being appointed and must maintain the security level throughout their employment at the CRA.

Requisition number

The key identifier for the staffing process. All correspondence related to the staffing process will reference this number.

Page details

Date modified: