Are you leaving CRS points on the table? Common omissions that are lowering your score

Your Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score may be higher than you think.

Many candidates within Canada’s Express Entry system may be omitting factors that could increase their CRS scores, due to unfamiliarity with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s (IRCC’s) rules.

Considering additional factors around work experience or having a joint application with a spouse when calculating your CRS score can yield significant gains to your Express Entry profile and, in turn, aid your competitiveness for an Invitation to Apply (ITA) in the candidate pool.

This article will cover some of the most common omissions that may be keeping your CRS score lower than it actually is.

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Not counting work done while a full-time student

It should be made clear: work done in Canada (full-time or part-time) while you were a full-time student does not count towards your Express Entry eligibility, nor for your CRS score.

However, work completed outside of Canada while you were a full-time student can count toward your CRS score as foreign work experience—and can greatly help increase your ranking in the CRS pool, depending on how much time this work experience amounts to.

Note that work done from inside Canada remotely (while a full-time student), for a foreign company or client, may also be considered foreign work experience. In fact, many forms of work may be considered foreign work experience under Express Entry, including part-time work accrued abroad:

Situation	Canadian Work Experience	Foreign Work experience
Working in Canada for a Canadian employer	Yes	No
Working on vacation outside Canada while still employed by a Canadian company	Yes	No
Working outside Canada for any foreign company	No	Yes
Working inside Canada remotely for a foreign company or client	No	Yes
Working remotely from outside Canada for a Canadian company	No	Yes

For more information on what is considered foreign work experience, visit our dedicated article on the topic.

Foreign work experience under these conditions can even be used to meet the minimum requirements of the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP).

Let's look at an example of how adding foreign work experience can impact CRS scores.

Ahmed is a 28-year-old from Egypt who is an international graduate in Canada. He completed a five-year business degree in Canada and is now working on his Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP). He has a level 9 proficiency in English and is unmarried.

Ahmed has accrued one year of Canadian work experience as a Growth Marketer. However, during his school years, Ahmed went back to Egypt over the summer break, which typically lasts from the end of April to the start of September (~4 months), every year, and worked full-time as a Junior Marketing Coordinator during that period. Over the past five years, he has accumulated more than a year of foreign work experience.

Ahmed is initially unaware that he can count his Egyptian work experience towards his CRS score, and so he first creates his profile with only one year of Canadian work experience. He uses CanadaVisa+ to determine his score, which comes out to 462 points initially.

However, after hearing from a friend that he can, in fact, count the work experience that he accrued outside of Canada while being a full-time student towards his CRS score, Ahmed re-inputs his information and sees drastic changes to his CRS—which has now jumped to 500 points.

By reconsidering his foreign work experience, Ahmed has gained 38 additional CRS points, a huge jump that brings him much closer to ITA eligibility in future Canadian Experience Class (CEC) draws.

See how you can optimize your Express Entry profile

Not considering non-continuous work experience

Another key factor that Express Entry candidates can miss is not counting non-continuous work within their work experience. If you have enough work experience, these separate periods of work within the eligibility period (the 10 years prior to the creation of your profile) can add up to big increases in CRS score.

Let's take the example of Lina.

Lina is a 29-year-old software engineer from Brazil. She holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science, has strong English at about CLB 9 in all abilities, and is unmarried. She has no Canadian education, no Canadian work experience, and no provincial nomination.

Lina has 21 months of continuous, full-time foreign work experience as a Software Engineer at Company A, which on its own is enough to qualify her for the FSWP because it comfortably exceeds the one-year continuous requirement.

In addition, she has also worked 8 months full-time at Company B and 7 months full-time at Company C in similar software engineering roles—though those jobs were separated by gaps of unemployment and are not one continuous stretch.

Initially, Lina focuses only on the continuous employment that clearly meets FSWP eligibility, so when she first creates her Express Entry profile, she only declares the 21 continuous months at Company A.

Based on her age, education, language ability, and treating her foreign work experience as being in the “1–2 years” range, she uses CanadaVisa+ to estimate her CRS score at 444 points.

After speaking with an advisor, Lina learns that for CRS scoring, she can accumulate non-continuous foreign work experience as long as it is paid, skilled (TEER 0–3), and within the last 10 years. She then updates her profile to include her 8-month stint at Company B and 7-month stint at Company C, which pushes her total foreign skilled work experience from “1–2 years” to “3 or more years” in the CRS system.

This increases her skill-transferability points for foreign work experience, raising her CRS score to 469 points.

By reconsidering and properly declaring her non-continuous foreign work experience, Lina gains 25 additional CRS points, a meaningful jump that brings her much closer to receiving an Invitation to Apply (ITA).

See how you can optimize your Express Entry proflile

Not checking who the better principal applicant is

If you are a candidate in the Express Entry system with your spouse (who must be declared under Canadian immigration regulations, even if they are not accompanying you), it is worth seeing who the more competitive primary candidate within the CRS is.

While candidates are advised against submitting multiple profiles to the Express Entry pool by IRCC, it is legitimate for a couple to have two separate profiles within the candidate pool, where each spouse is listed as the principal applicant.

While this may sound trivial, it can have a drastic impact on the CRS score of your profile, and on your overall chances of an ITA*.

Let’s take the example of Shahid and Layla.

Shahid is a 34-year-old civil engineer from Pakistan. He has a three-year bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering, strong English at about CLB 9 in all abilities, and is married to Layla, who is 29 and works as a data analyst.

Layla holds a Master’s degree in Data Science and also tests at about CLB 9 in English. They have no Canadian education, no Canadian work experience, no French proficiency, no siblings in Canada, and neither has a provincial nomination.

Over the past decade, Shahid has accumulated more than three years of continuous, full-time foreign work experience as a Civil Engineer, while Layla has just over three years of full-time foreign work experience as a Data Analyst.

Because Shahid has been in the workforce longer and has a more “classic” professional profile, the couple initially assumes he should be the principal applicant under Express Entry. They create their profile with Shahid as the primary applicant and Layla as the accompanying spouse.

Based on IRCC’s official CRS grid for candidates with a spouse, Shahid, as the principal applicant, gets an estimated CRS score of 408 points:

Scoring factor	Points
Core (principal)	303
Spouse factors	30
Skill transferability	75
Additional points	0
Total CRS	408

Later, after reading more about Express Entry, they realize that they are free to choose either spouse as the principal applicant, and that age and education are heavily weighted for the principal applicant under the CRS.

They switch their profile so that Layla becomes the principal applicant and Shahid is the accompanying spouse.

By switching the principal applicant from Shahid to Layla, their CRS jumps from 408 to 470 points, a gain of 62 points driven mainly by Layla’s younger age and higher education being counted in the principal-applicant columns.

Component	Points
Core (principal)	342
Spouse factors	28
Skill transferability	100
Additional points	0
Total CRS	470

*It should be noted that changing the principal applicant can also have wider-ranging implications for a couple’s ITA chances. For example, based on the work experience or language ability of the new primary candidate, a couple may qualify for a category-based selection (CBS) draw.

While this does not bring the couple’s CRS score up in absolute terms, CBS draws typically feature much lower CRS scores, meaning that a couple’s profile may receive an ITA without needing to see a huge gain in their CRS.

Check if your spouse may be the better principal applicant