Algonquin College reached out to the overeducated and underemployed in Ottawa on Monday at a conference it held for internationally trained professionals.

The point of the conference was to introduce skilled immigrants to each other as well as to potential employers.

"Honestly, I was expecting to find a job," says George Bebey, talking about what he thought would happen when he moved to Ottawa from Cameroon a year ago. "Maybe not easily, but at least after one year, I was expecting to have something."

Bebey is a civil engineer with eight years of professional experience, but right now, he's working part-time at a restaurant while he takes courses at Algonquin.

He says that he's frustrated Canadian employers won't recognize his credentials and experience.

"Nobody takes the risk to try us," he says. "We have a lot to give, but nobody cares about us."

The keynote speaker at Monday's conference knows what sort of challenge Bebey has ahead.

"It's as if you were born again, that's pretty much the kind of challenge," says Guillermo Mena.

Mena arrived in Canada a decade ago with two master's degrees from Colombia, but found that no employer would recognize his expertise.

So, Mena says, he went back to school.

He learned English and then got his executive master's degree in business administration. Three years later, he was running his own company.

But that's not everyone's experience.

"They go and they look for a job and they ask them for Canadian experience," Mena says. "Really, what they are saying is, 'I don't know about you. I don't know about your culture, I don't know about your standards. I'm afraid of you.'"

Mena says that he hopes events like this will not only help foreign-trained workers get ahead, but also help Canadian employers realize the potential that foreign-trained professionals possess.