Travel experience in 10 years on the DND application form

[reds]

Hello,

I've collected all the necessary recruitment forms (there are about 15-20 pages of details to collect - yikes) and am in the process of gathering all the correct detail and realised that in 10 years I've been to ~16 places internationally. I've spoken to the recruiter who says just summarise it on a separate page and attach to the form - no problemo.

My question however is, during the process has anyone had a situation where their application was held back due to this? I was lucky to visit some exciting and exotic places, but I'm concerned the detail might take a bit more time to verify. I'm assuming they cross-reference it with travel data they have internally or something. My brother had a similar situation when he applied for a government job. The process was a bit different however.

The other question is...what's the best way to determine where you've gone exactly? So far I've relied on old passports and a massive library of photographs (if I've visited, I've likely photographed it). I'm worried that I might miss some important details though. Will do my best.

Reds

 

[cdnsoldier1982]

Do the best you can and the only advice I can offer is give as much detail as possible of where you have been and how long you were there this should help avoid delays but this is a process and delays do happen.  The only for seeable problem could be if you have visited a scheduled country in that case your application may take a bit longer.

 

[reds]

What do you mean by scheduled country?

I did a majority of the detailing last night - soooo tedious. I went on two cruises during that time and visited 3-4 countries at once. I'm wondering if I should detail this, even if we stopped for only a day. Or I could just record where we landed and came back from.

This is definitely something I should ask the recruiter *prepares to dodge incoming sarcasm from forum flamers*. Haha.

 

[futuresapper]

Is this for your initial application? If so I've been on a cruise myself and actually now that I think about I completely forgot about it and never put it on my application form. If I remember correctly there's a list of countries that you don't have to list and if a country isn't on that list then you must put it down.  Correct my if I'm wrong, I may have just misunderstood the directions... long story short I swear in on the 10th so regardless of correct or not it didn't really affect the end result.  On a side not I did have to go into a ton of detail on Japan as I spent four months there.

 

[George Wallace]

If you look closely at the form, you will fill out a minimum of information.  You fill out the countries you travelled to, the reason why you travelled to them, and the dates.  The dates will indicate how long you were there.

If you were on a Mediterranean Cruise, for vacation, between 1 Sep 09 and 14 Sep 09; list that, and perhaps put the countries visited in ( ).  These forms are not too "all encompassing" and are geared more towards a person going to one country for a long period for work or family.  When it comes to the various Travel Tours one can book, they really don't leave much to be desired in data entry. 

If you for instance visited France for a month, and made a day trip to Luxembourg to sightsee; it really wouldn't be necessary to list Luxembourg.  France would be the major point of interest as that is where you spent the majority of your time.  If you went to Romania to study for a year, as a student, then those would be the points that they would be interested in. 

And as you already mentioned; if you have any questions--go to the person, or organization, who gave you the forms to fill in and ask for clarification.

 

[reds]

Thanks George and InLine052. That's what I figured about the cruise aspect of things, listing them as one item made more sense that individual details. I'm filling out the DND Personal Data Verification Form which doesn't state anything about scheduled countries, so I assumed I'd have to list them all.

Either way, thanks again...there's no point belaboring the discussion if I should just clarify with the recruiter about the mechanics of the form. I just wanted to ask about delays in the process due to inaccurate details.

Cheers.

 

[Otis]

Here is exactly what I tell applicants when explaining the form:

We are looking for SIGNIFICANT absences from Canada ... either significant locations or significant lengths of time.

A week visiting Disneyland? We don't care. A week visiting Kabul? We might care.
Two weeks in England? We don't care. Three MONTHS in England, we might care.

We don't want to hear about every vacation you ever took (and especially not every country you visited during a cruise ship visit ...  unless it was a cruise of North Korea and Mainland China)

 

[nickinguelph]

My Pre-Sec took 2.5+ years to go through, however, I lived out of the country for 2 years, and then travelled to all those nice quaint countries, like China, Viet Nam, Cambodia, etc...

 

[reds]

That all makes sense, of course Otis.

The good news is the only really exotic place we visited was Tunisia (northern Africa) for two days.

I guess this is a concern for most applicants because they don't want to seem dishonest in the application process. So there's a slight bit of paranoia in what would be necessary detail.

Meh, what I've been told makes sense though. Cheers guys, I got my answer.