Invitation to Apply

Express Entry candidates who appear to meet the minimum entry criteria (MEC) and have registered with Job Bank, if applicable, are automatically entered into the Express Entry pool. Once in the pool, candidates are eligible to be issued an Invitation to Apply (ITA) for the program(s) whose requirements they appear to meet based on the self-declared information in their profile.

The ITA is an auto-generated correspondence issued to Express Entry candidates through their online account. The ITA is issued to candidates who rank the highest in a round of invitations, based on their score in the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS).

Candidates with a provincial or territorial nomination certificate are awarded an additional 600 points in the CRS and are normally invited to apply at the next round of invitations to which they are eligible.

When there is a general round of invitations, and a candidate appears eligible for multiple classes (e.g., the federal skilled worker class and the Canadian experience class), the system automatically invites the candidate to apply under one of the classes in the following order:

• Provincial nominee class (PNC)
• Canadian experience class (CEC)
• Federal skilled worker class (FSWC)
• Federal skilled trades class (FSTC)