Students

Stories relevant to students seeking advice, updates and relevant information pertaining to landing employment and/or co-op positions

How to Define Your Personal Brand

One key aspect of job hunting that you may hear pretty frequently is the concept of personal branding. Branding yourself can help you stand out to potential employers and make you super memorable to contacts in your network. We’ve written a complete guide on branding yourself as a student, which you can read here.

Branding yourself can be a difficult undertaking. It’s hard to take an objective look at yourself and figure out what facets you should feature in your personal brand. You may understand how to market your brand during your job search, but how do you figure out what your brand actually is?

Thankfully, there are some questions you can ask yourself to really dig deep into your personal brand. Below, we take an in-depth look at some of them, so you can get to work on branding yourself.

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How to Manage Your Finances as a Student

One of the most obvious stereotypes of students is the financial struggle: surviving on ramen, counting out pennies (or, nowadays, nickels) for laundry, picking up whatever extra shifts come along. And it is true that your time spent in school can be among the most frugal times of your life.

But there are ways to mitigate the struggle. Bursaries, scholarships, and government programs like OSAP are designed to help you get through the lean years of school. And there are steps that you can take, as well.

Below, we look at three ways to start managing your finances as a student.

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The Super Easy Way to Forward Your Student Emails Account to Your Regular Email

With school starting up, you’ll be getting busy again soon. It can be hard to keep up with all the information coming at you, from your program’s Facebook group to Blackboard to random asides in class. But one thing to always keep in mind—especially as a co-op student at Algonquin—is that checking your school email is really, really important.

Here in the co-op office, we use your student email address as our primary mode of communication. That means that resume reviews, interview requests, and—vitally—job offers will often come through your student email. And you don’t want to miss out on any of that.

But, because you’re busy, remembering to check your student email can be hard. The answer? Forward your student email to your regular email account, and make sure you get notifications of new emails on your phone.

Here are the 3 easy steps to make it happen.

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Three Ways to Update Your Cover Letter

You probably already have a cover letter (hopefully written following our guidelines). You’ve probably had it, or some version or template of it, for awhile. And it has probably worked and gotten you a job.

But with the end of summer—and the end of summer jobs—coming up, now is the time to take a few minutes and update your cover letter so you have a new, fresh tool in your job hunting kit. Here’s how.

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Three Keys Ways to Get Established at Your New Co-op

Co-op is a different experience from being a young professional because you are still in a learning environment. You are considered a full-time student and your co-op term is an extension of your classroom education.

But co-op is also different from being a traditional student. Because you’re working in a professional environment, you have a different set of guidelines for measuring your success. You also have an opportunity to begin establishing yourself as a professional. But how?

Below, we look at three ways to find success during your co-op experience.

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