Posted on Tuesday, August 15th, 2017
This past weekend, CBC Ottawa aired a segment featuring an interview with David Hall, the manager of the Cooperative Education Department at Algonquin College. In the interview, David discusses the benefits of co-op for students, and shares some helpful advice for students and recent grads embarking on their own job searches.
Posted on Thursday, August 10th, 2017
Recently, LinkedIn came out with their 2017 Workplace Learning Report. It’s focused on how employers provide learning experiences and personal development to existing employees, but it resonated with us in Cooperative Education, too.
Much of the conversation around workplace learning and development ties into co-op. In fact, in some ways, co-op is ahead of the curve when it comes to professional development. When looking at the ideal industry standards for learning and development, we see that co-op is already there.
Here are three key takeaways from the article that show how co-op will give your professional development a boost.
Posted on Thursday, August 3rd, 2017
A common question from students is how to build a relevant resume when you don’t have any relevant experience. You know you should create a resume that shows employers why you’re the best pick for the position, but if you’ve never worked in the field, how are you supposed to do that? With only retail or service industry experience, it can be daunting to try and prove that you’re a viable candidate for a professional job.
If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that the answer is to brand your experience. You want to take aspects of your part-time job and show why having worked it makes you the perfect hire. You need to make the position relevant.
But what does that mean, and what does that entail?
Below, we look at the three steps to brand your part time job.
Posted on Thursday, July 27th, 2017
Impostor Syndrome is the feeling that you’re a fraud in constant danger of being found out. It’s the feeling that no matter what you’ve achieved, you’re not actually good at what you do. This feeling is a lie, but tons of people are subject to it: this constant sense that we are not good enough.
Impostor Syndrome can hold you back at school, in your co-op placements, or at work. If you listen to it, you hesitate to take promotions or leadership roles because you might feel like you aren’t qualified enough. And it’s simply not true.
So how do you beat this feeling? How do you stop these kinds of thoughts from holding you back?
Below the cut, we look at some real techniques to deal with Impostor Syndrome.
Posted on Thursday, July 20th, 2017
Job interviews are a huge part of the job/placement hunting process. It’s where employers get a chance to meet you and find out what it is that makes you the best candidate. They’ll ask a lot of questions about your experience. It’s likely that a lot of those questions are behavioural.
A behavioural interview question is used to figure out how you react to certain workplace situations. The question usually starts with something like, “Tell me about a time you…”.
The interviewer is usually looking for one thing: a specific example of how you acted in that situation. They want to identify your skills and how you used them.
These kinds of questions can be stressful if you haven’t dealt with them before. Lucky for you, there’s a really simple formula to use when giving your answer: the STAR Method.
