The Business Intelligence, Research and Analytics Division in the CRA honours its commitment to hire Algonquin College co-op students during the pandemic.

Posted on Friday, August 14th, 2020

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has contributed to Algonquin College Cooperative Education in significant ways, which includes a commitment to hiring co-op students. One particularly noteworthy example within the CRA is the unique partnership established in 2015 between the CRA’s Business Intelligence, Research and Analytics Division (BIRAD) and Algonquin’s Business Intelligence Systems Infrastructure (BISI) program. Since its inception, this partnership has shown great value to both the Agency and Algonquin College students. The nature of this agreement took on an all new meaning this summer in the midst of the pandemic.

Going back in time, the terms of the agreement between BIRAD and the BISI program include student recruitment, innovative exploratory case studies, and upgraded training/accreditation opportunities for BIRAD employees. This agreement was further enhanced over the years, building on a culture of mutual trust and respect, collaboration, shared ownership and mutually agreed upon working arrangements. It is one of the cornerstones of BIRAD’s Human Resources Strategy. It provides an unparalleled opportunity for BIRAD to build and renew its capacity and meet the growing needs for a technically skilled workforce in advanced applied predictive analytics. Since 2016, BIRAD has coordinated the hiring of approximately 35 co-op students, for the Collections and Verification Branch from the BISI program; most graduates now work at the CRA full-time.

“Business and Artificial intelligence is a key component and driving force for the future. The BISI program is one of the best fits to meet our current needs,” says Hala Ibrahim, Director, BIRAD.

Co-op hires have been instrumental in bringing fresh, creative and innovative ideas that have helped optimize our existing business processes. In addition, the students bring with them a level of maturity that allows them to be successful in a public service environment. Being a one year specialization program, many of the students have practical real world experience in BI or related fields. These skills, enhanced by an intense BISI curriculum create the perfect conditions for the graduates to succeed.

“Upon joining BIRAD, BISI students are put through rigorous internal training and follow a development plan customized for them. This helps them learn about CRA processes, and exposes them to different areas of BI related workloads. The students have found professional success and have thrived in a CRA environment. With an incredibly high “bridge-in” rate, many BISI alumni have been promoted within our Division, or found success in other areas within the CRA,” says Dinaz Forbes – Coordinator, BISI-BIRAD partnership.

Throughout this long-standing partnership, BIRAD has developed and implemented a well thought out and effective process for hiring co-op students. The process starts with an orientation session to the new students, which includes presenting an overview of the Agency, BIRAD, the partnership, and a brief description of the work done in the hiring sections. Previous co-op students, who are full-time BIRAD employees are taken along to share their work experience, and offer tips to the new class on the management of their course load. Once the positions are posted on HireAC, BIRAD ensures that every student who applies is interviewed.

“We share interview questions with students ahead of time. We want to make them as comfortable as possible at the interviews so they can fully showcase themselves. The interview process lasts up to three full days, depending on the number of applicants. It’s a great opportunity for students to get experience in being interviewed. The BISI program instructor and the Stakeholder Relations Lead for Cooperative Education are given detailed feedback on the overall interview experience.” says Forbes.

The strong BIRAD-BISI collaboration enabled BIRAD to support the growth in the Business Intelligence/Applied Analytics sector stemming from the pandemic. Significant emergency packages were rolled out by the government to support Canadians in these unprecedented times. This context enabled BIRAD to honour their offers of employment made to seven students in early December. They all joined on the scheduled date of May 4, 2020.

Furthermore, when other BISI co-op students lost their prospective co-op assignments with various private and public sector employers because of the lockdown, BIRAD, in a concerted effort with BISI, was able to place three additional students, as BI service needs continued to grow and more expert resources were needed. This spoke volumes to the depth of the relationship and a mutual commitment in supporting each other for the common good. Other positive benefits emerged as a result of this situation. The solicitation of interest across the CRA’s BI community to fulfill both the organization’s resource needs and BISI co-op students’ employment needs helped raise awareness of the BISI program across the Agency for the future.

As the BIRAD-BISI partnership continues beyond the academic year, representatives from BIRAD participate with other employers from the public and private sector, as members on the “BISI Program Advisory Committee” meetings. BIRAD’s participation in the advisory committee benefits the college by utilizing industry knowledge to contribute to the BISI curriculum while providing an opportunity for students to gain quality work-integrated learning opportunities through class projects and co-op.

Every year, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) honours the achievements of its employees whose work and behaviour best exemplify the mission, vision, and values, through the CRA Awards of Excellence. A few years ago, the “Algonquin College and BIRAD Collaboration” was the recipient of this award in the Partnership category. This underscored the initiative taken in recognizing the growing demand for skilled labour in advanced applied analytics and providing a solution from within the Agency, to recruit and onboard young, promising students through the partnership.

In 2018, BIRAD and the Learning Technologies Division in CRA won the inaugural Outstanding Contribution to Algonquin College Cooperative Education Award.

The BISI-BIRAD partnership has proved to be incredibly powerful and impactful. Best practices from this relationship have been expanded within the Agency to the benefit of other areas, with a focus on the business intelligence community. BIRAD has demonstrated its sustained commitment through hard times, and is committed to continue building on this relationship and taking it to the next level in the years to come.

Business Intelligence System Infrastructure students complete their co-op work term in the summer and fall terms. Connect with us to hire an Algonquin College co-op student today.

Algonquin College Biotechnology Students Help to Fill Talent Gaps at Big Rig Brewery

Posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2020

Big Rig Brewery was founded in 2012 as a small batch brewery and restaurant. In the last eight years, they have significantly expanded across Ontario and now produce over 30,000 litres of beer per year. Their growth in the marketplace has resulted in the build-up of their brew house lab in Ottawa. This expansion resulted in the need for qualified employees with introductory lab skills and the ability to keep up in a fast-paced production environment.

The brewing process at Big Rig Brewery is more than just hops and yeast. Their beer is brewed in a historic style but with modern processes and quality controls to monitor yeast health and cell counts. As Big Rig looked to fill positions in their brewing team they found there was a talent gap. “Many of the skills we are looking for can be found in basic lab techniques and unfortunately there are not many qualified Brewery Technicians”, says Philip Kochanke, Director of Quality Management and Packaging at Big Rig.

“We had hired Electrical Engineering Technician co-op students in the past for our processing line and through this process; we learned that Algonquin College also has a great Biotechnology co-op program”. In the summer of 2019, Big Rig decided to hire two Biotechnology co-op students, “These students brought a formal lab background and experience to their job which helped us to manage everyday brewery operations while our team focused on improving our Standard Operating Procedures as we continued to expand”, Kochanke said.

“Algonquin’s Biotechnology students really helped us. They were able to apply basic biotechnology principals to their role in the lab which included taking and processing samples in a specific way and helping to implement quality control measures.”

Funding opportunities helped in the hiring process. “There are really great financial incentives to hire a co-op student. We were able to hire two full-time co-op students due to the funding that we received from Biotalent Canada. The application process was simple and the staff at Biotalent were extremely helpful in the process.”

When asked about the future of talent in the Brewing Industry, Kochanke said “There is definitely a need for Biotechnology students and graduates in our industry; they can work in roles such as Lab Technician, Yeast Management Technician, and Packaging Line Technician. The skills they learn in their program can help breweries by applying scientific methods to troubleshoot and maintain process management in a production and food-processing environment.”

Kochanke added, “Our experience hiring co-op students has been great, it has been a real pleasure working with everyone from Algonquin and we hope to hire more co-op students in the future.”

If you are interested in hiring a Biotechnology Advanced Co-op student, please contact the Cooperative Education Department at Algonquin College by phone at 613-727-4723 Ext 7623, by email at coop@algonquincollege.com or by visiting our employer request for information form.

Images provided by Big Rig Brewery.

622 Co-op Interviews Conducted in the Past 2 Weeks!

Posted on Monday, September 30th, 2019

We are only partly through our hiring process for the Winter 2020 Term (January – April) though we are pleased to share that 622 co-op interviews were conducted in the past two weeks alone with over 113 of our employer partners. There are still plenty of students available to be hired for Winter 2020 but we would like to take this opportunity to thank our employers who have posted jobs with us thus far. Thank you to all our employers who have interviewed as part of our new Rank and Offer process, we appreciate your patience and understanding as we streamline our processes to support the growth of cooperative education at Algonquin College.

“Based on our research, and continued consultation with other high-performing co-op colleges and universities, we decided to test a new co-op job posting and interviewing model that can serve our stakeholders in a more efficient and timely way,” says David Hall, Manager, Cooperative Education. “This change has enabled us to conduct three times the amount of interviews in the past two weeks when compared to the same time frame last fall.”

Starting this semester, we’ve updated our job application, interview and job offer process to a co-op industry standard called Rank and Offer. This will allow the Co-op Department to manage the interview process more efficiently to better support our learners in their journey to find co-op employment while providing a more streamlined hiring process for employers.

“These self-serve and automation improvements mean our students get more choice in the jobs they accept, allow employers to know the results of their interviews sooner, and allows the co-op team closely manage the entire hiring process from start to finish,” adds Hall.

“With new co-op programs offered each year, we are constantly evolving to find new ways of becoming more responsive and scalable while continuing to provide an exceptional co-op experience for learners and employers.

With Rank and Offer we will have an initial first round of co-op hiring early in the semester and then we will employ a continuous process, where employers can post their jobs, interview, and send job offers at any time, for the remainder of the term.

It might seem early in the semester for students to have their job offers for a Work Term in Winter 2020 but there are several ways that our learners benefit from this new process.

  • More time to apply for jobs and interview with several employers
  • First round of offers are sent during a specified period potentially allowing multiple job offers for them to consider
  • More opportunity for interview feedback and reflection
  • Job offers will be fully automated, learners and employers will be notified as soon as a job offer is extended and accepted

If you are interested in hiring an Algonquin College Co-op student for a work term starting January 2020, now is the time to post your job as we still have plenty of students available!

Send us an email or visit our website to learn how Cooperative Education at Algonquin College can help support your business.

We look forward to hearing from you!hire

Algonquin College Co-op Team