Pics from Thursday interviews

I had 4 interviews today. I didn’t take pictures from the morning interviews because those were done by phone from Vancouver to Toronto. Those were for paid internships in IT.

The afternoon interview was in Gastown, unpaid internship in marketing. That company has a huge, amazing office, very cool, very good view. Here’s from their conference room – one problem with the picture (done on an iPhone) was the light kind of washed out a lot, so you can see the view but not the room.

Here’s the happy intern after the interview – she did really well, and they hired her on the spot.

No interviews for me tomorrow – Maria has a couple, but I think those are more phone ones which don’t look great on camera.

We're expanding!

The exclamation mark is because we’re expanding ahead of schedule – and I’m excited about that.

VancouverInternships.ca is soon to become WorkandTravel.ca.  We’re changing the name because we’re becoming a national company.  We’ve secured several good contracts with schools on the other side of the country, and together with a recent investment, it means we will be opening east of the Rockies in July.

Everything we’ve done with this company is months ahead of schedule.  I’m endlessly grateful for the trust schools have put in us, and the good faith students have shown so far.  We’ve done more than 2 dozen internship placements in our short existence, and nearly as many teacher placements.

On the books right now we’ve got more than 60 files.  This week alone, we have the following interviews:

• Casual Work Experience (1 interview – retail)
• Paid Internship (5 network administration, 2 telecom)
• Unpaid Internship (3 hotels, 1 new media, 1 marketing)

We’re really at the point of some explosive growth.  We’re opening two new offices, we’re hiring staff, we’re placing interns, we’re adding on new clients nearly every week.  And in this economy . . .

I’ll post some more when we get the new logo . . .

Recession hits Korean-Canadians hard

I can’t see an internship angle on this piece – though, I do see the potential marketing opportunity for schools here. This is from a blog post written by an intern at the on-line magazine I contribute to (a-ha! there’s the internship angle):

Many Canadians are feeling the effects of the global economic downturn, but Korean immigrants, despite being well educated for the most part, are experiencing even greater hardship than most.

The recession has compounded their challenges by increasing the level of competition for employment and decreasing the viability of Korean-owned businesses, which have traditionally helped new immigrants integrate into the labour market while they are learning to speak English.

Koreans face different challenges than other immigrant groups. Approximately 20-per-cent of all immigrants to Canada arrive as skilled workers and principal applicants. That figure rises to almost 60 per cent by adding dependents and spouses. This is compared to 91-per-cent of Korean immigrants to the country, who arrived under the economic class, which is defined as individuals selected by Citizenship and Immigration Canada for their “skills and ability to contribute to Canada’s economy.”

Despite the fact that a majority of Koreans arrive as economic immigrants, many of them face challenges integrating into the Canadian labour market. The 2006 census showed a 9.5-per-cent unemployment rate among the Korean population in Vancouver, compared to a 7.1-per-cent rate for all visible minorities and a 6-per-cent rate for the city as a whole.

Min said the biggest challenge he faced when coming to Canada was not knowing how to speak English, which made it hard to find a job with established Canadian firms – and when they do it is often at entry level. A City of Vancouver study on the Korean community found that among employed immigrants, 39 per cent are working in low-wage sales and services positions and many more are self-employed.

Read the rest here.

4 job fairs in 4 weeks

The job fair in Richmond was big, but weird.  Really weird.  It was in the public library, but the thing is that the Richmond Public Library doesn’t seem to have any conference space, so they held the job fair between the aisles and in the check out area.  Seriously, 50 companies spread over two floors, and squeezed into every available millimeter of aisle space.

Good companies mind you.  There’s this fruit stand by my house that I though was a quaint little neighbourhood shop.  Turns out they have about 50 locations around Vancouver and hire new people – including international students – each week.  Or rather, they will be hiring international students, thanks to that meeting at the job fair, which made the whole trip worth it.

The next job fair – the 4th in 4 weeks is at the Vancouver Public Library on Thursday.  You can find out about that here: http://www.cave-employment.com/events.php

Internships and the Great Recession

If you’ve been reading the papers or watching TV over the last two weeks, you will have seen that BC took a big hit last month.  The latest statistics show BC facing huge job loses, the worst since 2004.

They’re bad, and there’s no disguising it.  But it’s mainly the goods producing sector and service sector taking the hit – that is to say forestry, mining, finance, real estate etc…

So not to minimize the bad news for them, there is little bad news for you as an intern, or a school with interns to place.

Our company assists schools in managing their internship and work experience programs.  We do 3 kinds of placements for them and their students:

• Hospitality (food services, accommodation)
• Unpaid Professional Internships
• Paid Professional Internships

Schools worry, more than anything else, about the Hospitality program.  They’ve been told by our competitors that the industry has collapsed and that placements are impossible.

This is from the latest release by BC Stats (the provincial government statistics agency):

While the magnitude of the job losses during the previous month was not repeated, employment in the service sector continued to slip in March (–0.1%). The largest drops in service sector employment were experienced in the finance, real estate & insurance (–5.7%) and information, culture & recreation (–4.5%) industries.  Employment in the retail and wholesale trade industries slipped for a third straight month (–0.8%) while the transportation (+3.1%) and accommodation & food service (+4.5%) industries saw a boost.

That last line in bold – that’s your hospitality program.  In 2008, Metro Vancouver had about 90,000 people employed in accommodation and food services.  Last month, in our worst month of recession so far, the number actually continued to grow, rising 4.5%.

Summer is coming, the cruise ship season will be here soon, the Olympics are coming, and in fact even without those, we’re still seeing growth.  I’ve been at 2 hospitality job fairs in the last 2 weeks, and I have 2 more in the next 2 weeks.  The panic in the press asside – it is business as usual.

Now getting to unpaid professional internships – it’s a boom time.  We have placements available in even the hardest hit industries – want to do an unpaid practicum in finance?  Real Estate?  Recruitment?  How many interviews would you like?

Students at this point are more often than not, getting a choice of which company they will work with.  Granted it still takes skills and connections.  You can imagine how full the email inboxes of these companies are with job seekers – so if you’re not working with them now, it’s not going to happen.

Paid internships.  These have never been easy.  During the boom they were hard labour, and during the bust they’re hard labour.  But, largely because of the cost involved in 6 months of studies and the risk inherint in leaving a scarce job to come to Canada in the first place, demand has self-corrected to meet supply.

One thing helping us to meet our obligations for paid professional placements is the early opening of the Richmond Skytrain line.  This will now open on or before Labour Day in September.  In other words, any student beginning their studies in a paid professional internship program, will be doing their internship after the Richmond Line has opened and during the run up to the Olympics.

Having Richmond available for placements will effectively double our supply of paid professional IT jobs and office admin.

So overall, in spite of the numbers you see on TV, when you dig down into the actual stats, we’re in good shape.  This is the worst of times right now, maybe another 1 or 2 terrible months, and we’ll start to level out through the summer, and see major growth through fall and into the winter.

Graphic Design Internship in Vancouver – Apply Now

One of our old friends – Calgoo Software – was bought by a company called Meridex.  I visited Meridex a couple weeks back and took a quick tour of their office.  It’s a nice place, and an interesting business – they provide a safety product for schools called 3CSafe:

3CSafe is a web based safety assurance platform that provides the ability to respond in a rapid and proficient manner to any incident that jeopardizes safety. Unlike traditional CCTV surveillance systems 3CSafe combines your video with all the critical information you need into one view (common operating picture) and allows you to collaborate and communicate with anyone else who needs to be involved.

They’ve got a half dozen people in their Gastown (Vancouver) office.  They’re looking for an unpaid graphic design intern.  It’s a great environment for an intern, very supportive team.  They are looking for people immediately, and the term can vary.

The intern will be working on Adobe Creative Suite, designing marketing collateral for 3CSafe, and also working on web 2.0 marketing campaigns, using things like blogs, twitter, facebook etc…  Required skills are familiarity with Adobe products, and good written English.  To do this internship, you must be a student in an accredited university, community college, or career college.

To apply, contact us and we’ll forward your information along.  You can contact us by clicking here.

Job Fair April 23rd at the downtown library

Yet another …scroll through the main page of the posts – this is one of three job fairs coming up.

5th Annual Connections to Employment Job Fair

Thursday, April 23rd. 10 am to 3 pm, Vancouver Public Library

For a poster of the event, click here.

Learn about opportunities in health, finance, hospitality/tourism, information technology, janitorial services, public services and retail.

Some employers attending include:

• BC Hydro
• VANOC
• BC Ferries
• Blockbuster Canada
• Staples
• Bank of Montreal
• Fairmont Hotel and Resorts
• Home Depot
• Cara Airline Solutions
• T&T Supermarket
• Bell Canada

This event is particularly useful for new immigrant job seekers. Bring your resume and be prepared for on-site interviews.

For more information, call Carol Cordeiro @ PICS 604 324 7733

Job Fair Wednesday

I spoke to a friend last night who is working from 4am to 7pm because his company doesn’t have enough workers.  In spite of all the scare-mongering about the ‘worst recession ever’ almost everyone in Vancouver is still hiring.  Yet another job fair this week – ’tis the season.

This one’s downtown at the YWCA Career Zone.  I’ve helped put on job fairs there before – you can squeeze about 20 companies into that space if you’re committed to it.

YWCA Career Zone Spring Hiring Fair

Jobs, Careers & Opportunities
- Apply to 16 + Employers From All Industries

Wed. Apr. 8 from 2 pm to 5 pm

FREE Admission

YWCA Career Zone
1260 Granville St.
Vancouver, BC

Tel: 604-605-4666
careerzone@ywcavan.orgy
ywcajobseeker.org

BRING YOUR RESUMES, SMILE AND GET A JOB!!!!!!!!

Ramping up for the 2010 Games

Everyone that works with us knows how we’re preparing for the games: 175 new spaces in our work experience and internship programs.  I’ve heard a few clients say that it’s an ambitious number, too high to go during the recession.  Honestly – we could do 500.  Only two things are holding us back: accommodation (i.e. the lack of it) and staffing (we have to monitor and supervise all those people).

Here’s why I’m not worried about the job side - from the Globe and Mail:

… much like elite athletes who must begin training well in advance of the Olympiad, some businesses have been preparing for 2010 with the start of the games circled on their calendars for more than a year.

For Betsy Cooper, the run-up to the games started one day in 2006 when she quit her job as a public relations executive in Toronto, packed all of her belongings — and her mother — into the car and drove west to launch her own PR firm, B-Co Communications.

“Really, with 2010 around the corner I thought what a great opportunity,” she said. “It was a pretty obvious that if the Olympics are coming to Vancouver, companies are going to have to start focusing on this market, because the world’s eyes are going to be here. Whether they’re the Olympic sponsor or their competitor or maybe it’s a small business in B.C. that wants to make their mark.”

Some of her business comes through outsourcing deals she has arranged with Toronto-based PR firms, which has allowed her to find work with companies such as General Motors Corp., 3M Co. and Molson Coors Brewing Co. But the crown jewel of her client roster is Korath Wright, a 23-year-old snowboarding star who grew up in Canada and now competes for the Bahamas.

Although Mr. Wright has been ranked as high as 13th in the world in the half pipe event, comparisons with the Jamaican bobsledding team that competed at the Calgary Olympics in 1988 (and subsequently inspired the John Candy movie Cool Runnings) are unavoidable, Ms. Cooper said.

“He’s pretty honoured to be put in a category with people who had a movie made after them, but at the same time he’s a legitimate contender,” she said. “He’s a pretty great half-pipe snowboarder.”

Two provinces away in Regina, the six men and women — and a dog named Molly — who make up the staff of Laurie Artiss Ltd., better known as The Pin People, have been feverishly designing hundreds of tiny lapel pins in honour of the games.

“It’s very difficult for us to try to predict what pins are going to be successful,” said company vice-president Chris Pasterfield. “We try to take advantage of what we think will be popular pins in terms of the sports and the venues landmarks, things like that, but we can’t predict what pin will all of a sudden grab the public’s fancy.”

At the Salt Lake City Olympic Games in 2002, the most popular pin featured a bowl of Jell-O, made by The Pin People. At Winnipeg’s Pan American Games in 1999, it was a guitar-themed pin that became a favourite for collectors. For the Vancouver Games, the company is creating pins that honour the various sports, venues, mascots and countdown days associated with 2010.

The Pin People began creating Olympics pins at the Calgary Games in 1988 and haven’t looked back.

“In the 20 years that have passed, there’s certainly things that have changed in terms of licensing,” Mr. Pasterfield said. “The industry has really grown in terms of graphic standards and graphic controls in order to ensure that everything is adhered to properly.”

Some of the pins designed by The Pin People are currently on sale through the Vancouver Olympics’ official online store, built and run by Vancouver’s ElasticPath Software.

Although ElasticPath has also built e-commerce platforms for big brands such as Groupe Aeroplan Inc. and Avis Group Holdings Inc., the Olympics have provided the company with a rare opportunity to showcase their expertise to a truly international audience.

“It’s been great,” said Matt Dion, the company’s vice-president of marketing. “E-commerce is a real hot space, even in this economy, and with something like the Olympics, it adds to that list of high-profile customers and gets our name out there even more.”

Notice what they’re saying at ElasticPath.  Showcasing.

As I said we could place 500 people during the games without breaking a sweat.  That translates into a sizable fraction of a million dollars.  Don’t think we’re not tempted.  But rather than rake in short term cash at the expense of standards and our reputation – we’re putting extra efforts into monitoring and quality control.  We’ll be rolling out daily online media, photos, videos, multi-lingual testimonials … this is our showcase, and in fact it’s a showcase (whether you want it to be or not) for every business in Vancouver.  If you want it to work out for you, best to start preparing now.  Two or three years from now, our partners abroad will still be judging us on the quality of the work we do this coming winter.

How to get the most out of your internship

This is something I’m handing out to interns today – 4 of them will be off to work in the coming weeks:

1. Set Personal Goals. While some internships are very structured, others are not, so you need to spend some time before you start the internship setting goals that you want to accomplish. Maybe it’s deciding on what area within marketing that you want to specialize, or learning new skills, or building your network. Whatever your goals, you will feel a greater sense of accomplishment once you achieve them. Hint: Setting unrealistic goals could make even a good internship seem bad, so make sure your goals are realistic and attainable in your internship.

2. Have Regular Meetings with your Supervisor(s). Sound obvious? Well, maybe, but you may get a supervisor who never schedules meetings with you or travels quite a bit, so you have to make sure to have regular meetings where you can share experiences and lessons learned — both good and bad — as well as give progress reports. Hint: While you want to keep your supervisor abreast of your accomplishments, remember to also be a good listener and learn as much as you can during these meetings.

3. Tackle all Tasks with Enthusiasm and a Positive Attitude. In just about every company, the new hire/intern is going to have to “pay his or her dues.” You will undoubtedly be given some grunt work to do, such as making photocopies, but the key is to complete all your work assignments with the same level of enthusiasm and professionalism. Hint: You might also consider working extra hours (beyond the required number for the internship) to show your work ethic to your supervisor(s).

4. Avoid Negativity. The quickest way to kill a good internship is being negative. So, avoid complaining, being rude, disrespecting coworkers, arriving late, leaving early, being closed-minded, missing deadlines, appearing arrogant, wearing improper attire, acting unprofessionally, appearing inflexible, and taking part in office politics. Hint: A common mistake among interns and new hires is treating secretaries and clerks as being beneath them — avoid this behavior at all costs.

5. Never Shun a Chance to Learn More About the Company/Industry. Take every opportunity presented to you to attend company or industry meetings, conferences, and events; participate in training workshops; and read all company materials. Hint: Meetings may appear (and actually be) boring to you, but they can often offer a good chance to increase your knowledge, network, and build relationships.

6. Get as Much Exposure as Possible. Some of the best internships rotate you among departments and supervisors, but if yours doesn’t, don’t let that stop you from tackling new tasks, meeting people outside your department, and attending company social events. The more you are exposed to new ideas and new people, the more you’ll learn. Hint: Joining the company softball team (or other informal group) is a great opportunity to meet new people in a relaxed and informal environment.

7. Don’t be Afraid to Ask Questions. Always remember that an internship is a learning experience for you. While the employer expects to get a certain level of work from you, you are not expected to know everything. Seek advice and raise questions whenever you encounter something that is not familiar to you. Be open-minded about new ideas and procedures — remember that you don’t know everything and that your professors didn’t teach you everything. Hint: Smart people know that there really is no such thing as a dumb question, so ask before doing.

8. Take Initiative. Employers love employees who dive into tackling tough problems and who think “outside the box” in finding solutions. Just make sure you work with your supervisor(s) so you don’t overstep your authority — and make sure you share successes with her. Hint: There is a fine line between taking initiative and being perceived as a “know-it-all,” and for interns especially, it is best to err on the side of caution.

9. Find a Mentor. A mentor is someone at a higher level in the organization that looks out for you and makes sure you are learning what you need to know and accomplishing what you need to do. A mentor can also shield you from office politics and be a good sounding board for you to discuss ideas, ask questions, etc. Hint: Your supervisor could be your mentor, but it could also be another person within the organization.

10. Network, Network, Network. One of the key tools of job-hunting is utilizing your network to find your next career step, whether another internship or a job upon graduation (and beyond). Build professional relationships with your supervisor(s) and other managers in the organization. These people are also a good source for getting other job-hunting advice and tips from their years of experience. Hint: Even if you have a bad experience on an internship, never burn your bridges because you never know when it could come back and hurt you. Always leave on good terms.

11. Leave with Tangible Accomplishments. One of your goals with any internship is leaving it with some tangible results – both for your resume and your career portfolio (if you use one). Maybe you developed a brochure, computerized an inventory system, organized a sales conference, met with clients, tracked industry trends, etc. Hint: Keeping a journal may help you remember all the things you accomplished on your internship.

12. Enjoy Yourself. Most internships are great experiences, so make sure you have some fun while you’re working and learning. Don’t be so uptight that you are perceived as something you’re not. Hint: Just make sure you don’t overdo the fun — and avoid office romances.

Source: http://www.quintcareers.com/internship_success.html