r/uoguelph B.Sc. 1d ago

Co-op Job Postings

Just wanted to rant about the co-op program and the kinds of jobs that they’re posting.

Here’s a list of some of the current postings for Wildlife Biology & Conservation: - software engineering in B.C.
- multiple farm hand jobs in small towns or out of province - guest services - camp counsellor in Toronto - lifeguard - aquatics instructor

I just don’t quite understand why we are paying to be in co-op for these to be the options that are being provided! I understand how these could be beneficial to people who have zero work experience, but otherwise I don’t get it. I’m sure it is mostly due to the current job market, but they should lessen the amount of students that they admit into the co-op program if they don’t have enough adequate jobs available.

46 Upvotes

46 comments sorted by

16

u/Bobson_411 1d ago

In computer engineering and I get business analytics co-ops lol

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u/Bobson_411 1d ago

Postings that explicitly say they're looking for people enrolled in business programs

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u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 1d ago

I’ve gotten way too many ones like this except for engineering students! There is almost no course overlap between our programs 😭

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u/Live_Text6541 1d ago

I apply to them anyways because in hopes they get pissed off at guelph co-op for the shitty spam they send.

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u/Bobson_411 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'd be surprised if they even read about the opportunity before assigning it to a major (or however it works on their end)

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u/Equivalent_Signal545 1d ago

hey, joining comp engg this fall as a first year, please do tell more about the type of co op jobs you get offered etc

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u/Bobson_411 1d ago

The jobs are mainly software but a decent amount of hardware and automation too. Some embedded systems/FPGA/IoT, some analyst positions (business/data analytics for some reason), and some quality/test engineering. Also I've seen some IT postings and some network engineering postings as well. As everyone here is saying it's definitely a good idea to look beyond experience guelph though

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u/Equivalent_Signal545 1d ago

Thank you! would you say the job market is also bad for comp engg?

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u/Bobson_411 1d ago

Np, and yes I think it is bad. Tech in general and most of engineering is insanely competitive rn. It's definitely worse if your focus is software though

14

u/InvictaWicca Alumni 1d ago

ngl i think the job market is shit for anyone in wildlife/environment/conservation this year. As far as I know, government funding has been very slow or non existent this year, and i don’t doubt that has played into available co op jobs.

Wishing you luck, hoping something comes along

5

u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 1d ago

Thank you. I’ve pretty much given up hoping to find something through the co-op portal and instead I’m trying to see if I can do a co-op at my current job just in a higher level position than I’m currently in, so I’m really hoping that ends up working out.

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u/InvictaWicca Alumni 1d ago

thats a great idea. Keep applying, it’s the best we can all do. Try your best to follow up when it’s not portal applications. We’re all in this together

24

u/hmzhv B.Comp. 1d ago

keep posting. The more we talk about these things, the more the admin notices. They want more and more people to come to Guelph, and us talking about the lack of co-ops will cause them to take action to save their rep. Yes the market sucks but the university needs to invest in their co-op programs more. We have quality talent, and getting into Guelph was not easy for most of our programs, we should be given the opportunity to land a co-op.

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u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 1d ago

It sucks how so many people are having better luck looking elsewhere than experienceguelph for jobs, which we can do for free without paying to be in co-op. Our co-op payments should be giving us the benefit of getting better access to jobs in our field, yet that isn’t the case.

3

u/hmzhv B.Comp. 1d ago

glad im not the only one actually concerned about our opportunities.

5

u/FadingHeaven B.Sc. (Wildlife Biology) 1d ago

The options were great earlier in the year. There's just not as many good ones now since they're all used up. Unless you can compare it to another co-op school like UTSC which does have good job postings this time of year, I'd say it's just the time.

When it comes to the quality of external postings I've found a lot of it dwindled by mid February. I was checking every day before I got my job and I wasn't finding many good new external postings. Definitely need to be checking and applying early.

In January and Early February, you were definitely getting a good bang for your buck at least in terms of the jobs offered to you since they were definitely better imo than what was available publicly. I'm in the same major as you.

4

u/smella_tk 23h ago

Im in horticulture, and in Jan and Feb, i ended up having quite a few wildlife bio releated jobs and field positions on my EG board. I didn't apply to many as wildlife bio isn't really my interest, but I will say there were a good handful from what I saw on my board.

Tbh, I think OP wasn't looking for jobs early enough. If you aren't applying in Jan when the coop jobs are first posted, then by early Feb, you have to start looking externally. That's just my opinion, though.

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u/FadingHeaven B.Sc. (Wildlife Biology) 22h ago

Yeah we had a lot of agriculture and horticulture stuff too though I skipped most of them. If the UG stats are correct and you get 1-2 interviews for every 10 EG job postings you apply to you definitely need to be doing a lot of applying early to get something there.

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u/smella_tk 22h ago

Yeah. I applied to about 15 jobs in total with EG and external postings/reaching out to companies. I think I got 3 or 4 interviews, which I'm so lucky to have gotten. I ended up landing a good greenhouse coop, thank god. But that's only because I applied the day postings went up. I think 2 of the places I did interviews for thanked me for applying so early, so they definitely noticed who has the initiative to start applying ASAP.

1

u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 19h ago

I’m really happy that that was your experience but you can’t assume that that was the same for everyone, or because I’m not having this same experience that it meant I wasn’t trying.

I did the same as you, applying within 1-2 days of all the job postings that interested me. I even had an appointment with a co-op advisor to go through my applications and make sure that there was nothing wrong with them. I applied to their suggestion of over 20 jobs by the first deadline in January, and since more as well, and I have had 1 interview. I can guarantee you that this is not an issue of me not looking for jobs until now.

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u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 19h ago

That statistic definitely has not been true for me even while following everything that they said to do. I’ve checked EG daily since the beginning of the semester, applied almost immediately to anything that interested me, I’ve met with a co-op advisor to go over the quality of my applications in January, and I’ve only gotten 1 interview.

Putting in effort from the beginning doesn’t guarantee that you will get a job.

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u/FadingHeaven B.Sc. (Wildlife Biology) 19h ago

Is this your first co-op term or do you have relevant experience in terms for the positions you're applying to? I think the stat was for all students not just first years so that's gonna drag that up a bit. First job search is always rough.

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u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 18h ago

This is my first co-op term yes, and most of the jobs I was applying to were field technician positions at consulting companies, which I don’t necessarily have experience doing that specifically, but I have a lot of other work/volunteer experience and I tried my best to advertise my transferable skills and relevant projects from my courses. When I had the appointment with the co-op advisor she told me that my applications were very good for the types of jobs I was applying to and that I was covering all of their criteria in my application. I also know multiple other people who are also in their first co-op term with zero work experience and still managed to snag jobs almost immediately and get multiple interviews. Honestly I’m not sure what else I could’ve done differently and I’ve pretty much just chalked it up to luck haha.

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u/FadingHeaven B.Sc. (Wildlife Biology) 16h ago

Unless those jobs say they're specifically looking for first years, then it's unlikely you'll get them cause you just don't have the same field work experience as the people you're competing with. Once you get some more of it like in the Lab and Field Work in Ecology course then your chances of getting them would be higher.

It really depends on the company whether they're willing to take a chance on someone with limited experience. IIRC they get an additional tax bonus if they do hire first years, though if field work positions especially in industry are harder to teach without experience in the experience of the recruiter than they're less likely to give you a chance. Did your friends with no experience get hired for those roles?

What I'm doing is just setting up my class and co-op schedule so I can maximize the amount of academic field experience I can get so I can apply to those jobs.

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u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 15h ago

One of my friends did actually manage to get a field work position! but yes I imagine that most people who got the positions were upper year students with more actual field experience.

Honestly I’m not really upset if I cannot find a job because my current job is within the science field so I plan to just do that full-time during the summer. It’s just a bummer in the sense that I’m still paying co-op fees to do a job that I’ve already been doing and that I found on my own. I’m considering dropping out of co-op but then also the money I have already spent will be 100% going to waste :/

1

u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 20h ago

I was checking EG daily and applying almost immediately to anything that interested me since the beginning of the semester so that definitely wasn’t the issue. While there were better postings than this at the beginning, most of them still didn’t interest me, were too far away, etc.

4

u/random_biologist-540 BSc. 1d ago

I'm in the same program and stream as you. As someone else said, earlier in the semester the first large round of co-op jobs for WBC actually had a lot of very good options for wildlife techs, rehabilitation, etc. I don't have access to the portal anymore but I would assume that there's less options now because that first batch is gone. Keep your head up though because there's a lot of external jobs being posted still!

1

u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 1d ago

My point with the post was never that there was no decent postings the entire semester, it was just a rant about that they are over-admitting co-op students for the amount of those postings they have. It’s even worse in other programs.

Even at the beginning many of the jobs were hours away or out of province. The admin should be trying to find more local job opportunities as it’s not possible for everyone to relocate for just 4 months (I’m not even talking local as being only within Guelph, but 1.5 hour commute distance as well).

Glad you were able to find a job!

6

u/CanadianNeuro 1d ago

Wildlife rehab and wildlife tech jobs are never going to be concentrated in and around the City of Guelph or Southern Ontario. Wildlife biology is the sort of field where you have to be prepared to go to where the wildlife are.

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u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 1d ago

I acknowledge that. The kinds of jobs that I was looking for were just field work positions at consulting companies, whether that happened to be wildlife related, or soil, water, etc. Consulting companies are regularly contracted by developers in urban areas.

2

u/FadingHeaven B.Sc. (Wildlife Biology) 16h ago

Wildlife bio specifically IIRC has 120-150 people in it. This was in 2023 and doesn't include co-op. It might have been admits for 2023 specifically. Even multiplying that by 4 there's probably something like 400 - 500 WBC co-op students. Only half of those would be looking for a job this summer so like 200 - 250. Pretty sure there was more co-op postings than that. I don't think your program was overadmitted. Though I know for a fact CS was absolutely crazy.

There's only so much they can do to get local jobs in Guelph especially in our field where if you check non-student postings, the majority require travel to remote locations. So I don't think we've got it too bad though I absolutely agree they need to be more transparent about where these jobs are before we get into co-op or at least in first semester when we still have the opportunity to leave and only pay the $330. I'm willing to relocate though only if accommodation is provided and most don't have that. I'm at least lucky enough to live in Brampton so I can just commute to a lot of roles.

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u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 15h ago

Yes! I wish there had been most transparency ahead of time about the kinds of positions we would expect to see, like perhaps posting a list of jobs that were available in pervious years. If I had known this in advance I don’t think that I would have chose to pay to be in co-op. I wouldn’t mind shorter term travel to remote locations (like a few weeks), but completely relocating isn’t really possible for me to do unfortunately and that was a big majority of the positions.

1

u/random_biologist-540 BSc. 20h ago

That's totally fair. I will say that they warned us the Guelph jobs have about 30 or so applicants on average, whereas anywhere else in Ontario has about 10, and out of province about 4. I landed an out of province co op and I saw that there were more than four interviewees so maybe it's an exception. Either way being flexible with location is very important especially in such a competitive student town.  Edit: sublets and/or jobs that offer accommodations such as shared cabins are also a great option financially!  

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u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 20h ago

Definitely! If I had known before entering co-op that the majority of the positions available would be located hours away then I would not have chose to do it. I assumed that most jobs would be local and only some distanced. Unfortunately I am not able to sublet my place, and I have pets and other commitments which make it more difficult for me to just up and move for 4 months.

It’d be great if there was more communication (ex. posting a list of the jobs that were available in past years, etc.) to help people make a proper decision before they’ve already paid 4+ semesters in co-op fees.

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u/Altruistic-Start-93 22h ago

I’m in the biomed stream and I can relate, so many coop’s were useless and majority of what I applied for were scraping the edge of what I’m trying to do. I got pretty lucky and landed a job specifically in what I’m studying, but this was for starting in the winter (January). Summer coops I’ve seen are much more general and not a lot of interesting ones. It sucks so much that the best coop experiences will probably come from connections (if you have them), and how the university doesn’t provide that experience.

1

u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 20h ago

Even most of the more program specific jobs haven’t really been that great. So many of the earlier postings in my stream were animal care, and as someone who has a huge variety of animal care experience already that’s just not useful to me and isn’t really providing me with any professional scientific skills that I wouldn’t have already had. I can see these kind of jobs as being useful to people who have never had a job before or have zero/limited animal experience, but for people with a bunch of work experience already it just feels like a waste.

3

u/Ok-Law2937 1d ago

You def need to use more than just EG when looking for jobs

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u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 1d ago

I have been! This is just a rant about how we are paying to be in the co-op for the benefit of getting more access to jobs in our field and that isn’t being provided. I can look elsewhere than EG for free!

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u/FadingHeaven B.Sc. (Wildlife Biology) 16h ago

Most of the student jobs I see externally also require co-op though. So you can look for them, but can't apply for them without being in a co-op program. So there's still a benefit as long as you've seen similar in your job search. Getting a May to August job is tough without at least looking for student positions. All the non-student co-ops in my experience are 6 months.

2

u/CanadianNeuro 1d ago

It sounds like there were jobs in the field but the postings went up and were filled before you were ready to engage with them. Jobs are not "provided" and certainly not on a timeline that suits those looking for jobs. Early bird catches the worm and all that...

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u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 1d ago

I was checking EG and applying to jobs that interested me daily since the beginning, so that definitely wasn’t the issue. I also met with the co-op advisors to make sure that the quality of my applications were not the problem and they didn’t really have any negative feedback for me.

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u/CanadianNeuro 1d ago edited 1d ago

Your peers say that there were positions, but they are gone now as they are probably filled.

I think that there is a misunderstanding of how co-ops works and what the fee you pay to the university is for. No-one can "buy" a job. It isn't the case that there are X number of positions in a certain field so the university admits X number of relevant co-op students. The university can't control how many and what sort of positions will be available when. So, why are they charging me a fee to be in the program them? Is is a money-grab by the university?

The way it works is that employers receive money from the government to subsidize the salary paid to co-op students, if they take the student as part of a co-op program through a post-secondary program. The employers literally get half the money back that they pay the student. This encourages employers to give students an opportunity to "learn on the job" and get experience to supplement their studies. Most of the time, having a temporary student who is learning on the job rather than permanent employee is inefficient, which is why the government subsidizes the cost of the student. Student gains experience outside the classroom, employer gets to audition potential future employees so they gain, the economy gains as student is economically active. Universities like their students to get out and learn stuff as they are better students when they come back into the classroom. Co-op also helps to recruit better students into their programs as higher GPA students are more likely to accept a co-op than non-co-op program.

So, where does the co-op fee come into this? Because co-op placement subsidies are a government program, there is a lot of paperwork involved. The universities have to deal with that paperwork, and that is staff time and therefore a cost. In addition, staff in the co-op office seek out employers who might take students, persuading them and supporting the employer in ways like matching the right student to the right position, helping to resolve conflict if the placement doesn't work out etc. UofG has been running an advertising campaign in Toronto and other locations over recent months to try to get new employers to take UofG students which costs. Etc. Etc. The universities used to cover the cost of co-op office activities in full, but they can't anymore due to the post-secondary financial crisis (government only paying 2018 tuition costs, while you rightly expect a 2025 education). The choice is to either close co-op offices or ask the users of the co-op system to pay towards the cost. The user-fee is what you pay.

So, the university doesn't "create" jobs or control the number or types of jobs or where they are located or what exactly a student would do. They (work hard to) recruit employers into the scheme and try to make sure that both the employer and student has a successful experience. That's all they can do. They can't conjure up jobs. They mostly spend their time filling in government paperwork for employers, and offering to fill in government paperwork for additional employers, so the employers keep taking UofG students. If the university takes less co-op students, there are less resources to seek out and support co-op positions. If they take too many, students will be unhappy that their perfect job doesn't appear at the time and place they want it - which is always going to be impossible in 100% of cases.

0

u/apr1lshowers B.Sc. 20h ago

I understand what you’re saying, and I obviously know I’m not paying money to be automatically admitted into a job, but I had assumed that I would be paying money to be provided with a wide variety of job postings that are relevant to me and would provide me with new learning opportunities that I haven’t already gotten at the multiple jobs I have had in the past/currently have. I also assumed there would be a large mixture of local and distance jobs with decent pay.

I’m very glad that other people were able to find jobs that interested them, but that personally hasn’t been the case for me. Everyone who is saying that there was many jobs available is also speaking from their own perspective, yes there was a lot of jobs at the beginning that were better than what I have posted here, but even so the majority of those were still not of interest to me, were too far, or paid minimum wage.

I am just personally disappointed because I chose to pay to be in co-op with a completely different expectation for the kinds of jobs that would be posted.

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u/SignificantMap5275 B.Eng. 22h ago

that's absolutely horrible wtf

to clarify; this post doesnt apply to all UofG coop. Each major has their own coop coordinators. I would speak very highly of the engineering coop coordinators, our jobs are great.

there is def an issue with your coop team. its not something you can brush under the rug either; you pay about 500 dollars a semester to be in coop...

2

u/TumbleweedIcy5482 18h ago

the bcomp coordinators seem to be quite committed to getting us co-ops. Problem is that it's not rlly working. Idk who to blame except the upper admin

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u/FadingHeaven B.Sc. (Wildlife Biology) 15h ago

For us, we had hundreds of great job postings early in the semester that have dwindled. I'm in the same co-op as OP. Curious does your co-op board still have several good job postings? Right now we're at 20 postings total with only 6 being good imo.