Laurier BBA co-op second year student, some perspective....

There are many threads concerning Laurier BBA and its co-op program, just thought I would throw out a different perspective, a parent of a second year BBA student who is happy to have landed his first co-op job. Many of you reading this would at least be considering Laurier to pursue your Biz studies, and I hope you are treating the 50/50 chance of getting into co-op, as the “cherry on top”, and not a make or break feature of the program.
A little history, my son got into WLU with marks in the high 80’s, which dropped to an 80% first year average, with many solid EC’s, including a responsible EC with his floor in rez. As he had no Biz experience, he took his Canadian Securities Course (CSC) over the summer, to have something “business-y” to put on his resume, as well as to pursue his interest in Finance. He also was an ice breaker during frosh week of 2nd year. His co-op interview was the first week of classes this past Sept., and he was successful. The rest of first semester is mostly attending sessions to learn about the job hunting process and refine resume/cover letter, etc….If you are interested in accounting, some jobs are posted in December. If you are interested in Finance/Marketing/HR/Supply Chain/general biz type jobs, they are posted in January and beyond. Over 100 jobs were posted in Jan., and you are expected to apply to around 40. My son got 1 interview, many got none, and the stars got several (great marks and/or real-life biz experience make you a star, hit those books, kids). He was not ranked as the top candidate for the job, but since the top candidate took a different offer, he got the job with a large consumer products company in the GTA (Junior financial analyst, read, MS Excel jockey/guru/samurai, if you don’t know Excel cold, learn!!!).

The students who were successful in landing a job in the first round, which ended before reading week, have started a Facebook group and a googledoc so people can list their position obtained, on a volunteer basis. So far over 60 students have listed their position, there are approx. 290 second year BBA and double degree co-ops, hopefully they will all be placed before the end of April for a summer work term. My son says that some posted jobs were cancelled due to candidates at other schools getting the job, or funding cutbacks, and his co-op co-ordinator was surprised at the lack of government jobs in the “first round”.

In case you are curious, some sample job titles and employers are listed below:

Accounting – AGF, BDO Canada (4), Chubb Insurance, Collins Barrow, Deloitte (3), Ernst & Young (2), GE Capital, Grant Thornton, KPMG (3), Parker Simone LLP, PWC (3), most job titles say “Staff Accountant”.

Finance – Bell Canada (2), BMO Harris Private Bank, Diageo, Fidelity Investments, JC Clark, Ministry of Economic Development, Molson Coors, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (2), Pepsi (3), Sentry Investments, TD Bank Group, UBS Investment Bank/Securities (3), most titles are junior financial analyst or equity analyst.

Marketing - Aecon Industrial, ATS, Daggerwing Group, Johnson & Johnson, McCain Foods, Smuckers Foods, Conagra Foods, most jobs just say marketing intern/analyst.

General Biz – Formulating Change, General Motors, Open Text Corp., Region of York, The Co-operators, Winners, RIM, a real variety of job titles (e.g. supply chain intern).

I hope some of this info is useful, of course it is all second hand from my son and it is my attempt to piece together the process, suffice to say he is thrilled with his choice of school and he hopes co-op will be the “bonus” he was looking for in terms of getting some real world experience. I will monitor this forum for a couple of days to see if I can answer any questions, but likely current WLU co-ops or first year students will do a better job of answering. Haters, save your strength, not trying to pump up my kid, just hoping to provide some useful info at a crucial, decision-making time for some.