Landing Your First Co-op

ByteSized
5 min readFeb 15, 2021

Boosting your application so that it gets from your hands straight to your employers’.

Applying for your first co-op can be in equal parts exciting and intimidating. You finally get to step outside of your academic bubble and put all the skills and knowledge you’ve acquired to use. At the same time, you wonder if you have what it takes — enough skills, the right experience, good grades. The truth is, co-op employers are not looking for people who can already do everything. If they were, they probably wouldn’t hire students. Instead, what they are looking for is promise. They likely want to hire a student whose application shows the potential for them to grow and establish themselves at their company. Here are a few tips on how you can be that student.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

1. Sort Jobs and Apply in Batches

You’ve probably heard at this point that it’s a good idea to create applications that are specific for each job you’re applying for. When you’re a co-op student applying to multiple jobs at a time in hopes of getting selected, this is easier said than done. A good way to organize this process is to sort the jobs you’re applying to into batches.

If you’re a STEM major, you might sort your applications into research, leadership, and industry-specific categories. This lets you prioritize certain job categories and send out your applications more efficiently. Grouping multiple jobs together can also help you find similarities in the job descriptions to better tailor your application.

2. Tailor Your Resume/Cover Letter Using Templates

Once you’ve grouped your prospective jobs into categories, you can now begin to make templates. Making a template resume/cover letter involves looking through job descriptions in one category and highlighting the common skills they all require. By doing this, you can match up your own skills to the common ones you find. You can then make a template which includes all the skills you have that you know these roles prefer. This streamlines your applications because instead of creating new, tailored resumes for each role, you can instead add to one template resume for the whole category and quickly send out your resume and/or cover letter. Having templates for each of your categories can drastically cut down on the time it takes to apply while also ensuring your handing in top quality stuff.

3. Use Multiple Job Boards

A lot of co-op programs offer their own job board for students to use. These are useful because they contain unique university-approved positions where students have previously worked. However, limiting yourself to one job board that everyone applying for co-op uses is a recipe for disaster. Each position is likely receiving high volumes of student applications, making them highly competitive.

Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, look on other job boards. A lot of the time applications may be coming in much slower on another job board and the number of skilled people applying may not be as high. Applying to jobs on other job boards may get you a quicker response. This is not to say applying on your co-op job board is a waste of time, just don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Some unique job boards include Girls in Tech, Work in Tech, Charity Village, and GoodWork. Job boards like Indeed and Glassdoor shouldn’t be off the table either.

4. Contact Companies for Co-op

Have you found a really cool job that you think you have the skills for, but it’s not offered to co-op students? Contact the company requesting for it to be a co-op position and offer yourself as their candidate. This might sound entitled, but it actually offers both you and the company benefits. Before you email, look into the benefits your prospective employer would get if they were to hire you as a co-op student. Not only are there obvious benefits like being able to fill a temporary position, potentially creating a future employee, and unfortunately for you, being able to pay less (you may not want to include this in your email), but there are also significant benefits the company can get from the government.

In Ontario, they can benefit from the Ontario Co-operative Education Tax Credit and also internship grants if they choose to hire you for a paid/unpaid internship. This option may require a little more work, but if there’s a company you really want to work at for experience, it’s worth a shot to try!

5. Take Advantage of Resources

If you are looking for a co-op, one of the biggest advantages you have on your side is an abundance of resources. Your school is likely to have a writing centre/career professionals that you can go to double-check your resume and make sure that it is as polished as it can be. The same goes for your cover letter. Your student centre or guidance office likely offers mock interviews for you to practice your interview skills. With the recent shift to online interviews, this is incredibly useful. Attending seminars and workshops being held by clubs at your school with corporate speakers is also super helpful even if you are not interested in applying to their company. Getting diverse advice from people across different fields can help you craft a better application and may open new doors for you when it comes to applying.

Not taking advantage of these resources can be harmful to your job search. You may end up having a weaker application than other candidates who took advantage of school resources. If you are a university student, you may also be paying for these resources in your tuition only to not use them. Outside of school, there are also online tools you can turn to. Glide is an example of a free, student-made resume critiquing website that you can use for industry-specific feedback (currently it is only useful for software engineering roles). Using Reddit to see how other people who work in your preferred role built their applications could be useful, as well.

6. Don’t Think About It — Just Apply

A lot of people end up missing out on good roles because of their fear of rejection. If you come across a job description and you feel like you’re not the perfect fit, just apply! Thinking about whether or not you qualify for a job isn’t something you should overthink about. That’s the recruiter’s problem. You just have to make sure you gather the best experience you can and present it in the most appealing way possible. If you like a job but don’t feel qualified, just apply! You have nothing to lose and a job to gain.

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ByteSized

ByteSized is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to bridging the gap between students (technical or not) and the technical world