Diversifying your work experience: A CO-OP student’s journey

Career and experiential learning 
CO-OP

By CO-OP

Career and experiential learning, uOttawa

Hiba
When choosing your CO-OP placement, one option is finding a sector where your studies are relevant but not necessarily directly related. A benefit of CO-OP is diversifying your work experience — whether through a different position, another company branch, a whole new company or an entirely separate industry.

Hiba Ait Bouhou is a student in her final year of her Master of Economics at uOttawa.  

Hiba decided to participate in the CO-OP program throughout her graduate studies. She completed her first work term at Montfort Hospital and is currently completing a second. At Montfort, she was tasked with optimizing services, studying the feasibility of multiple projects, helping with project communication and promotion, and updating the hospital website.

Hiba worked in the medical imagery sector on the project titled “PocketHealth”, a digital platform for sharing and sending images from medical exams to patients and medical specialists quickly and efficiently.

Hiba applied what she learned through her academic career in economics by calculating the costs of establishing the platform and applied uOCompetencies like communication by gathering and presenting the benefits of the project for the hospital.

She also worked on reducing the wait time for sending and receiving medical imagery.

To eliminate communication delays, the hospital had an attendant to transfer patients and replace medical equipment. Hiba recorded, analyzed and compared how various factors affected queues and wait times. She measured the times between when patients arrived and when they began their medical examinations, and how long their examinations took, based on factors such as whether the attendant was present, whether there were multiple technicians, whether it was day or night and whether it was a weekend. Finally, she organized meetings to discuss protocols among radiologists, medical technicians and others, documenting them digitally to avoid excessive paperwork and phone calls and growing her collaboration skills as well as her digital capacity.

Although Hiba’s work environment was in a different field than her academic major, she thoroughly enjoyed working at the hospital. She was exposed to a much different atmosphere than what she might have experienced with the usual economics work placements. 

Thanks to this experience, Hiba has a better idea of how to apply her studies at work.

Hiba

“There’s always economics everywhere, actually … the professional world is a bit different from academics, but it’s still consistent.”

Hiba Ait Bouhou

Hiba applied to the Montfort because she wanted to be in a bilingual setting — not working in just English or French — and because she would be able to start projects from scratch. She says she highly values the care and guidance she received from her supervisor, having been a bit nervous about how she would fit into the team. She believes she’s built a great network from her placement.

Hiba advises future CO-OP students to be curious and truly interested in the placements they choose, so as to do their best, put love into their work and be themselves. This will also affect how you’re perceived by your coworkers and the image you leave, which can help you get rehired after you graduate.