Working as a talent attraction coordinator co-op student, my main role revolves around using our social media to market our brand. Some of my primary responsibilities include assisting in responding to social media DMs, building our marketing campaigns, and working closely with recruiters to meet the job demands of the industry. For every needed role, I created featured jobs of the week and job alerts to help the roles gain more exposure on our social media and attract more talent.

I supported the team with our social media campaign. I researched the company's competitor websites and employee testimonials series to gain more insights into the industry. This included going into each competitor's career page and leaders of different industries to catch up with the trends and find any potential improvements for our website to provide a more compelling user interface experience. From the research, I created a social media one-pager that serves as a guideline that our team can follow when drafting and posting to yield high-engagement posts.

My manager also had me interview people for some other co-op roles. I got the opportunity to learn more about the interview process in recruitment, specifically how the recruiters interact with the interviewees, ask questions, and make final decisions.

I was in charge of hosting multiple events in the company. One of them is our co-op icebreaker event, which happens every first month of each term. I planned the event, from writing emails, building slides, and creating activities to inviting guest speakers and conducting surveys. Throughout my co-op term, I was able to host three icebreakers in total and connect more than 50 co-op students across Canada to network and learn more about the company. Another event was the department Christmas party. I volunteered to help the event organizer plan the logistics and donations. The team party was a great success, as we received positive feedback and donations from the participants.

I also worked back-to-back with the data teams to create our first talent attraction dashboard, which helped us gain more insights into our social media performance, audience demographics, and, most importantly, areas of success and improvement. I was the point of contact between the data team and my team, so I was responsible for delivering the requests and all the necessary information to the data team. The dashboard was completed in time, and our team could use it to pull useful findings that supported our campaign.

I learned a lot of things through the opportunities that my manager, teams, and company provided throughout my co-op term. My manager was supportive as she continuously helped me reach one of my goals during the co-op term: to learn more about the HR field. Thanks to my manager, I got to talk with people who work in different roles in the HR department, from HR data analyst, Recruiter, to HR Senior Business Partner and VP of HR. They shared their stories, their love for their jobs, and pieces of advice for a student like me. I am more confident and more motivated to start my career in HR.

I also developed new skills during this 8-month co-op. One of my projects involved interviewing co-op students and editing videos, which I had never done before. So, the task was challenging for me to get out of my comfort zone and expose myself to new things. In this case, that new thing is video editing. I spent two weeks learning how to crop videos, add subtitles, color grade, and edit audio. It was an enjoyable process as I got to work with various tools and get creative while building a new skill that would be extremely useful for me later.

It was a great 8-month co-op journey with my company. I met many people, developed many skills, and learned many things about the industry. This whole experience has shaped my personality and made me a better version as it forced me to work on my attention to detail and adaptability skills. For example, as I mentioned, I got out of my comfort zone and learned video editing to adapt to new tasks. Even when I write emails, I now pay extra attention to ensure the details, format, and tone are correct. I believe I will continue to do so in the future, to be curious and ready for new ideas and concepts. The co-op experience has helped me grow not only professionally but also personally, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of it.