Summer Temporary Employment Program (STEP)
Local business and the Alberta government are connecting with the Summer Temporary Employment Program (STEP). The program helps students gain work experience in collaboration with employers. Information sessions will be in Alberta, and already happened in Edmonton.
Minister of Labour, Christina Gray, said STEP is valuable to students by giving work experience. Indigenous Relations Minister and Edmonton Rutherford MLA, Richard Feehan, said the importance of STEP in giving advantages to students in the job market.
STEP is predicted to cost $10 million and create 3,000 jobs. The program gives employers a subsidy of $7/hour based on “work opportunities between four and 16 weeks” for high-school or post-secondary students returning in the fall with distribution “across sectors and across the province” in a fair manner.
Athabasca University Pushes for Manufacturing Jobs
Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME) joined with AU to train the Canadian manufacturing workforce. AU School of Business created the Manufacturing Management Certificate of completion (MMC) in late 2015, in Saskatchewan.
CME encouraged all companies in its membership in Canada to have “every company engaged in manufacturing to enroll their employees.” The CME/AU joint effort is intended to train workers capable of competing internationally as managers and supervisors.
By training, MMC will fill the gap in manufacturing management’s skills shortage “promoting production or operations employees into supervisory or management positions.” According to Dr. Deborah Hurst, dean of the Faculty of Business at AU, it will develop the necessary soft skills for leadership and “hard-management acumen.”
Each course is delivered online at AU over 4 weeks and needs 8-12 hours per week course “readings, discussions and assignments.” In 2015, every company that sent AU students to MMC received a received 2/3rds of the tuition costs back. Registration for MMC begins March 6, 2016, and courses start April, 2016.
Canadian Universities Ranked among most employable
The ?most employable? list says six Canadian universities prepares the most work-ready graduates in the world. Out of the top 150, “The University of Toronto, McGill University, the University of British Columbia, the University of Montreal, McMaster University and the University of Alberta” were the Canadian universities. The Global Employability University Ranking 2015 “designed and commissioned by the French human resources consulting agency, Emerging, and carried out by the German market research firm Trendence” used 2,200 votes from recruiters and 2,400 from managing directors of “international companies or subsidiaries across 20 countries.”
