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News & Announcements

Apr 22
Love5

Federal Government Promises Greater Protection for Interns

By News & Announcements

Yesterday, the Government of Canada presented the 2015 Federal Budget, which – among many of our country’s chief priorities – includes a promise of strengthening the Canada Labour Code by extending protection of, “all employees and interns under federal jurisdiction.”

This news represents a big win for those who have joined forces with Career Edge to advocate for fairness and equity for interns in Canada, particularly the Canadian Intern Association, which has advocated tirelessly for interns’ rights since it was founded in May 2012. This inclusion of intern protections in the budget is also being celebrated by all those who have supported the Intern Protection Act (Bill C-636), which is scheduled for voting tonight.

This time last year, Career Edge and the Canadian Intern Association were among many subject matter experts asked to present briefs to the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Finance (FINA) as part of their Youth Employment Study, and subsequent report. The purpose of these briefs that were presented in a series of Committee hearings was to advise FINA on solutions that would promote higher levels of youth employment.

As a staunch advocate for greater employment and paid internship opportunities for new graduates – including those with disabilities – as well as newcomers to Canada, we are truly thrilled to see that our recommendations were reflected in the budget.

Working with government at all levels and other key stakeholders, we have taken a significant and positive step forward to cultivate socio-economic sustainability for all Canadians by ensuring our youth and new immigrants find meaningful work experience, so they can become taxpayers – not tax burdens.

Mar 17
Love5

Your Update on Bill C-636 and Bill 64

By News & Announcements

Last month, NDP members of both federal and provincial parliaments introduced bills that – if passed – will extend workplace standards and safety provisions to interns under the Canada Labour Code (CLC) and Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA). The introduction of these bills is a big step forward in terms of ensuring fairness and equity for interns, while making the conditions related to unpaid internships more comprehensive for employers.

Read More

Dec 12
Love4

Career Buzz: “Get an edge on your career with Career Edge.”

By News & Announcements

Career Edge was featured on Career Buzz, a radio show broadcast on CIUT 89.5 FM, on December 10. The show was hosted by Mark Franklin, President and Practice Leader at CareerCycles, a Toronto-based career management social enterprise. During the show, Mark interviewed Naguib Gouda, President of Career Edge and a staunch advocate for paid internships. Naguib was joined by Sydney Helland, Marketing & Communications Coordinator at Career Edge, who launched her career through a Career Edge paid internship. During the show, both Naguib and Sydney shared their career stories and chatted about the socio-economic impact of paid internships and the benefits of Career Edge’s internship model.

If you are an employer looking to learn more about paid internships, or a job seeker aspiring to launch your career, play or download the radio episode by clicking here to hear how Career Edge’s paid internship programs can help.

Career Buzz radio show of Dec. 10, first broadcast on CIUT 89.5 FM in Toronto. Produced and hosted by Mark Franklin, president and practice leader of CareerCycles (www.careercycles.com)

About Career Buzz: Career Buzz aims to inspire, educate and entertain listeners in the area of career satisfaction, how careers really happen, and what listeners might do to find more career happiness. If you believe that career happiness and having stories like yours heard is valuable, please consider supporting CIUT and Career Buzz during the twice annual membership campaign, which you can find out about by signing up for the Watch for Clues Newsletter on www.careercycles.com.

Aug 11
Love6
skilled newcomers

Helping Skilled Newcomers Join Canada’s Workforce

By News & Announcements

Career Edge and the NACC have joined forces to connect internationally qualified professionals (IQPs) with leading organizations to help re-launch careers in Canada.

The partnership’s pilot program, NACC Edge, is an alternative career pathway that aims to help IQPs find relevant work in their area of expertise by using their Canadian-obtained training and skills. After completing a training program at an NACC member career college, program graduates can re-launch their careers in Canada through Career Edge’s paid internships in related occupations.

The paid internship program focuses on opportunities in various sectors, such as information technology (IT), administration, and health care. Many IQPs join the program in order to enter regulated professions within these fields.  The NACC Edge program enables IQPs to continue working in their field while re-training to meet the needs of the job market.

The NACC and Career Edge share a common goal of helping create opportunities for IQPs, giving them a greater chance at finding professional success in Canada, whether through education and training programs or through career-related work experience.

“The NACC’s members are very excited to see this partnership come into effect,” said Serge Buy, NACC’s Chief Executive Officer. “This is one concrete step we can take toward reducing the challenges faced by IQPs when they seek to obtain work experiences in their fields.”

Canada’s labour force has experienced a growing number of underutilized workers who resort to accepting “survival jobs” to stay afloat when they are faced with a job market that seldom recognizes their international experience and accreditation. The NACC Edge program seeks to address this pressing issue by ensuring IQPs are integrated into Canada’s workforce, so that they are working to their full potential, while strengthening Canada’s globally competitive economy.

“We are very proud to partner with the NACC,” says Naguib Gouda, President of Career Edge. “Through this partnership, we’re giving more options to newcomers who are struggling to acquire Canadian work experience that aligns with their career goals,” he says.

NACC Edge is available across the country and is delivered by NACC’s Regional Coordinators in Vancouver, Edmonton, and Toronto, and will be supported by staff at the NACC national office in Ottawa and Career Edge’s headquarters in Toronto.

Jun 25
Love5

Report from FINA recommends the protection of intern rights

By News & Announcements

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance (FINA) has released “Youth Employment in Canada: Challenges and Potential Solutions” – a report that summarizes the information gathered in relation to the Committee’s Youth Employment Study that was adopted on October 29, 2013.

As part of this study, the Committee held seven hearings in March and April of 2014; 38 groups or individuals made presentations to the Committee, and an additional 26 written briefs were received. Career Edge was privileged to have been included among those invited to appear as a witnesses, and to submit a brief with recommendations towards improving employment outcomes for Canada’s youth.

Career Edge’s brief that was presented to the Committee on April 8, 2014 included the following recommendation:

“That the government enact federal legislation to the Canada Labour Code that specifically outlines the conditions of internships across all of Canada’s provinces and territories. This will ensure fairness and the protection of young workers, while giving employers firm guidelines for incorporating internships and internship programs into their recruitment, retention, and succession planning initiatives.”

Read More

Apr 03
Love5

Open Letter RE: Ministry of Labour’s crackdown on unpaid internships

By News & Announcements

As a staunch advocate for paid internships, Career Edge supports the Ministry of Labour’s crackdown on internships that violate the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA) in Ontario.  We believe enforcement of the law is the right thing to do, in order to prevent exploitation of our youth and to protect workers’ rights.

In our opinion, the search for a resolution to the issue of unpaid internships will require the collaboration between the government, employers and our youth:

  1. The government needs to educate employers on the stipulations outlined in the ESA, while safeguarding young people’s rights and ensuring fair and equitable access to career-launching opportunities.
  2. Employers must be willing to invest in our future by ensuring young people receive the experience required to grow professionally and become tomorrow’s leaders.
  3. Young people have a responsibility to educate themselves on their rights and make informed decisions to invest in their career.

From our experience, we know that unpaid internships limit opportunities to a certain socio-economic class – only those who can afford to work without pay have the chance to gain experience in this way.  Paid internships, on the other hand, offer an inclusive and accessible way for young people to transition into the workforce and get the experience needed to launch their career, while being fairly compensated for their work.  With that in mind, we must find ways to make internships work for employers, while ensuring equity for young people entering the labour force.  We must also ensure interns have the opportunity to make a decent living and to get on the right track to a promising career – without restricting the number of opportunities available to them.

Career Edge has remained passionate about connecting recent graduates – including those with disabilities – and internationally qualified professionals with leading organizations for paid internships since 1996; not only because we know it is good business practice, but also because we know it works.  Over fifty five per cent (55.46%) of our interns are hired by their host employer during or immediately after their internship, with the majority of the rest finding work elsewhere within six months of completing their internship.  For this reason, we hope to continue helping the government, employers, and youth leverage internships that launch careers and support Ontario’s social and economic sustainability.

Sincerely,

Naguib Gouda
President
Career Edge Organization

Mar 07
Love4

Career Edge opens its doors even wider to share internship opportunities

By News & Announcements

Career Edge has taken a big step towards connecting more interns with leading organizations in Canada, by making our internship posting board public.

Previously, our internship posting board was only accessible through private user account logins. Now that we’ve gone public, however, any visitor to careeredge.ca can quickly and easily check out all of the paid internship positions we currently have available.

For job seekers, searching for internships is now a breeze, and – with a single click – registered users can log in and apply to internships that match their career goals.

Employers will also benefit from added internship posting promotion. With an open posting board, jobs posted to Career Edge’s website are picked up by metasearch engines and aggregators, like Indeed.com. The board and individual postings are also optimized for social sharing, making it a snap to “Like” on Facebook and LinkedIn, or tweet on Twitter.

open posting board blog image

So what are you waiting for? Check out our brand new public posting board now!

Dec 20
Love5

The CEO Blog selected as favourite working life writers of 2013

By News & Announcements

BrighterLife-Award-Working-Life_500pxThe CEO blog was just selected as one of the winners of the 2013 Working Life Award, presented by Sun Life Financial’s Brighter Life Likes! As Career Edge’s resident blogger, I am delighted to have our blog receive this recognition – what a great way to start a new year of blogging! I would like to extend a big “Thank you!” to the inspiring individuals and organizations that I have had the honour of writing about in 2013. Read on to learn more about the Brighter Life and our fellow award winners…

“Our mission at Brighter Life is to create and share useful information about the topics that matter the most to Canadians – their finances, health, families, careers. As part of that task, we track down good reading from reliable sources on the Internet and, each Friday, we share our recommendations in the Brighter Life likes column.

With the year drawing to an end, we have gathered our favourites for working life in 2013. We hope they will help encourage and inspire you to live a successful, brighter life. Check them out, and follow them on Twitter:

  • n-gen. Follow Giselle Kovary, a specialist in managing generational differences in the workplace:@ngen_training
Nov 25
Love5

Career Edge celebrates 500 internships for recent graduates with disabilities

By News & Announcements

Career Edge is celebrating over 500 interns placed through Ability Edge, a paid internship program for recent graduates with self-declared disabilities.

Ability Edge was launched in 1999 by the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA) along with five of its member banks (TD, RBC, Scotiabank, BMO, and CIBC) to increase the employment of people with disabilities (PWDs). In partnership with Career Edge, the CBA piloted an internship program for recent graduates with disabilities interested in working in the financial services sector. Since the official end of the pilot, Career Edge has continued to manage the program to provide meaningful work opportunities for PWDs pursuing careers in Finance, Marketing, Human Resources, Technology, Engineering, Business Operations, and more.

As the Ability Edge program grew within the financial services sector, the CBA and its member banks were quickly joined by a number of other leading organizations seeking talent with a diverse range of abilities. Many employers across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors have partnered with the Ability Edge program, including Deloitte, MaRS Discovery District, the City of Markham, the Ontario Ministry of Government Services, and Loblaw Companies Limited.

With the support of Career Edge’s internship model, employers provide inclusive and accessible workplaces that allow the interns they hire to gain meaningful work experience that aligns with their education and professional aspirations. As interns are given a foot in the door at reputable organizations, employers benefit from their qualifications and high levels of motivation while adding greater diversity to their workforce.

“At Deloitte we have set out to be recognized – internally and externally – as a diversity leader,” says Sarah Boon, Senior Manager of Talent Advisory at Deloitte. “We can’t do this alone, so our relationship with Ability Edge is very important.”

To help connect more new graduates with disabilities with employers like Deloitte, Career Edge maintains a number of strategic partnerships with organizations that share its commitment to supporting the employment of this group of talented new graduates, such as the Ontario Job Opportunity Information Network (JOIN).

As one of Canada’s leading organizations specializing in the recruitment of new graduates with disabilities, JOIN has strongly collaborated and supported Career Edge in promoting full inclusion of this talented group, and to provide expertise on disability in the workplace. As part of this partnership, Naguib Gouda, President at Career Edge, was recently appointed as a member of JOIN’s Board of Directors.

“We are incredibly proud to have made a difference in the employment of recent graduates with disabilities,” says Gouda. “Our partnerships with employers and like-minded organizations have significantly contributed to inclusion in Canada’s workforce, while creating over 500 successful, career-launching experiences in the process.”

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