Career Buzz

This show is a little different. We focus on career literacy on Hoda’s career info channel. 

Dr Hoda Kilani’s project is Raising Career Literacy Awareness One Interview At A Time. Hoda’s a Certified Professional Career Coach and President and Founder of Right Career Fit.

Hoda’s Career Info focuses on interviewing experts in the Career Development field who will share with you a specific project they are working on or talk about their expertise. Her purpose is to increase awareness about the importance of career literacy and the role that career professionals can play in supporting you to career success.

Listen to episode 11 - if you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

After a few years working in technical sales, Steve Petryschuk needed help reevaluating his career and deciding on next steps. So he hired a career counsellor and found it was practical, helpful and an investment in his future. He decided to leave his job and join a fast growing startup called Auvik where he’s progressed through roles as a director of solutions engineering, and now forecasts the future as director of product strategy. 

Do you love being outside and being among the trees? Working with your hands? Seeing tangible results?  Then consider working as an arborist. In the second part of today’s show we chat with arborist Cindy Myall while she’s on a job taking down a black mulberry tree. But first...

Roads, highways, bridges, parking lots. What does it take to bring these projects to life? Today we talk to a project manager with a construction company about what it takes and what it’s like working as a project manager. I interviewed Suchit Chanana from the Miller group in front of a live audience in the Engineering Careers course I teach to grad students at the University of Toronto. You’ll hear their questions too.

On this episode of CareerBuzz, the hosts get together for the Ride the Airwaves Fall Fundraising Campaign broadcasted by CIUT.fm. Hosts Stephen Armstrong, Shellie Deloyer, and Mark Franklin each take some time to bring up powerful moments from past shows.

If you wish to support the CIUT radio station: visit ciut.fm or call 4169467800 or 18882048976

4 years ago Andrew Wang left an engineering and business career to care for his school age children and pursue his lifelong dream of becoming an artist. He’s influenced by the Renaissance period where artists were engineers - and engineers were artists. Andrew studied mechanical engineering first at the University of Waterloo then as a graduate student at MIT. As a former engineer for a materials company, Andrew takes care in his art materials choices, considering both the technical and the symbolic.  I intereviewed Andrew Wang by zoom in front of a live audience in the Engineering Careers course I teach to grad students at the University of Toronto.

How can students -- and employers -- benefit from "virtual internships"?

Tom Brunskill is co-founder and CEO at Forage. They partner with leading companies to create virtual experience programs for students to build skills, gain experience and better understand different career paths. Also, after 16 years in the tech industry including a CTO role, Michal Juhas developed 17 video courses, wrote six books, and trained over 30,000 IT professionals online. In 2019, Michal founded Geek Recruiters. Hear IT recruiting tips in the second part of Career Buzz.

While Mikhail Burke was working on his undergrad, then PhD in biomedical engineering he got involved. He led the U of T chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, and he established ENGage; a STEM/Leadership camp targeting African-Canadian youth. So when he graduated, in addition to teaching engineering courses at U of T, he got more involved as the Co-Chair of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Special Interest Group at Canadian Engineering Education Association - then was invited to become the Dean’s Advisor on Black Inclusion at University of Toronto’s, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering.

What’s a wedding photographer to do when weddings are cancelled because of a pandemic? Jess Okonski started fiddling around in a small woodshop to keep busy, learning how to make rolling pins and bowls that she gave away to friends. Soon, she started getting requests for custom pieces, so she created an online store, developed workshops and is now the founder and owner of Toronto woodwork company, This Lady Wood.

While Mikhail Burke was working on his undergrad, then PhD in biomedical engineering he got involved. He led the U of T chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, and he established ENGage; a STEM/Leadership camp targeting African-Canadian youth. So when he graduated, in addition to teaching engineering courses at U of T, he got more involved as the Co-Chair of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Special Interest Group at Canadian Engineering Education Association - then was invited to become the Dean’s Advisor on Black Inclusion at University of Toronto’s, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering.

What’s a wedding photographer to do when weddings are cancelled because of a pandemic? Jess Okonski started fiddling around in a small woodshop to keep busy, learning how to make rolling pins and bowls that she gave away to friends. Soon, she started getting requests for custom pieces, so she created an online store, developed workshops and is now the founder and owner of Toronto woodwork company, This Lady Wood.

What careers are there for people with strong verbal communications skills and being able to put people at ease? If you’re Steven Petroff, it could be gallery owner, AND executive search recruiter. After working in business for telecom companies, Steven and his wife bought and ran an art gallery. When it was time to exit that business, what to do with a lifetime of skills in client service, verbal communication, sales, and helping clients feel comfortable and at ease? A friend suggested recruiting, and that’s where Steven’s been working, as Director of Client Service at IQ Partners in Toronto.

Steven shares insights from the recruiter - valuable for any listener, plus he shares his own career story from business to gallery to recruiting.

Standing in an antique clock store in Prague, Howie Woiwod had a career a-ha moment. Fascinated by the gears and movements hidden in the antique clock he was shown, Howie found himself thinking about it for days. Back in Montreal, he followed the clues and took inspired action to step away from his music career and enroll in the only watch repair school in Canada, Ecole horlogerie, in Trois Rivieres, Quebec. Meanwhile, his wife Julia Gellman - also a musician – had completed an Environmental studies degree at McGill in Montreal. When Howie finished the program, the couple set off for Vancouver where Howie began his watch repair career, The Dialed in Watchmaker, and Julia, works as a sustainability specialist.