The company havn’t hire co-op for a long time during the down turn. The business has been slowly picking up, and the summer we have many co-ops like in good the old days. For those lives outside Canada, co-op is the term for intern in Canadian. Usually we hire university students for 4 months through this co-op job experience program.
My team got a co-op, who will be assigned to the tedious tasks that no one wants to touch. We think co-op are great slave labour, usually got fed all the boring jobs. I bumped into a friend working downstairs during a coffee break and asked him how do he like his new slave. I am surprise to find out his department didn’t get any co-op. Engineers with at least several years of experience has to do the grunt works. Not a very good use of resource. However, his department likes to outsource design works to India on the other hand. What is the logic behind oversource instead of hiring co-op. Co-op is as cheap as the Indian guys. From my experience, most of the co-ops are much better. You can work with the co-op face to face. If they have any problem, you can help them out easily. Most important, the co-op are eager to learn. On contrary, the Indian guys just want get by with minimium work and maximium pay.