When University of Waterloo grads experienced issues like the uncertainty of the home buying process, the hassle of filling prescriptions, and the lack of focus on female pelvic floor health, they decided to take matters into their own hands. And they hired co-op students from their alma mater to help! By hiring student talent from the global leader in co-operative education, these industry disruptors have raised their small businesses and startups to new heights.
ManorLead, founded by Richard Xie (he/him), offers buyers a transparent and guided process to purchase a home. “As a co-op student, I had the opportunity to work in roles that were revolutionizing typically traditional service industries,” Xie says. Working for a small business gave Xie opportunities that he may not have had if he worked for a larger organization. Xie hires students for roles to help with both projects and with daily tasks—including marketing assistant, software designer and sales analyst.
Rachel Bartholomew (she/her) saw a need in the market for women-centered pelvic floor health tools. Enabled by Waterloo co-op students, Bartholomew brought her company, HyIvy Health, to life. She hired her first Waterloo co-op student just four weeks after founding the company. With the HyIvy smart pelvic rehab system currently in clinical trials, Bartholomew credits co-op students, who performed roles like mechanical engineer and UX designer with helping her design the portal and app, the user experience, updating the CAD model and writing test procedures for the prototype.
MedMe Health, founded by Rui Su (she/her), is a digital patient care platform. It helps pharmacists schedule, conduct, document, and follow-up on clinical services. The company is already serving over 140 pharmacies across five provinces and expects to be in more than 700 by the fall. Co-op students perform roles like QA analyst and clinical associate and “are really involved in every part of the code base, says Jakob Manning, software developer at MedMe.“We train upper-level co-op students to become experts in a certain area and they learn our entire product line.” .
“Co-op students fill a hiring need, it’s a short-term commitment with someone dedicated to being a high-growth learning individual,” says Manning. “There is always the opportunity that they will come back or contribute to your ecosystem in the future. We’re already seeing that.”
Xie, Bartholomew, and Su all have one thing in common, they see the value in hiring Waterloo co-op students. Co-op students bring a variety of skills, curiosity, and drive. They add energy and creativity to teams of any size and bring diverse insights and knowledge.
Hiring Waterloo co-op students is affordable with many grants and funding options available to subsidize student talent. Waterloo has dedicated service teams to help you find the talent you need for your organization. If you believe that a co-op student would be the right fit for your organization, contact small business hiring expert, Emily Burgess to help you find your next great hire!
