Scalar Decisions

A: Scalar Decisions is an IT solutions integrator that specializes in architecting, implementing and managing mission-critical IT environments. In relation to the field, they have a Security team, a Cloud team and an Infrastructure team. It is a vastly growing company, in fact, they are now roughly the 7th largest ICT solutions integrator in Canada, leaping from their 75th position back in 2007.

A: I set plenty of goals for myself which consisted of technical and practical skills. Obviously, I gained a lot of valuable technical skills but for me, achieving the practical goals were more satisfying. This was my first official job and as a beginner, I gained a lot of knowledge on the environment of the workplace, the culture and the attitude one should have during work. This can only be experienced first-hand by being in a working environment and going through different experiences, through which you learn something new every time. Coming out of the work term, I wanted myself to become more socially aware, outgoing, responsible and most importantly, have more self-control. Undoubtedly, the greatest thing I’ve achieved through this term is a better sense of self-control. The workplace teaches you to sacrifice a lot of things for your own benefit and you learn to prioritize tasks which not only help you in the workplace, but it has a positive impact on your day-to-day life as well. I am really thankful for this experience and I believe this will always be my most important and influential work term.

A: When I joined the team, I was informed that there would be tasks which would require the knowledge of HTML and JavaScript. Right then, I set goals and milestones for myself to achieve throughout the work term. I had previous knowledge of the standard HTML and JavaScript, but throughout the term, I set goals like by the end of a certain month, I would finish learning about text effects and transitions and such.

A: Before the start of the work term, I had a list of skills that I wanted to practise and master. Some of them included technical skills such as being fluent in HTML, JavaScript and learning about the special effects in web design. More importantly, I gained a lot of knowledge on IT tasks such as how to operate requests, process changes, create notifications and various different aspects of the IT and Networking world. The practical skills included time-management, clear communication, greater analysis of situations and I believe learning these things will help me in the future work terms. Having dealt with deadlines and project guidelines, these experiences will have invaluable importance in the future because having dealt with requirements and time deficit management, I will be more experienced and knowledgeable in similar situations which will help me deal with them in a better manner compared to someone who has no experience in those types of situations. Along with that, learning about IT and expanding my skillset will give me a great advantage in the future because it is a very prominent and common field. Having learned so much will make me more versatile and compatible with jobs of different requirements.

A: As an avid fan of the new technologies, I would have loved to communicate and work with some aspects of AI because to put it simply, it is fascinating. I don’t think I am the only one amazed and interested by that specific field. To actually have worked with and breaking down AI which is only really appreciated from the outside perspective would have been an unforgettable experience.

A:
Depth and Breadth of Understanding – Throughout my life, I’ve been working on my patience and putting in the effort to understand something during times when you get confused. There were times during my training phase that I wasn’t understanding some of the concepts of the ServiceNow modules which was quite frustrating. But I knew it had to be done so I was patient and gave myself multiple chances to understand the modules until I finally did. Sometimes, the solution is to just keep reading something until something clicks in your brain. I had many of those situations during my work term and I was able to lock down and overcome any obstacles to reach a deeper level of understanding.

Global Understanding – My goal was to understand not only the aspects of my job but also to learn about my company and the bigger picture. Through various meetings and lunch-time events, I was able to grasp onto the authentic culture of my workplace and the people.

Technological Literacy – I set a goal for myself to expand my knowledge in JavaScript and HTML. Through the tools of the tasks, training courses and external resources, I was able to learn a lot more and exercise my programming knowledge in those languages. I also wanted to learn Python but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get around to it.

Oral Communication – I developed a lot of communication skills through interacting with my team and co-workers. In my set of goals, I wanted to really step out of my comfort zone and talk to new people. While I was able to build minor bonds and interact with many new people, I wasn’t able to build strong friendships with anyone outside my team. Firstly, this was down to the fact that in my workplace, the schedule is very flexible, and most people alternate their days due to the option of working from home so I wasn’t able to see the same regular people. Along with that, I was really the only co-op student in my area and everyone else had their own groups. As a result, I would just grab lunch with my work team or friends outside of my workplace instead of bringing my lunch to the work cafeteria and trying to meet new people. I am disappointed because I believe I could have really pushed myself to reach out to the people and arranged plans outside of work to bond with them.

Time Management – This is something that I am really proud of because I believe working in a professional environment like this has helped me establish a structure in my lifestyle not only in the workplace but outside of work as well. In the beginning of this term, I set a goal to remove any hint of procrastination and establish a schedule by which I religiously follow and to the most part, it has been very successful. Being in a professional work environment and being surrounded by talented peers has motivated me to become more productive with my life outside of work. I have learned to sacrifice things for the good of my own sake and this overall experience has played an essential role in my new structured lifestyle.

A: The early stages of my job consisted of completing various training courses for ServiceNow and ITSM related concepts. My job mainly consisted of using the ServiceNow platform for IT tasks, ServiceNow scripting and integrating CSV files. My team received requests from clients to finish tasks and it was my job to complete the assigned tasks. I had a variety of tasks such as creating workflows and automated processes, UI, creating widgets, creating and manipulating records, creating, approving and tracking changes, and much more. In addition, I carried out various tests throughout the ServiceNow platform in order to ensure that the front-end and back-end scripting were functioning as they were intended to. Along with that, I would help out my team with side tasks such as creating documents to track the changes, bugs and issues.

A: I want this website to not only reflect on my work term experience but I want this to be a portal into my world. It is a brief visual portfolio and I want it express how I am as a person as well. I want the specific design choices to express myself through the means of a web page.

Starlight Investments

A: Starlight Investments is a multi-family and commercial real estate invest and asset management company that is focused on investment and active asset management of North American multi-family and commercial real estate. They specifically have an Application Support and Information Technology team, which consists of various software developers such as myself. Starlight is comprised of approximately 220 real estate and investment professionals and they recently completed the acquisition of $1.735 Billion GTA Portfolio Acquisition consisting of 6271 units in 44 High-Rise Concrete Multi-Residential Buildings

A: Before every work term, I like to set a lot of technical as well as practical goals for myself so I can improve in all areas by the end of the term. As a member of the Application Support team, dealing with tickets and requests requires technical knowledge on how to handle each type of case as well as problem-solving skills. Handling different types of tickets helped me develop knowledge on the technical side which consisted of using different platforms like the Yardi Voyager, VendorCafe, and RentCafe systems to process the user requests. As for the practical side, dealing with various cases and understanding the root cause of the issue develops problem-solving skills which is a universal skill that can be carried into other jobs. Another goal I set for myself is learning to communicate with the members of the team and building a rapport. Due to the unexpected circumstances of COVID-19, meeting in the office was not an option so we used virtual technology to conduct the meetings. Having daily meetings with the team which consisted of reporting my workload progress every day and voicing my experience with the cases undoubtedly helped me further develop my communication skills in a professional work environment. Being able to communicate in a professional manner and knowing how to do so is an essential skill that is going to be useful no matter which field or job ones goes to. Some other goals consisted of improving my current skillset of programming knowledge, getting a global understanding of my role and how my actions affect the company and lastly, using the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to improve myself overall instead of letting it get the better of me and ruining my habits.

A: Before I started this work term, I had no previous knowledge on how to handle support tickets and accounting based issues. The goal that I set for myself was to get an overall solid understanding of how the ticketing system works and being able to resolve the issues at hand with relative ease no matter the difficulty so that if I were to be employed in a similar job, I would have no difficulty settling in and understanding the process. Regarding my second goal, the core focus of the tickets were regarding Accounting and Financial things, and even though my tasks consisted of fixing issues from the front-end and did not have worry about that side, I wanted to learn how the actions I performed from my end contributed to the Accounting side of things. I didn’t want to blindly perform tasks from the front-end and not understand how it impacted the joined parts. I wanted to understand how the operations were performed and all the terminology used within the Accounting side.

A: As previously mentioned, I had a big focus on improving my technical skills through expanding my IT and ticketing knowledge while also further enhancing my problem-solving abilities, a skill that is universal. As a member of the Application Support team, dealing with tickets and requests requires a lot of problem-solving skills. Handling different types of tickets helped me develop knowledge on the technical side which consisted of using different platforms like the Yardi Voyager, VendorCafe, and RentCafe systems to process the user requests through formatting and importing CSV files to reflect on the database, creating and granting access for the platforms as system administrator, and changing items and objects that lie in the current database. These are the general tasks that are carried out in most if not all IT based jobs and these skills that I have picked up on will be extremely helpful when transitioning into another job as I will have predeceasing knowledge on the core pillars of such tasks. Not to mention, the problem-solving skills that I have exercised and acquired during my time at Starlight Investments will not only help in the job field but in my personal life as well.

A: Having some knowledge of IT based jobs and having worked with it before, ServiceNow is a very prominent and integral part of the IT field and is often used by many companies to operate. Expanding my knowledge further on ServiceNow would provide me an advantage and an it is regarded as a plus by many jobs if one is familiar with ServiceNow.

A:
CRITICAL & CREATIVE THINKING - Problem Solving Problem solving is a skill that is essential in the work environment as well as in real-life scenarios. It is a universal skill that applies to many different situations. Especially working in an environment where the core focus is solving different types of issues faced by the users exercises and develops one’s problem solving abilities further. By the end of the term, I wanted to be a key member of the team, having the knowledge to tackle the issues I was dealt, with ease. In programming, it is very common that an unexpected error may arise from anywhere and one has to be prepared to face such challenges. Having worked in an environment where there are constantly issues arising, I have been able to exercise my problem-solving skills not only in the technical aspect but in a more general sense as well. With every problem, one must first have a plan on how to tackle it which includes finding the root of the issue and planning on how to fix it instead of blindly going at it without any set plan. By dealing with tickets, I have been able to enhance that skill of being able to deeply problem solve which is a skill that comes handy in any situation presented. Of course there were some things that I wasn’t able to fulfill due to the circumstances such as being the one that executes the SQL queries for the team. Writing and running the SQL queries is a task that takes a lot of experience because the size of data that is being dealt with is much bigger than the ones in assignments. One tiny mistake can lead to a catastrophe so it is a role that is more suitable for me as I build more experience. Having said that, I was able to practise writing such queries in test instances and play around with it. Overall, I would say that working in such an environment has helped me gain practical skills of problem solving that has made me more confident and versatile, and I can take this skill to any job presented.

PROFESSIONAL & ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR - Leadership Every job appreciates someone with leadership qualities, and it is something that one should have in their arsenal. I was very keen on leaving a good impression and showing initiative by taking on different types of tickets, such as ones that I wasn’t trained for. I constantly went on the team bucket of cases to see if I could help out the team in any way. I also got the opportunity to further show initiative when one of our team members departed from the team. This resulted in more cases being assigned to each team member and I was eager to help with the workload so I took it upon myself to voluntarily take on more cases.

GLOBAL UNDERSTANDING - Global Understanding When doing anything, it is essential that one understands the purpose and how their work is affecting the overall picture. Working as an Application Support member, I took the initiative to understand how the tasks I performed affected the Accounting and Marketing side of things so that I wasn’t just blindly carrying out tasks but actually had an understanding of how I was contributing overall.

LITERACY - Technological Literacy Before the work term started, I wanted to enhance my SQL skills and be more experienced and knowledgeable with the language. Observing how the team wrote and carried out the queries as well as playing around with the queries in the test instance really helped me get a greater understanding of queries. Despite not being directly involved in the query processing, this was a very valuable experience and I improved my understanding of queries because of it.

PERSONAL LEARNING GOAL This was my biggest improvement and I was really proud of myself for making a change. Due to COVID-19, the circumstances were much different to what I expected and it brought a lot of negative changes to the way we live our life. I wanted to make sure that I use this time to better myself and not sulk on it. I wanted to develop habits and goals at home that I had been putting off earlier. The time I had in my hand had to be put to good use and I am glad to say I used it to my benefit. I started working out, eating healthier, dedicated more time to my side projects and reading, developed a good sleeping schedule which is something I have struggled with for a long time. My lifestyle has become healthier and more balanced as a result of working from home, an opportunity that may not have come up if COVID-19 never happened. So, this was one of my most satisfactory goals that I achieved because I was able to use this time of difficulty to make a positive change in my life.

A: Working in the Application Support team, my job consisted of resolving tickets and fulfilling requests raised by different teams, whether it came from Starlight itself or other partnering companies. In order to fulfill the requests, the main platforms at use were Yardi Voyager, VendorCafe, and RentCafe. The general overview of the tickets involved setting up users, providing user role, post-month and property access, formatting CSV files and uploading them to the database as ETLs, creating items on the platform such as parking spots, amenities, unit types, etc. Having said that, there was a lot of unique tickets which required extra knowledge and needed more steps to be followed. The overall providing user access and uploading items to the database was done in Yardi Voyager. In terms of fulfilling requests for the vendors, VendorCafe was used and some aspects of setting up tenants and corporate users were performed in RentCafe. The interesting part about my job was I got to see how the accounting and financing side merges with the computing and IT side of things. Having taken accounting last semester, I got to see a lot of the principles and terms being used in real, work environments and how they are applied. It was very interesting to see how the three platforms mentioned above were synced and how an action on one of them could reflect on the other two.

The Co-operators

A: The Co-operators are an insurance company offers Home, Auto, Life, Business insurance amongst others. Despite the core of the company not being based around technology, there are various computing technologies used within the different areas of the company. There are various teams such as the Development team, Automation team, QA team, etc. which utilise the computer science technology in their daily work. The hard workers in the team reflect the current excellent standings of the company with Co-operators being a leading Canadian multi-line insurance and financial services with $47.3 billion in assets. As a student living in Guelph, I always used to see the Co-operators building, located in the heart of downtown Guelph and it is a great pleasure to now be working with them.

A: There were many goals that I had set for my time at the Co-operators, especially as it is my last co-op placement in my 5 year program. These goals are more concentrated on the soft skills aspect. My goals were as follows: Communication – As a developer in the modern age, it is now not only our job to be able to code well but also to speak well. Being able to communicate with the team, stakeholders, executives is an essential skill in the industry and many companies look for these skills in their candidates. I really wanted to hone in on my communication skills so I can prepare for the work industry. I challenged myself to organize meetings with team members when in need of help and not shy away from doing so. Also, I wanted to talk to various members of the team and build connections for the future as that is extremely important for your career. Another small goal I had was to present my work to my team members at least once so that I have the experience of talking in front of a team and being able to showcase my work, explaining the process and thinking behind it. Teamwork – Working in a team is something that one must get used to if they plan on working as a developer. I wanted to use this work term as an opportunity to enhance my teamwork skills. I set small goals for myself such as helping new people settling in and answering any questions they might have, reaching out and asking other team members if they require any assistance, doing my part for the team by ensuring that I finish my tasks in the given time and producing high quality work. Also, I challenged myself to step in and help with the workload of the team in times when a team member might be away. Time Management – The skill of time management can help not only in the work field but in the daily aspect of our lives as well. This was another skill that I wanted to really improve on. Before I took on the role of being an Automation Developer for the team, I knew I would have to manage working on different projects at the same time. So I set myself a goal to manage my time efficiently and allocate a set amount of time for each project. It is important to not get caught up in one thing and forget about the other tasks that you are responsible for. So being able to manage different tasks, knowing how much time to allocate for each task and keeping track of the progress is an essential skill that I challenged myself to learn and enhance. Global Understanding – It is important to make the most out of every job opportunity by making sure you’ve squeezed out every bit of knowledge you could absorb. Working in an insurance company such as this, I wanted to understand how everything works. The process of making a claim, registering a vehicle, creating the policy ,etc. Understanding these things can help me greatly if I work for another insurance company in the future.

A: Having relatively minimal experience with automation prior to taking this job, I set a few technical learning goals for myself. Firstly, I wanted to make sure that I write my own test suite for the automation. I challenged myself to not only understand the full picture of automation but to use that knowledge to create my own test suite. Through this, I could take this knowledge into my own projects and write my own test scripts for it. Another technical learning goal I set for myself was to expand my knowledge of the front-end and more specifically, the back-end. Although the automation is solely based on the front-end, I wanted to learn some more things and expand my knowledge on the back-end. I wanted to see the various tools and programs that were in place and how the back-end was structured. I challenged myself to use this opportunity to take a look at the large-scale projects and the frameworks, code standards, structures are established for a back-end especially since these projects are much bigger than any typical personal or school projects. Exploring and delving into such large-scale projects can provide great insight and knowledge on how the various aspects of programming we’ve learned are applied to the real industry development projects.

A: To get into the specifics of the skills I wanted to learn, there were a few I had my eyes set on. Firstly, I wanted to get a deep understanding of the Robot Automation Framework. It is used by many companies for their automation needs and knowing that automation jobs are in such high demand, knowing how to use it can present a great advantage. Along with that, I wanted to enhance my literacy with Python as well. Python is one of the highest demanded programming languages and I wanted to challenge myself by trying to expand on my current knowledge by incorporating it in the projects. I also wanted to work more with JavaScript, specifically focusing on Ajax calls. Ajax calls are very frequently used in building the back-end of the website so I wanted to get more experience with that. This can be very helpful on your resume, especially when taking on web development jobs.

A: I wanted to work with JavaScript and Python primarily as these two languages are arguably the most in demand right now. This included any tools or programs that utilised these languages as they will help with my resume and skillset.

A: Before my time at the Co-operators, I set goals for myself in hopes of bettering my skillset and coming out as a more knowledgeable, experienced and improved version of myself. Working at the Co-operators has allowed me to do so by offering me various opportunities to showcase my skills and prove my worth. This is my reflection on the goals that I had set for myself:

Communication – I wanted to come out of the work-term at the Co-operators with a more sociable, approachable and talk-experienced version of myself. And I believe for the most part, I have achieved that. Whenever I needed any help or had a question about something, I scheduled meetings with my team members to discuss it and clear it up. I also wanted to put myself about more, talking to more people and building connections and I believe I have achieved that. During team events or meetings, I tried to talk to the people about their past experiences and asked for their tips on how to succeed, achieve goals, and become a more efficient version of myself. I also presented my work to my team members as well which helped me gain more confidence with showcasing my work in the future. I believe that something I could have improved on was showcasing my work more frequently and not shying away from the spotlight. I could have also volunteered to lead meetings when other team members were away. These are all goals that I can set for myself in the future and look to improve on.

Teamwork – I made a conscious effort to put myself about and try to help my team members when in need so I am happy with the progress that I have made. When there were any team members that were confused about something or needed help, I tried to set meetings with them to discuss and do my part by helping them understand it better. I would like to challenge myself further by stepping in more frequently when a team member is away by taking some work off their load, helping the team.

Time Management – After my first couple of months, I was assigned more projects so I had to learn to manage my time and ensure that each project had the right amount of time dedicated to it. Being in charge of the Daily Shakedown Script which was a test suite that runs every morning, I had to learn to dedicate my morning time to that. Once everything was checked and any necessary changes were made, I would then work on writing test cases for the Regression project I was working on. This helped me get some great experience under my belt. Although I am sure there will be even more work assigned to me at once that I would have to balance once I work in a full time position, this will help me prepare for those situations and help me allocate time to each task efficiently.

Global Understanding – Writing various test cases for the different processes involved in an insurance company such as making a claim, payment, policy etc. helped me get a good understanding of how the processes work. I also got a brief training course on the workflow of the processes in the beginning of my work term which provided me a clear view of the greater picture. I not only learned about the processes but also got the technical insight on how they were structured. For instance, I got to see how the client information and policy details would be stored in the back-end. Now, If I work for an insurance company in the future, I will already have pre-existing knowledge on the processes and technological aspects of it as well, providing me an advantage in the job search.

A: I joined the Co-operators as an Automation developer who had minimal experience with automation and testing. I had a few projects in school that required testing but it was done at a very high-level. Working at the Co-operators, I got to learn the low-level details of testing and how it is automated. I picked up many valuable skills here that I can take anywhere and utilise. My primary job was to ensure that the Daily Shakedown Script was passing all the test cases and to make any necessary changes when it failed as well as writing new test cases for the script. To put it simply, the Daily Shakedown Script is a collection of test cases which test the various components of the company’s website for the clients, ensuring that the user is able to perform necessary tasks such as making a payment, making a claim, being able to access the “Contact Us” page, checking their profile, etc. This script runs every morning at the same time and releases a report after completion specifying the percentage of the pass rate for the test cases. My main priority was to have the pass rate at 100% consistently and write new test cases that the script didn’t currently cover. Along with that, I worked on the Regression Test project where I wrote test cases for different modules of the website. This project focused on intensively testing specific modules of the website. For instance, one of the modules for that project was the “Make A Payment” module where I wrote multiple test cases with different values to make sure it would give the right error or message. Both of these projects required the same tools. When writing the test cases and automating, the two main tools I used were the Robot Framework and Selenium. Robot Framework is a generic test automation framework for test-driven development and the Selenium library is a web testing library for the Robot Framework. I used the PyCharm IDE to write all the test cases as it is specifically for the Python Language which is the language in which the test cases are written. I gained invaluable experience working with automation, writing test cases using object identification, and I am very thankful. This experience will help me massively in the future, especially for any automation roles.