Student talent helps startup capitalize on an opportunity to succeed
By: Matthew King (he/him)
Life insurance company Dundas Life makes use of Waterloo Experience (WE) Accelerate program to complete wish-list project.
Overnight, Dundas Life went from being a small startup to growing their team significantly. By taking on a project team of five Waterloo Experience (WE) Accelerate students, the Canadian life insurance company was able focus resources on a wish-list project.
WE Accelerate students are University of Waterloo students who were unable to secure a traditional co-op position for their first work term. Students who opt-in to the WE Accelerate work-integrated learning opportunity participate in a career curriculum and in skills training led by an industry collaborator, and then use those newly acquired skills in a real world project experience.
Dundas Life wanted help turning informational blogs into short videos that would help explain life insurance to customers. They submitted the video marketing project to WE Accelerate so a team of students could work on it.
“We had WE Accelerate students very quickly learn about the basics of life insurance, read some of our blogs, and translate them into scripts that we can turn into short videos,” says Ochwat. “Then, from those scripts, our team went out and recorded a couple dozen or so videos. The students then learned how to edit the videos and create a final finished piece of content that now is live and out in the world.”
The student’s video project is still available to view on Dundas Life’s YouTube channel. The project represented a nice-to-have content piece for the company whose focus is often pulled in several directions.
“I am dealing with clients all the time. I am dealing with partner companies all the time. Usually, having to deal with video is not a primary concern of mine, but still an important one,” says Greg Rozdeba, Dundas Life chief executive officer. “So being able to have a group of students work on a specific project within a limited time with very defined goals was actually very useful for us.”
Although much of the focus has been on the skills the students learned and developed through this process, the Dundas Life team has also learned from the experience and grown as an organization.
I think with this program in particular, it really does reinforce the need for a good onboarding process. And I think because of the timeframe with WE Accelerate, there is no time to mess around. You very quickly understand what is important in this process, what is not, and what resonates with the people that you are bringing on board. Those are lessons that we will take with us moving forward.
Dundas Life has worked with a team of WE Accelerate students for two terms and plans to continue to find project work that is meaningful to both the company and students.
“We're really excited about WE Accelerate! We were signed up again for this term and hopefully for future terms. It's been a huge help for our company growth and for helping us educate more Canadians about life insurance,” says Ochwat.