Hi everyone, it's Odette here. I am the founder of her authentic crown and right now you're
listening to my podcast called Queen Citizens. So I'm glad that you decided to tune in.
I'll be talking about my confessions as a recent public health graduate. So let's get into it.
To start off, I wanted to mention something that didn't mention in the previous episode.
So a lot of people when they hear public health, they think nursing or medicine,
I just want to say and clarify that to do a master's in public health, you don't need to have a nursing degree.
Also don't need to be a doctor. Now at the U of S there were a lot of students were international students
and I think many of them that were pursuing these degrees are similar to degrees if something like health sciences
or population health sciences which I'll discuss in future videos.
They actually were doctors and in Canada some people who are doctors, they can't practice here.
So that's why they do this master's programs. And some of the students they already have a master's degree and they're doing a second master's degrees.
That being said, I like to say that with public health, you're focusing or population health, you're focusing on a community
or maybe you're focusing on a nation, but when it comes to nursing or medicine, you're focusing on a patient.
Now if you ever hear the term global health, which I believe I did mention in my first episode of this series, global health is like more worldwide.
So when I said I wanted to work for WHO, WHO is a global health organization, their focus is more worldwide and not just one country.
So today I specifically wanted to talk about how to get a student job and how I finally got a job in my field.
So to get a student job, the first thing is you gotta make connections with your supervisors.
That's one place to start because given that they are researchers, they probably have a project for you to do.
Like I was able to do data entry for a project.
Now at the university, I was also employed by another research lab and I discovered that position by going to like a research fair.
So all universities have some type of research fair research day where students from different faculties present their research posters.
And it's a great opportunity to see what your main, what your interest is.
I had an interest in nutrition, believe it or not, and I noticed there are some students that were doing these studies that had to do with nutrition.
And I wanted to get involved and they told me there's a lot of projects going on.
She was a student professor in email and that's how I was able to get a job.
So when you're drafting an email, you always want to be super professional, like saying hello, doctor, in the person's last name or dear doctor.
I learned the hard way of not being professional because if you're unprofessional, the supervisor or the professor may not even respond.
I also want to mention why you want to be involved.
So do you some research, maybe read an art published article to understand more about the research interest.
There could be even like a web page that you can look at.
Another thing that I have learned is that some research jobs I put in coal are not paid.
Now I want to say you want to be very careful of some of these paid on paid opportunities.
Some people would say, oh, it can lead to a paid opportunity down the line.
In my case, that didn't happen. I did this on paid project and let to another opportunity that was also on paid.
So for me personally, it got to a point where I was like, you know what, I've been in school for a long time.
I want to be paid. I think I deserve to be paid.
And as students, I think we do deserve to be paid. You have skills and you have knowledge and you're able to learn.
So I do think sometimes it's not always fair.
Some of these projects that are on pay keep in mind it can be a lot of work and investment on your own time.
Yes, there might be some rewards such as publishing or a coal or going to a conference and winning the best poster prize that's happened for me and something to put on your CV.
But I'm telling you there are other opportunities where you're getting paid and you could still put that on your CV.
While I was a student, there are these projects called ripen.
There's something called venture for Canada and there's also something called, what was the other one?
Level up.
There's non-profit organizations, there's small non-profit organizations that have some type of health promotion activity.
So I was really grateful, especially during COVID when they're funding provided to certain supervisors or certain small nonprofits and businesses.
That really helped me and I would say it is really good pay and all I had to do was mostly just to sign up.
The entire, any type of interview process like with the level up projects is not super complicated.
So maybe if requested, I can go into detail more about the difference between venture for a Canada and level up projects.
It's available to students who are Canadians and if it's never done these type of projects before, you'll be given like high consideration.
Because that was basically doing those type of projects as my job, even though you're not considered an employee and the employers technically not paying you, the, it's, these programs are funded.
But you do get like a T4 A at the end too.
I highly recommend doing some of those projects.
And even if it's not related to public health which happened in my case, you're still getting some type of experience and from those projects, that's kind of,
I started thinking about actually becoming an entrepreneur and creating opportunities for myself and not only that recognizing the gaps and how I can address certain needs.
Like I think girls education is a need for sure.
And I do hope that one day I could potentially, yeah, contribute to that space by raising money for girls education.
But anyways, moving on to moving forward with finding student jobs.
When I cost to finding student jobs too, like you can talk to the classes of other departments and some professors that they get.
They get really good funding and I know that there's some of departments.
One of a professor gets funding.
It's announced in some tech, the newsletter or newspaper.
So if you see any professor that's getting a lot of reward to a lot of funding, that's your sign to reach out to that professor.
But of course to your research first.
You want to make sure that the research topic is interesting to you.
Because with public health there's so many different research topics.
It's not just nutrition.
It could be mental health, which was another topic that I was interested in.
Now moving forward.
How can you get a job after graduation?
The very first thing to do is you want to start to apply early.
I kind of wish that I would have gone to more conferences because that conferences you can make connections.
You don't have to spend a ton of money on business cards.
But if you could have like a, at least a LinkedIn share with people.
That can help you big time.
Another thing is not just making professional connections to, but think about who's already in your network.
Let's say someone in your church community.
That could help you.
What about friends and family?
That can also help you.
So I got my first job through a referral basically.
So it was, it was not through a professor or a former classmate.
So if you're just signing up for jobs on a website like indeed, indeed, those types of employers
you see so many applications and it could be likely that you're up your resumes being screened out.
The most frustrating thing about the job process is that a human is not always reading your resume.
And that's probably why they're not providing you any feedback, which makes it so frustrating.
One of the biggest things about how to get a job really do a store research early.
I thought that by going into bios statistics, I could work for a pharmaceutical company.
Now, to work for a pharmaceutical company, you need to have not only are they looking for experience, which I didn't have,
you want to have experience with like clinical trials, which I didn't have.
And without that, it's just very, very hard to get into that position.
I actually thought initially, from the very big idea I could work for like Johnson and Johnson,
or there's a lot of pharmaceutical companies out there,
then they do hire bios statisticians.
Sometimes they prefer people who have the PhD and by the time I was looking for jobs,
there's no way that I had a PhD, right?
So that's the biggest thing that I have learned.
Another thing for students that are going into masters is also looking to study abroad opportunities.
I think that could definitely widen your horizon so much.
Now, some of these abroad opportunities too are not always well paid, so that's the downside.
Sometimes there's a stake in sometimes or not.
So you really have to evaluate your financial situation.
So if you want to hear more about how to get a job abroad,
I would love to talk more about that.
I did.
It was a mission trip in Honduras, but I raised money for that mission trip.
And we weren't even there for a month, it was like, oh, me.
So I'm very self-pressed, I'm still learning about how can I go abroad one day and be able to work abroad.
Some of these work abroad opportunities that I was looking into were not really related to public health.
And if they were, they weren't paid.
So I would love to hear comments and suggestions and ideas of how to get into that international space.
Like, for me when I joined my program at the Genos COVID-19, so I didn't have the opportunity to do the Queen Elizabeth Jubilee scholarship.
If you do have that opportunity, if you do get that scholarship, I'll highly recommend that you go.
Because I wish I wouldn't have been able to go.
You have to be a student for those ones and you have to be able to work in the country for 90 days.
I had the opportunity to go to Barbados, but then I was so close to being done my program.
And I didn't want to continue to pay tuition.
So I also given my financial circles, I was having a lot of students that didn't even start being paid off, I couldn't go unfortunately.
Yeah, I feel like I should actually advocate for more opportunities for recent graduates.
Because a lot of times, some of these internships are like, you have to be a student, you have to be returning full time.
And I'm not exactly sure why that is.
Anyways, that's just my opinion. Let me know what you think down below.
This episode's getting quite long. So I think I want to sign off here.
So once again, this is Odette.
I'm the creator of her authentic crown.
The link to my website will be in the description box along with my other socials.
So once again, it's at her authentic crown.
And yeah, you're listening to Queen Citizen. So hope you tune in next time.
Bye.