Peer Coaches
Get an experienced perspective on PEY
How peer coaches help students
- Could you use a POV on PEY from someone who's recently completed their 12-to-16-month work term?
- Need a hand completing your Preparatory Program assignment deliverables?
- Or perhaps you'd just like to chat with an upper-year student about career development?
Our Peer Coaches are standing by, ready to connect and help you out!
These seasoned fourth- or fifth-year students have done their 12-to-16-month work term and are now back in school. They've been in your shoes and now they're looking to share their experiences, tips and tricks, often over a sociable snack.
Get involved
You can meet Peer Coaches in several ways. Depending on the year you're in, one-on-one counselling and/or small group sessions and workshops are available. Pizza with Peers is an example of a popular Peer Coach event available for second- and third-year students.
- Book your one-on-one appointment by logging in to the PEY Co-op Preparatory Program on Quercus.
- For events, space is limited and registration is required. Check out the Events and Workshops pages on Quercus and Orbis – they’re updated regularly.
Peer Coaches' services are free to students enrolled in the PEY Co-op program.
Pay it back (after your PEY)
Peer coaches are hired through the University of Toronto's work-study program, usually in August.
If you'd like to talk informally (with no obligation) about what's involved in becoming a Peer Coach, email us and we'll connect you to the right person on staff.
Why I love being a Peer Coach
(Video is available to University of Toronto students. Length: 1.2 minutes. Captioned.)
Peer Coach Muskan spoke with us from the floor of You're Next Career Network's Fall Career Fair (September 2022), where she kept busy advising students.
"Throughout my whole undergrad, I always offered other undergraduate students to look at their resumes. At club events, I would be like, "Show me your resume, send me your cover letters!" And I've always had them, months later, retroactively follow up and ask for advice. So as a Peer Coach now, I get to do what I was going to do for free anyway, but I get to get paid for it.
So that's definitely my favourite part: I love working one-on-one with students and giving back to the Skule community.
And then the second part of it is there's an amazing work-life balance. The team is very understanding that we're students. I get to do a lot of remote work, asynchronous work, but then there's still great events like these where I get to come in person, meet other Peer Coaches and ECC staff and have a great time. So I think there's a great balance."
The number one mistake I see on students' resumes
Peer Coach Muskan also talked about a common mistake she sees when reviewing resumes with students.
"The number one mistake that I see on students' resumes when I review them is a lack of articulation of their results in their bullet points. Students are really good at remembering what they did, but they're not very good at identifying the impact that they made on the organization, or their manager, or their peers.
And that's definitely a shift in mindset that I think you learn when you write your resume and get it reviewed over and over again."
(Video is available to University of Toronto students. Length: 1 minute. Captioned.)
Pop Up with Peers: Resume Review – January 24, 2023
(Video is available to University of Toronto students. Length: 2 minutes. Captioned.)
Ahead of the You're Next Career Network's (YNCN) Winter Career Fair, our Peer Coaches hosted a drop-in Resume Review event in the Myhal Centre's atrium for prospective co-op students.
Vallissa Mueller, Student Development Officer: "Today, we're at Myhal for a Pop Up resume event with our Peer Coaches to give some advice to our second and third year college students on the resume before the YNCN career fair. If you weren't able to make it today, don't worry, we will have other events and you can also book an SDO appointment with myself or one of my colleagues to go through your resume and cover letter interview preparation, job search strategy. We're here to support. We look forward to connecting with you soon."
Zahra, Senior Peer Coach: "As a Peer Coach, I'm here to help facilitate and run workshops with the ECC that are designed to help students prepare for their PEY Co-op experience. An example is today's event where we had a Pop Up with Peers helping students really learn how to make targeted resumes and improve the resumes that they currently have. Today, we saw a lot of great work with students and we helped them really drive home and fix a little key features in their resume, including how to do action statements as well as some formatting. But overall, it’s a really great turn out and students are engaged, eager and ready to go out on their PEY search."
What did you learn from speaking with a Peer Coach today?
Jiayu, 3rd year Chemical Engineering student: "Most important thing I learned from this is that I can actually customize my LinkedIn URL to something more professional, and I've got also more advice and suggestions on how to make my resume more professional, more concise."
Luke, 2nd year Computer Engineering student: "You definitely want to have a lot of action and results when you're talking about your work experiences. So definitely highlight some things that you did and the results that came out of it."
Somesh, 2nd year ECE student: "You should take every opportunity to learn in your classes so that you're able to build great projects to put on your resume."