Olivier Cossette is a student completing his Master of Mathematics and Statistics here at the University of Ottawa.
For his postgraduate CO-OP work term, Olivier was matched with Statistics Canada, an employer which he was strongly hoping to get to experience, because it is somewhere he would like to work in the future.
The main project that Olivier took on was the University and College Academic Staff System (UCASS) survey, where he helped in collecting information about all professors in Canada, such as their ages, salaries, ranks, and social characteristics. Olivier created tables comparing data like professors’ ages throughout time, from 1970 to 2020, to publish in The Daily, Statistics Canada’s release bulletin.This will be used by Statistics Canada to provide clients, mostly governmental organizations, with data surrounding analyses on gender, salary, and age, as well as employment patterns, renewal patterns, and projection of demand. The data surrounding the profession would often be processed through SAS, a analytics and data management software, but the organization aims to transition into using R , a tool useful for statistical analysis, data visualizations, data analysis and machine learning. Thus, Olivier did the programming for this project entirely using R for the first time, so his experience and work will serve as a reference for future employees. Another task he got to collaborate on was working on data visualizations to publish with the tables.
Although Olivier studied programming in his statistics courses, he did not expect to use his skills with the jobs in his field. His prior knowledge of analytics developed further because of this CO-OP term, especially since he had learned how to use R in class and was therefore able to apply it to his work. Skills such as multivariate analysis, big data analysis and computational statistics (which were also acquired in university) were also useful to him while manipulating the data to create the tables, as he was working with millions of rows. These skill sets made his experience interesting and enriching.
“It’s really encouraging to carry out concrete projects that you know will be published and have an impact.”
Olivier Cossette
Aside from developing his digital capacity uOCompetency, Olivier also improved his communication by interacting with many different people in various positions at his workplace. Although he was not very familiar with SAS when he began his placement, he was able to learn enough to translate the data into R , which made him more adept at using both software.
Olivier is thankful for the opportunities he had to develop his skills throughout his CO-OP work term because he was able to gain knowledge and experience that are essential to bring to his future career. Before starting his placement, he expresses that he had experienced imposter syndrome at his workplace, but he became more comfortable once he realized that his work was being praised and he was actively learning things that he would have never expected to know how to do in the past.
Thanks to this CO-OP work term, Olivier’s career goals have become even more resolute. He is excited to see where exactly he will end up in the domains of mathematics and statistics, while still leaving some room for himself to experience other paths such as biostatistics and clinical trials Thanks to this term, Olivier now knows more concretely that this is the general direction he wants to grow in.
During his undergraduate studies, Olivier changed his academic major from biomedical science to statistics – by the time he switched over, it was too late to apply to the CO-OP program. However, because he had decided to continue his education, he took the opportunity to enhance his career path with experiential learning. He makes a point that in his case, even if he did not participate in the CO-OP program throughout his bachelor’s, he was able to during his master’s, and that it is never too late to try. He saw that positions for Master's students are even more specialized and enriching, as some employers look for that qualification. Olivier concluded that it's a great time to be enrolled in CO-OP as a Master's student.
“It’s really important that you apply to jobs that you’d care about, while still focusing on jobs that are pertinent and relevant to you.”
Olivier Cossette
For future CO-OP students, Olivier advises to apply to a substantial number of postings, but not arbitrarily in order to avoid any compromises with integrity.