Meet Will: Data Analyst

In this episode, Devon and Sarah-Jane interview Will Howe, who is the Provincial Data Lead for the School-College-Work Initiative in Ontario.

While you learn all about Will's extremely windy career path, you'll also hear his insights on:

• Why a liberal arts major is useful
• How to use connections to find work
• The importance of being able to communicate what you learn in school in a language employers understand
• The bonus of not having a plan
• Bringing honesty into the workplace and your work relationships
• Having postsecondary options that aren't just "straight to university"

Learn more about what the School-College-Work Initiative does here.

Transcript

Welcome to The One About Careers with Devon and Sarah Jane. A career podcast for adults involved with teens navigating life after high school. We help you help your teens make informed education and career decisions by providing quality information and resources. Join us for weekly, bright -sized conversations covering various aspects of careers, including insights from professionals and different fields. - New episodes available every week at theoneaboutcareers.com.

- Welcome to another episode of the One About Careers. So we decided to interview
actual humans in real jobs to get a sense of the kinds of things that are out
there. So Devon, who is up on a beautiful hot seat today. Today we are talking to
Will Howe. Will is the Provincial Data Lead for the School College Work Initiative.
He also wanted me to throw in that he is a volunteer at Team Fight of Dog
Training at Elder Dog Canada. Welcome Will. Hello. We are so glad you are here.
Can you tell me what the, I heard your job and I don't need me to be rude,
but what the heck do you do? What does that mean? What do I do? I get that a
lot. Usually I just say I'm a data analyst and that it's still a confusing title.
The school -college work initiative in the province of Ontario manages the dual credit
program and so this is an opportunity for students in high school that they get
college credits while they're still in high school or through apprenticeship etc etc.
I work for the group that is contracted by the Ministry of Education and colleges
and universities to fund that program across the province. So essentially colleges and
school boards ask us for money and I get to say yes or no as part of the team.
It's not my decision. So I basically play with spreadsheets. Cool.
Yeah.
This is going to be, I'm sure, a very convoluted answer, but how did you get
there? Like, if you go back to Little Will in high school, how did you get where
you are now? Well, it's even more complicated because it started way before that.
At a very young age, I was one of these kids that I would shovel the driveways
and driveways and mobile lawns, my neighbors, I had paper routes and those kinds of
things. And actually, by the time I was in grade six, I had a part -time job as a
dishwasher.
And, and worked legally. Yes. Yeah. Back back then you could you could work under
the age of 15 or whatever it is now. I worked in a pharmacy in grade nine,
and then grade 10, I actually again got a job as a dishwasher by the end of grade
10. I was a cook and by the end of high school, my brother and I were running a
restaurant a kitchen at a five star resort. I then went off to university,
and I did pick my major out of a hat. So maybe that wasn't the best thing to do
but I went to university because that at that time that's what you did right it
was It was the expectation. - So which university and which program did you pull out
of the hat? - Yeah, I went to Wilfrid Laurier and I took psychology. - I was down
the street at Waterloo. - At Waterloo, yeah.
Throughout university and in high school, I always worked full time. Even though I
was a full time student, I worked full time, I worked in kitchens, I worked on
campus. After I graduated, I actually moved to British Columbia for a few years.
Again, working in kitchens. I also did some telemarketing, some sales, retail. I did
labor ready. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. That's where you kind of,
you sign up and if there's work that day, you work that day. And that was a great
thing in order to get my rent paid when I was unemployed. - Right, so nowadays it's
like something like a task rabbit. - Right, similar kind of thing, even less
protections in the case of something like a TaskRabbit or a gig economy thing.
So when I moved back from BC, a friend of mine had opened a multimedia youth space
and I worked with him there and we did things like we had a recording studio, an
art gallery. We did zines, Again, I'm old. This was a thing. All kinds of different
things for youth and youth at risk. From there, I moved to Peterborough, where I
live now, working at the United Way, running youth programs and supporting boards of
directors. From there, I got hired at an agency called Skills Ontario,
which Devon used to work with me, where I promoted trades to kids across the
province, I actually left that job. It was a permanent full -time job, but it was
something that wasn't necessarily as fulfilling as I wanted to be, but I left it
for a Matley, for a contract position at Durham College, actually in career services.
Then I worked various contracts at that college and then ended up working at Fleming
here in Peterborough as the manager of dual credit and academic operations, which I
did for a number of years. My job was restructured. And after that,
I ended up in my current role through the connections that I had made working at
Fleming and Durham and elsewhere. So the volunteer gigs, I've got a dog,
I love dogs. My trainer said, do you want to help? And I said, absolutely. So
that's my fun part -time gig is playing with dogs and that's just something that I
really encourage folks to do is anything you can do volunteering is always a great
opportunity. So yeah, easy peasy, direct line. Also I can really see where your
psychology degree faked right into there, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. No such thing
as bad education or experience. The challenge with a general bachelor degree is that
it doesn't really teach you how to do anything. And it's really up to you to
figure out how you can take that education or your experience and pitch it in such
a way that people understand how it fits the role that they're advertising for. The
majority of the learning that I did at university did not happen in the classroom,
97 to 99 % of it. It was about learning how to be,
you know, an adult and do laundry and have a checking account, which again,
young folks, you don't know what that is and that's okay. But learning how to take
care of myself, learning how to live with other people and be part of a community
and just be a responsible adults that you can do outside of a post -secondary
institution, but at a post -secondary institution, you have additional structured
support that allows you to do that. These days, I could have gone and done an
eight -month certificate program at college, maybe came back for a year,
three years later, etc. you can transition, you can pathway things now way,
way, way more easily than in the past. And I think that's to the benefit of a lot
of younger people, should that be the route that they choose, right? It's up to,
you know, what you want to do, but you also need to be able to have the ability
to be open to what comes with you. I know a lot of folks who are laser focused
on I'm going to be that one thing and for whatever reason it didn't work and their
life was over. At least that's how it felt to them where if you don't have a
plan. Well imagine where you could get.
- I don't have a plan. - Like the person you're describing when
it doesn't work out, that's 90 % of my clients. - Right, yeah, because they're
focused and that's all they've ever known, that's all they've, and especially now
we're getting more of that American style mindset of where, you know,
you've got to get that kid into the right preschool, even though we don't have it
here, into the right high school, even though it doesn't exist year into the year.
And they're taking all of their extra curriculars that match with that all to this
goal. Well, and then if you get into that job and you don't like it, what do you
do? You're you feel that that that opportunity cost,
right? You you you spent so much time and effort to get to here.
And now I don't like here. And so sometimes things aren't what you expect them to
be and you need to have that breadth of experience and back to what's the value of
a general bachelor degree is it allows you to have a little bit more of a breadth
of experience to try different things to do courses in different subjects and see if
something twigs and sends you down a different direction. Is there anything that
you've really been surprised at as you've gone along your work adventure?
Surprised.
I've been surprised at the number of people who stay in roles that they absolutely
hate.
There's a lot of people and so I've worked in everything from very, very small not
-for -profits. I've been self -employed, I'm self -employed now and I've worked for
large institutions and I find a lot of people who say you know I hate my job I
dread coming here and to be fair I was one of those people as I referenced I
laughed at a job that had benefits it was permanent it was full -time yadda I was
great at it so says I and I left it because all I did was complain and finally
My wife said to me one day, she said, "You have two choices. You can stop
complaining or you can get another job. Pick one." And so I did and I took that
leap and it was scary, especially at the time we had just bought a house.
My wife was in doing a master's degree. It was scary to do,
but at the same time, I was like, "I can't keep living this way and waking up,
we're actually not even waking up, going to bed on Sunday night, dreading the whole
week. If you only get two days off, that's not good. So yes,
there can be an opportunity cost or there can be a financial penalty there,
especially if you talk to somebody who works in a large institution, who's in the
union and they have beautiful, wonderful benefits that I miss very much.
Still, what's it worth? - I think we're hearing some of it come out in some of the
stuff you're talking about, but if you were to look back at your teenage self, is
there any piece of advice you would give yourself?
- Yeah, I would say absolutely try
You find, you find in so many different ways what you expect is not,
is not the reality. I hated math in high school. Now I work on spreadsheets and do
math all day, every day, love it.
Relationships matter the most.
Almost every single job I've gotten is because of who I know, either directly or
indirectly, work hard. People notice, right?
They might not say anything to you, but every job, even the crappy, crappy,
crappy jobs, and I've had a lot of them, you're only hurting yourself.
If you don't work hard, the job's going to be even worse because you know that
you're half arcing it, and putting in no effort. And it's just gonna be harder for
you. So work hard, do your best. And communicate and be honest.
This is a big, big one, especially for younger folks working with old fogeys like
myself.
You have to be upfront. You have to tell us. I can't solve your problem if I
don't know it exists and if I don't understand it, right?
Ghosting people really, really, really annoys old folks like me. We take it
personally and we will tell people that you did it and that will prevent you from
getting other jobs. And I think that's really important for me. I have an invisible
disability, I have chronic fatigue, and I'm actually not able to work full -time.
Just, it's a health thing, can't do it. I could have tried to fake it.
It could have put my health at risk. I could have made everything worse for me in
order to fit in with what the boss wanted me to do.
Instead, I told the truth. I said, listen, this is what the situation is.
This is what I can do. Can we work together and come to a common ground and find
an accommodation? My boss doesn't know that unless I tell them. And I can't be mad
at them if I haven't told them. But if you tell the truth and you discuss things
openly, you'll be surprised at the number of people who want to support you and
want to help you and want to enable you to keep working, especially if you've been
doing that work hard thing that we talked about previous. If you're a good employee,
not only do you get to do way more work, super bonus of being a good employee,
but you get those benefits, right? You get to be able to have those opportunities
if there's an accommodation or those things needed. So those are the things that I
think really important. I'd also say to any young person, if you don't have a part
-time job right now in high school, go get one. Go find out, go learn while the
stakes are lower. When you still live with mom and dad, and if you screw up and
you get fired, you don't lose your housing, right? You need to learn those skills
and those norms,
I guess it is, how to interact with people who are older than you, the way this
is their job and this is very important to them and it's their life, having that
under your belt will really help you going forward. We appreciate your input today.
Stay tuned for the next episode of The One About Careers.

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