Student & Apprentice Talent

Meet them before everyone else does.

Work-integrated learning puts students and apprentices in your workplace while they are still training - so you assess them on the job, they learn your systems, and the hiring decision is made on evidence rather than an interview.

Co-op, internship and practicum placements
Registered apprentices in the skilled trades
Summer and seasonal student hiring
Wage subsidies and training grants

Talk to our team See the funding

Regional post-secondaries

4-16

Week placement terms

Yes

Wage subsidies available

The formats

Four ways to bring a student or apprentice in.

They differ in length, in how much supervision they need, and in what the institution asks of you. Most employers start with one and add others once the first placement works.

Co-op placements

A paid work term inside a credential. The student is assessed by both you and the institution, and terms run on the academic calendar.

Paid, term-based

Internships

Shorter and more flexible than co-op. Useful when you have real project work but not a full term of it.

Project-shaped

Practicum placements

Common in health, education and human services, where supervised hours are part of getting licensed.

Often regulated

Apprenticeships

You employ the apprentice; they alternate on-the-job hours with technical training toward journeyperson certification.

Multi-year

Applied training at Red Deer Polytechnic - students arrive on site already familiar with the equipment.

Where they come from

The institutions already training your next hire.

Red Deer Polytechnic

Trades, health, business and technology programs with established co-op and practicum streams.

Olds College

Agriculture, agri-technology, horticulture and land-based programs, including the Werklund Centre.

Burman University

Degree programs in business, education, health and the sciences.

Campus Alberta Central

Coordinates access to post-secondary training across the smaller communities in the region.

What it costs

Much of the wage is fundable.

Student and apprentice placements are among the best-funded hiring you can do in Alberta. The programs, amounts and deadlines are set by the provincial and federal governments - check which ones apply before you commit to a placement.

Apprenticeship subsidies

Federal wage support for employers taking on apprentices in Red Seal trades.

Government-funded

Training grants

Provincial funding that covers a share of the cost of training a new or existing employee.

Government-funded

Summer student funding

Seasonal wage support for hiring students over the summer months.

Seasonal deadlines

How to start

Four steps to a first placement.

1. Scope the work

Pick real work with a beginning and an end. A student with a defined project outperforms one given whatever comes up.

2. Contact the school

Career services at each institution matches employers to programs and tells you when their terms start.

3. Line up funding

Confirm which subsidies apply before the placement begins - most cannot be claimed retroactively.

4. Assign a supervisor

One named person who owns the placement. This is the single biggest predictor of whether it converts to a hire.

Regional partners

Why employers keep doing it

A placement is a long interview.

By the end of a work term you know how someone handles your systems, your customers and a bad day - which no interview will tell you. Employers who run placements consistently spend less on recruitment because their next hire is already trained.