Colin Ramdeen is a big believer in personal balance, especially when it comes to education.
“You could be the smartest person in the class, but if you don’t know how to sell yourself in a job interview or know how to work with other personalities effectively, then you’re probably going to have bumps in your career,” he says.
Ramdeen graduated from Centennial’s Computer Systems and Network Technology Co-op program in 1996 and currently works as Manager of Training and Documentation at Redknee Inc., a global provider of innovative communication software products and services.
He credits his co-op education for providing him with his inner equilibrium. He also counsels other co-op students, whom he frequently oversees in his job at Redknee, about the importance of developing people skills.
“Co-op students need to be balanced. They have to know their technical skills, but also possess the soft skills needed to work with people and learn how to maneuver in an organization.”
Co-operative education – which requires students to work with employers as part of their curriculum before they graduate – has been a big boon to the colleges and universities that offer it. For minds that learn better by doing rather than by rote, co-op education is a rich learning opportunity that works.
“My co-op program was great. You learn on the job about what really matters to employers in terms of knowledge and skills,” he says.
Centennial has been offering co-op education for more than 20 years. It’s an appealing option for students of the college’s three-year business and engineering technology programs. Co-op is often cited as the primary reason they choose to come to college rather than university, which does not offer as wide a variety of co-op programs.
Students qualify for work if they maintain a minimum grade point average (GPA) of 2.50 during the first year of the program. The college finds them an employer that can provide work related to their field of study, usually for wages or a stipend.
Ramdeen’s own success owes a lot to his co-op experience.
Back in high school, Ramdeen had decided to pursue engineering and applied to all the right universities. But a chance meeting with a counsellor had him thinking about college for the first time.
“I was tossing up the idea of going to college for the hands-on learning, which someone told me would be good to try. Besides, I knew lots of people who had gone to university and ended up coming to college anyway to get the work experience.”
He enrolled in Centennial’s electronics program, but later switched to computer systems and networks. Ramdeen also got involved in student government on campus – the Centennial College Student Association Inc. – as an engineering student representative and, eventually, student president.
“I learned to juggle a busy life: I had a part-time job, my studies, a girlfriend, the Student Association, and I was the lone driver in the family,” he smiles. “After an easy first year in college, things got very complicated – but I learned to manage the various responsibilities.”
When it came time to start his co-op assignment, he picked EDS, a large information technology (IT) outsourcing company. His time there was so fruitful, the company hired him right out of co-op and he scarcely had time to write his final exams before starting his job as an Infrastructure Analyst Developer.
After three years of exemplary service, Ramdeen realized that his EDS client had a very conservative strategy and he wasn’t learning anything new on the job. On a lark, he went to a job interview at Redknee – and got the position.
Working as a deployment analyst for clients all over the world, Ramdeen trains client company employees to work with new software often required to implement wireless networks.
“The technology is mind-boggling. Last week I was setting up a wireless network in a nation where the citizens sometimes don’t even have four walls. Yet you’ll see them walking around with two cell phones in their pockets.”
The technology is changing rapidly, which means solutions companies like Redknee have to be able to provide the right software to make everything work right. Training is a big part of the equation, too, since the wireless company has to take over when the Redknee employees head back to Canada.
Ramdeen especially likes the fact that he’s the lone college graduate in an organization filled with university grads. Eight years later, Ramdeen is still at Redknee, managing the technical training.
source: www.centennialcollege.ca/success/ramdeen
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