Bonus Episode - Exploring My Career Pathways™

Lora Bucsis

Lora has always been a champion for forging one’s own path. A non-traditional, lifelong learner herself, Lora leads the team at SAIT responsible for educational products and learner success in Continuing Education and Professional Studies. Wildly curious about how jobs change over time, Lora believes that learning for 21st-century careers needs to come in several different forms from a number of different avenues. When she’s not binge-listening to podcasts or driving her teenagers around, you’ll find her hiking in Alberta’s backcountry — or falling off her bike.

Zachary Novak

Zachary is the Founder of Careers in Technology and Innovation (CITI), an online community that supports experienced professionals find and grow careers in technology. Through Careers in Technology and Innovation, Zachary has hosted over 150 events and has helped over 120 people land roles in tech.

Zachary is a community professional, also providing community consulting work through FML Studios Inc. Zachary was previously the Director of Community at RevvGo, Director of Product at Actionable.co, and spent seven years in investment banking. Zachary holds degrees in engineering, business administration, and is a software development bootcamp graduate.

Pat Hufnagel-Smith 

Pat Hufnagel-Smith, Managing Partner at Creative Links International Inc. since 2002, expanded the organization's services to include project management and labour market research. With a background in Human Resources, she's passionate about skilled worker transition and using labour market intelligence to develop evidence-based action plans. Pat holds a Masters Certificate in Project Management, a BA in Sociology and a Certificate in Adult Education and Facilitation.   

SAIT Podcast: Bonus Episode - Exploring My Career Pathways™

ANNCR: [00:00:00] This is a bonus episode of the Best Careers You Never Knew Existed Podcast.  

LORA: Hi there, I'm Lora from Continuing Education and Professional Studies at SAIT. In this episode, we're talking to Sarah Struthers and Brad Aykroyd in a little bit of shameless promotion for a tool called My Career Pathways and how SAIT is helping learners and students and folks who are considering different career paths find their career path and their next best thing. So, we know each other really well, but I thought I'd start with, can you both introduce yourselves and share a fun fact?  

BRAD: Certainly, I’m Brad Aykroyd. It's been about a decade I've spent here at SAIT in different roles. I'm currently in a product strategist role. 

I have the benefit of being able to envision and breathe life to new learning experiences here at SAIT, which is a passion of mine. Fun fact. I think this thematically will tie in a little bit [00:01:00] later on, but I believe that you're never too old to learn something. I actually learned to snowboard in my 40s, and it was a painful but exhilarating experience. 

SARAH: I'm Sarah Struthers. I'm manager of talent services and community engagement at Continuing Education at SAIT. I've been here for just, under four years, will be four years in November. A fun fact about me is I have identical twins, and my last name is Struthers, so often I'm either called Sally or Stacy, which is my twins names. So, that's my fun fact.  

LORA: Thanks so much for joining us. What the theme of this podcast really is around, is around the best careers you never knew existed and we always like to start with, do you, either of you have a pivotal moment in your career, where you even pivoted or where you changed directions on careers? 

SARAH: I can go first. A pivotal moment in time for me was when we closed our family business. [00:02:00] And I started working for my mom's, had his own company and we sold industrial hardware. It was a very male dominated industry and I was one of the only females in the industry. I thought my kids would be working for our family business. 

And when we closed it, it wasn't just we closed the company, it was my identity too. And I realized I didn't want to, be in that world anymore, It was just too painful coming from, and it was like a family member died when we closed our family business and I had to take stock of what I did like about that job, but it was also really scary because when you work for a family business, are you really good at what you do, or are you in it because it's your family business? I had to realize that I was really good at what I was doing, understand what my skills were, and then try to implement them in my new careers. But it was really tough because [00:03:00] I had no plans for it. Like, my long term goals were my children will be taking over the business. Yeah, it was really tough.  

BRAD: For myself, I actually did a fairly hard pivot right out of the gate in my career. So, I originally, my first degree, It was actually a bachelor of education degree. I had every intention of teaching junior high energy, junior high students and enjoying that process as a career. 

And as fate would have it, that door wasn't open at that time or season in my life and I actually turned, I pivoted, retrained in the area of instrumentation engineering technology at a polytechnic and several years later, after I'd got some work experience under my belt, I had the opportunity to marry up those two different passions, the passion for technology and a passion for learning and teaching and that road brought me back, brought me back to post secondary and an opportunity to both teach and create curriculum for other people to continue their learning journeys. 

LORA: So, you both work with [00:04:00] students in different capacities there and you team help students find their passion and then practical tips on how to do that, and Brad, you are designing programs that have the student kind of journey or experience in mind. What are the stories that really resonate with both of you in terms of actual student stories of where they've made changes and have been really impactful, or? 

SARAH: So I can talk about one that's actually from a program that Brad created. 

And this student was an executive chef. Over COVID, he was laid off, and he was trying to find something a little bit different. And after some discussion, he went into our Robotic Process Automation Bootcamp, which is a 12 week program. And he's now working as a robotic process, a designer, pure pivot, some amazing transferable skills. 

But that was one of the programs that, that Brad created. And we have, yeah, [00:05:00] we have so many other stories like that, but there are people that do pure pivots, and some people just do pivots within their own domain. But yeah, that's a big example for me.   

BRAD: I guess I could follow up with a story in terms of, not a story, but a narrative around another individual who actually did a pivot into a major airline that's based in Calgary, which without name dropping is fairly apparent who that might be, but, and is part of their data analytics team. 

So a graduate in this case, it's another bootcamp delivery type story, but this was from our applied machine learning bootcamp. I was able to go through that process and do a fairly significant career pivot. Had some analyst background, but certainly hadn't worked in the data realm, but now I was employed at a major airline doing very important critical mission, critical work. 

LORA: Yeah, it's great. The Applied Machine Learning Boot Camp was our first boot camp that we built, and the RPA program was our first podcast. How do you both stay [00:06:00] current with the trends? The world is changing so fast. in Alberta right now and the technology and automation and changes in energy. How do you both stay current? 

BRAD: Even my technical interest in the rate of change in technology is becoming increasingly faster paced. I think take a couple different strategies. One of which obviously is an outlook on lifelong learning and continuous learning. Always keeping my edges sharp in that regard. Given the breadth of opportunity to learn can be intimidating at times. 

What prefer to do is to find things that I can apply within my current work context or context adjacent and do projects. I don't like to learn in abstract, I like to get my hands dirty and roll my sleeves up and work with things. Whether that's taking generative AI for a spin to help me out. Create strategic documentation that's aligned with my day to day or taking a page out of my student's books and learning a little bit about robotic process automation and [00:07:00] creating some processes internally that help to optimize and create efficiencies within the system. 

Wonderful opportunities. So, you're always looking for applied projects and I can chase learning materials and opportunities to learn and grow.  

SARAH: I'm not quite as similar as Brad. I did do a lot of applied stuff. Robotic process, automation process is like over me, but I like to meet with people and network and find out what's new that's going on in different organizations. 

Talking to people, and they might have the same job title, but they're working in different industries and finding out what's changing with them. I listen to podcasts, I read different articles, and those kinds of things just to try to stay up to date. But to your point, things are changing so fast. Some industries are changing quicker than others, and some areas within industries are changing faster than others, but it's trying to meet with people and, learning from folks that I network with to find out what changes are happening in their organizations and what they're [00:08:00] looking for in candidates. 

LORA: Yeah, that's great. What skills do you think are the most important? If people were to focus, what skills should they be focused on? And how would you choose?  

BRAD: In terms of, I think if you'll let me just, you know, allow me to slightly deviate, you know, I'll promise to bring it back around to the question. I think it's important to note that all of us as individuals, regardless really where we're at in our stage in life, it could be early career, mid career, late career, we're bringing to the table an existing set of skills that really need to be leveraged. 

In such a dynamic environment where the needs of employers, the needs of organizations are changing, it's basically in pace with the changes to technology, there's a demand to always be upskilling or reskilling. And that can be intimidating at times, but the beautiful thing is when you look backwards, there's a breadth and a richness of skills that you bring to bear. 

In terms of what's most important, I think that I'm going to be selfish, and I'm [00:09:00] going to say it aligns with your passion. I would encourage those individuals that are, you know, on that hamster wheel of always improving that if you're going to be donating time and energy, chase your passions. There's enough breadth of opportunity out there that you can probably, find yourself in a place where you're upskilling or reskilling in an area that really is going to bring a lot of life satisfaction. 

SARAH: I agree. Curiosity. Make sure you maintain that sense of curiosity. They're always trying to learn and trying to figure out what the next thing is. Collaboration is huge. I'm hearing that within industry domain experience, what Brad was saying. So if you want to pivot, sometimes you don't have to pivot. Do a complete pivot. 

You can just make changes within your own industry, but collaboration, curiosity, those are things I would think would be in.  

LORA: So, you talked a little bit about everyone has skills, and I think we hear sometimes about unrecognized [00:10:00] skills. How do you help people recognize the skills that they might already have that have value, but they might not see it? 

SARAH: That happens a lot. When we're talking to career pivoters and people that we speak to before they decide to take one of our programs, They're, they don't realize the skills that they have. A lot of them come naturally to them, and when they come naturally, they don't realize other people don't possess those skills. 

So, it's really taking stock of what you're good at, and maybe what you're good at isn't what somebody else is good at and being able to recognize it. Um, Brad alluded to it a little bit ago, but we do have this platform called My Career Pathways, That will help people figure out or highlight the skills that they have. 

Whether it's hard skills or soft skills, it is something that helps folks see in black and white the skills that they actually have.  

BRAD: And sometimes it almost takes, reading through a job posting [00:11:00] or to see those skills broken out and say, I have that one. I'm actually quite good at that. I might look at postings within my current role and identify skills that I might have. I might actually look at roles that I want to have. And similar to saying what, you know, I, they're looking for good communication skills, good organization skills, and some hard technical skills. You know, and I have some of those skills I have, right? Sometimes just making it explicit is, makes it a little bit easier.  

SARAH: And the suggestions that our platform gives people, so when they upload their resume, the platform pulls skills that you have off your resume, so your past education experience, your work experience, and then it makes recommendations. It recommends different skills to add to your profile, comparing your profile and your past work and education experience to other people, and then make recommendations based on that. The skills that may have not popped up on your resume or on your profile. So, it [00:12:00] makes you aware of, Oh yeah, I do have those skills. I never thought about them, but I do have them.  

LORA: I think you guys can speak more to this. The way we hear a lot of is how important what would be maybe classified as soft skills, communication, collaboration, problem solving is really valued by employers. And can you speak a little bit about that? Because I think over the years, there's been a lot of focus on hard technical skills and the need for those skills, which they are important, but I think what we've seen over the past few years is an increased importance on the soft skills.  

BRAD: As a hiring manager, prior to my academic career, I did work within software development in the private sector, and as a hiring manager, technical hard skills were required, but what got you the job was soft or essential skills, right? 

Really, the technical skills were the minimum line in terms of requirements can perform X, Y, or Z in [00:13:00] terms of technical proficiencies. But really, once you got to the interview, your ability to integrate with the team, your ability to dynamically communicate, your ability to, um, potentially present outwards on behalf of the team, your presentation skills and that type of thing, were really the differentiating factors that got you the job. And I would suggest that, even within an academic domain in the second half of my career, that same criteria holds true.  

SARAH: Completely agree. The hard skills will get you the interview, your soft skills will get you the job.  

LORA: What do you think makes people most afraid about pivoting their career? 

SARAH: I think it's the unknown and not lack of I don't want to say self confidence, but they don't understand how their current skills translate into the new pivot career. 

And they don't always see themselves as the new career. Their identity is sometimes tied to their past experiences, their past role, and not [00:14:00] understanding how those skills fit into the new role, because there's so many transferable skills. And that's what's the beauty of My Career Pathways, because it helps people see what skills they have in common with any role that they want to compare to, and what skills gap they have to any role they want to compare themselves to. 

LORA: So, that's a good segue, Can you tell us a little bit more, tell our listeners a little bit more about my current pathways and how this is a good option for people who are starting down this path?  

BRAD: Absolutely, I'll hand things over to Sarah here in just a second, but I'll take a quick stab at it here. When we first conceptualized the need for a tool to help people navigate this space, to be able to understand where their current skill sets lie. What their dreams and aspirations are relative to their careers and to, uh, provide an opportunity to bridge that gap of where they're at, where they'd like to be with training, [00:15:00] we went out to the market to find a partner that would be able to provide us with the ability to provide a detailed breakdown or an assessment of your personal skills are secondarily wanted to make sure we had a platform that was current and relevant and tied into real world market data on the back end, and, and then actually would be intelligent, as in artificially intelligent, and be able to provide training recommendations based on that data and your skill set, and be able to place you in a situation where you can craft a pathway that leads to a dream, an aspiration, a future career goal. 

And we found that in our partner Skyhive, who have recently been bought out by Cornerstone, and they have a platform that we've, internally branded as My  Career Pathways, and we've been able to provide that functionality and that experience to people that are looking to improve, shift, and [00:16:00] continue on their learning journey. 

SARAH: That's a great answer Brad. I love My Career Pathways because it's a tool that didn't exist before, and it really helps people Make the choice of what their new career could look like based on where they are right now. So, a lot of people worry, career professionals. A lot have families, mortgages, they're working a full-time job, and if they want to pivot, it's hard to figure out what that next step could be and how expensive is it going to be. 

And so, it gives people an idea, gives them different options for their next step, and they can make their next career change based on what they can, how much time commitment they can put into education. What the cost of that education looks like, so they can make the best decision for themselves with the information that we give them. 

And it could be based on anything. You could be a business development manager and come up with five different potential roles that [00:17:00] might interest you, and you can get the information of how many jobs are available today in Calgary, based on those roles, what are the skills that are needed on those roles, What skill do I have that matches that role, and what my skill gap is, and what courses I can take at SAIT Continuing Education to fill in those skill gaps. 

And you can do it with any job that you can think of, just about, is in our platform. So, it's super powerful for people.  

BRAD: Well, the other important thing to note, Sarah, is that it's so free.  

SARAH: Yeah, that's a very important thing to note. It's absolutely for free and you don't have to be a SAIT student to access it. It's free to anybody.  

LORA: Yeah, and my understanding is that we have a number of career counselors across the city who are also accessing it, particularly those who are very interested because of the The ethical AI that's been built into the platform.  

SARAH: Yes. We actually [00:18:00] tried to see if we could break the ethical AI and we could not, so that was a great thing. 

We uploaded one resume four times, created four different profiles, two with two as males and two as females. And one of the men and one of the females had nontraditional Canadian names. And a male and a female with traditional Canadian names. And the profiles uploaded exactly the same and the jobs that they recommended to all four were exactly the same. 

So, Skyhive, or Cornerstone, has trained their AI bots to combat unconscious biases for job postings. And there's, when I worked as a recruiter at Radstead, I too had unconscious bias and didn't realize it until we got into this a little bit too. And an example of that is when I wrote job descriptions for an executive assistant, an executive assistant in my mind was a woman, and I wrote it with that in [00:19:00] mind, and I never had men apply, obviously because the languages I was using. 

Our platform combats that. What's also amazing is that we know women don't apply to jobs unless they fit 100 percent of the skills that are asked. Men don't have that problem. This platform will recommend jobs to women that they wouldn't normally think that they should apply to. It's an amazing tool for all types of folks. 

LORA: Yeah, I think it's great to give people the information that traditionally has been held by more institutional type organizations. It really democratizes that information around what skills are in demand, what the trends are. What industries are hiring and where things are going, because it's important information to have, especially if you're in future thinking. How do you see the future of work evolving? 

BRAD: I think we're living part of it right now. I think COVID has accelerated the rate of career flexibility and options available for individuals, the options for remote work. And if you [00:20:00] think about how we've acclimated to virtual meetings and those types of those that become commonplace for us. So, in terms of the future of work, I err on the side of optimism. 

I think we're going to see, greater opportunities in terms of flexibility and a greater range of opportunities that we can apply for. I know that there are certain technologies being brought to bear that perhaps, people are cautious about because they're going to replace jobs. I am confident that as you continue to upskill and reskill, that you will find a place within the modern economy to add value, uh, in a role that will pay well, and will provide opportunities for future growth and development. 

Having said that, the one thing I probably would weigh in and say that, I suspect that those roles will be ever shifting and ever evolving.  

SARAH: I can add to that too. I think it's going to be more of a skills-based hiring in the future. Less on, you have to have this degree or [00:21:00] this master's degree. I think employers are going to start looking more on skills. 

The upskilling, reskilling is going to be more in our future. And I see that's one of the trends that is going to be evolving. 

LORA: What advice would you give to someone who's contemplating a career change? Maybe it's still stuck.  

BRAD: This might be, you're certainly beaten on the same drum here. I guess I'm an optimist at heart. 

I think you should chase dreams. Use wisdom and prudence as you do, but if you're in a place where you're unhappy, or you're looking over the fence at, you know, the next opportunity, take the leap. The beautiful thing, and Sarah's referred to this, is it doesn't always have to be a hard pivot. If there is interest, if you have aspirations and interests, there's actually opportunities to upskill within your current position and then have a softer pivot, softer landing as you go through. 

And if you plan that accordingly, and we certainly don't want to tell you to jump [00:22:00] prematurely, but if you invest the time and effort, I think, have your cake and eat it too, right? You can have aspirations, continue to work without taking huge risks. If you want to be a huge risk taker, we probably could support you in that as well, but I probably would caution you to take a little bit more prudence as you approach your career path. 

SARAH: I would do exactly what Brad said, and then talk to people, find out what different kinds of job or roles, careers that you'd be interested in, and start talking to people in those careers to get a sense of what their daily life is, what it's like doing that different role and talk to people in different industries with the same role title or career title because it could change in the same industry, different companies, the job title might be the same, but what they actually do is completely different. 

I would also take a look at My Career Pathways and see what those different skills are required and what kind of training you would need. But definitely [00:23:00] network and talk to as many people as you can and meet me. You can reach out to me and I'm happy to have a conversation with you and walk you through the platform or even talk about different opportunities for you. And yeah, that's what I would do. Networking for me would be really key in this stage.  

LORA: Yeah, and obviously we'll put a link to My Career Pathways and Sarah, your contact information and in the notes, or the resources list, maybe just one question that just occurred to me to ask is how did My Career Pathways come about? And can we talk a little bit about the support that we've had from the City of Calgary? 

BRAD: Certainly, we wouldn't be where we're at right now with actually two funders. that have supported this project, one of which is TD Bank, very appreciative of their financial support and their vision in supporting this project. 

And the second is the Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund, through, it's affiliated with the City of Calgary. They have also provided support with funds that have opened doors and opportunities [00:24:00] for us to offer this particular service to the community at large, no cost. In terms of how it came to be, we certainly envisioned a need for it. 

And really wanted to leverage a technical solution to make it easier for individuals to walk or to find their way along their pathway, right? At scale. And so, what we've done is we found a platform that allows us to bring people to the table and allow them to largely self solution, pathway of their own choosing but as Sarah's indicated, that's not the only way we can interact if we want career counseling those services are also provided as well and yeah, none of that would have been available without the, our benefactors.  

SARAH: We also noticed a lot of continuing ed students weren't sure how they fit in into different roles and that when we started this was what, three years ago and there's a large number of folks that were laid off in [00:25:00] oil and gas and a lot of tech industries were coming to Calgary looking to hire these highly skilled candidates. 

One thing we didn't envision is these highly skilled candidates not understanding A, what different opportunities were in the tech industry, and B, how they fit in. And it's not just tech anymore, we've opened this platform to just any jobs in any industry, but it allows people to figure out where they can fit in a new industry, in a new role. 

And I think that's, was a big push for us to create this platform with the help of OSIF and TD, because otherwise people really struggle to figure out how they fit in, how those skills that they have are transferable, and understanding different opportunities that are in front of them.  

LORA: And correct me if I'm wrong, but there's been quite a bit of collaboration with Zach and the group from Careers in Technology and Innovation, as well as a number of the community serving agencies who, [00:26:00] the tool is really helpful to help them help their clients who are also struggling. A bigger impact, not just our students, but also the community at large has benefited from that.  

SARAH: Absolutely. Other community associations that do immigration, land and immigration services. One of the aspects of our platform that really helps them is when you have a new Canadian coming in and they're not sure if a certain skill set that they have, or a specific skill is something that's used here. 

And so, they can plop that skill into the system, and we can let them know in specific cities, even if Calgary, if their skill is being used and where it's being used. If it's there in Toronto, they can look in Toronto or whatever, but it', that is something that's really helpful to that group because when you're from another country and there's could be a platform that they use in that other country, that's something really specific to there and for them to know that it's something that's used here is gives them a sense that they have a belonging here and they have an [00:27:00] opportunity here for them and that the skills that they possess match some of the jobs here in the city. 

LORA: Is there anything else you wanted to share?  

SARAH: I mean, I love this platform. I had the opportunity to demo this platform on almost a weekly basis, and the reactions to people, once they've seen our demonstration, or halfway through the demonstration is amazing. It's a very powerful tool. I'm also very thankful of the opportunity to work with the people that I do, the students, to help them reach their new goals and that's, a lot of them are pivoting, some within their industry, some are doing some massive pivots, and to see them succeed and see them starting their new careers and then seeing them a year after their new careers and the accomplishment that they have and the, it's just, it's amazing and absolutely powerful. 

BRAD: Originally, I talked about early on in my career, the aspirations with my Bachelor of Education, want to get in there and [00:28:00] learn and teach. I love technology. I, it's easy to get fired up about technology, but the real success story behind My Career Pathways is the impact it has on people. And their journeys, love working in education because of the impact it has on people's lives. 

So as much as I'd love to stand here and pitch a tool to you, I'm not. I'm going to pitch, I'm going to pitch up the tension, your potential and uh, My Career Pathways is simply a way to get to where we need to get you.  

LORA: Big thanks to both of you. Usually now is when we do a wrap up and whoever is co hosting with me and we talk about all the things we learned, but obviously I really appreciate your time doing this. 

And I think, yeah, for our listeners, please check out the resources. We'll put some links to our career services. If you're interested in any of our programs, Sarah and her team can help guide you as well as the link to My Career Pathways and certainly encourage you to explore the tool. If you are thinking about [00:29:00] making some changes or engaging in training or even just interested in how roles are emerging, it's got a wealth of great information. 

Encourage you to check that out in our resources. Thanks again for listening.  

ANNCR: The Best Careers You Never Knew Existed Podcast, powered by SAIT, funded by the government of Alberta. Have a career suggestion or want to appear as a guest? Get in touch. Email careerspodcastsait. ca or reach out directly to Lora Bucsis on LinkedIn. Rate and review this podcast and you might find your review read on a future episode. Please subscribe to the Best Careers You Never Knew Existed. Wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. The Best Careers You Never Knew Existed Podcast with Lora Bucsis and Pat Hufnagel-Smith. Produced by Terran Anthony Allen and Jenna Smith. 

Executive produced by Lora Bucsis. Special thanks to SAIT Radio for their [00:30:00] support and the use of their studios. And most of all, thank you for listening. 

SAIT’s Continuing Education and Professional Studies offers hands-on, immersive courses to infuse your career with the latest skills that employers are looking for. 

Discover My Career Pathways™

Meet your career goals through SAIT's My Career Pathways™ tool. This free, self-serve portal categorizes your existing skills and experience to create a personalized profile, identify gaps in your skillset and provide recommended courses and training options. Discover the skills you have — and the ones you need — to chart your future career path. 

Learn more

• Connect with/Follow Bradley Ackroyd on LinkedIn
• Connect with/Follow Sara Struthers on LinkedIn