‘In the city’s talent pipeline, students play a really critical role’

Fifth-year Integrated Business and Humanities students, from left: Yumnah Hussain, Isabella Demakos, Aidan Hussey, Julie Hong, Diviya Leonard, Alex Bovie, Meghan Duivesteyn. Not pictured: Forrester Sorensen.  

Conducting a survey may not seem, on the surface, like the most exciting capstone project. But for eight McMaster students, it’s become both a creative and meaningful way to give back to their community.  

The fifth-year Integrated Business and Humanities students are supporting the City of Hamilton in administering an Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) survey to prospective employees in the Greater Hamilton region. 

The survey aims to help the City of Hamilton better understand the barriers to hiring and recruitment within both the City and the Hamilton Fire Department. Insights from it will be used to enhance hiring and recruitment processes, increase inclusion, and strengthen IDEA initiatives.  

Their goal is to collect 1,000 responses over the summer. Engagement from McMaster students will strengthen the responses, the students say.  

One student involved in the project, Forrester Sorensen, already has first-hand experience with the City: He’s been working for the recreation department since he was 16.  

“It’s been a fantastic job, it’s helped me pay my way through school, I’ve met a lot of great people through it,” Sorensen says.  

He wants to help open the door for others. “It’s been such a rewarding experience for me that I would love everybody to have the opportunity to pursue positions like that, and be able to reap the benefits and be able to pay for school like I have.”  

Students are often overlooked in recruitment, outside of summer opportunities, Sorensen says. “They are kind of referred to as an unskilled labour force,” he says. “We think they have a lot of unique, diverse perspectives.”  

He’s seen a lot of the City’s full-time roles filled by people who got part-time opportunities as a student and progressed internally.  

Long-term project to make a difference

Sorensen and his classmates are the latest group to work on the project, an ongoing partnership between McMaster, CityLAB Hamilton and the City.  

Previous students Kavin Qiu and Sanjeevani Maloo worked on the survey’s design and development with Shahad Al-Saqqar from McMaster’s Office of Community Engagement.  

The current group of eight students is working on the execution and launch of the survey, through the IBH Community Engagement Capstone course with instructor Sarah King and CityLAB Hamilton. Once they graduate, the next iteration of students will conduct a more in-depth analysis of the survey’s results.  

“It has quite the history, predating our involvement,” says Aidan Hussey, one of the students. “Within the capstone element of our class, we all electively chose this project because we were really drawn to the impact that it could have on the Hamilton community.” 

The students are the next generation of workers, says Isabella Demakos, another student working on the project. “We’re the voice heading in to establishing our lives and entering the workforce. Our voice matters,” she says.  

Electing students to be voices within the survey recognizes their immense potential. “The City is very aware that we’re strong voices to have.” 

Experience working with the City

Collaborating with the city on this project has been a great experience, the students say, giving them new connections and insight into the workings of the municipality.  

They’ve been in contact with several different teams and city leaders, including the Manager of Diversity and Talent and the Fire Chief.  

“We’ve been able to touch a lot of different points within the umbrella of the City that, had we not been a part of this project, I wouldn’t even know existed,” Sorensen says.  

They’ve learned about stakeholder management and project management, which has been unexpectedly inspiring to witness on this survey, Demakos says.  

 “This survey has been four years in the making, but I think there’s a story to that, because you want to get it right,” she says. “You don’t want to push out a survey just to push out a survey and not get the response rate you want.”  

Working with the municipality, and seeing their dedication to this IDEA initiative, has been heartwarming, she said.  

“To see them be so dedicated to creating a more equitable and inclusive environment and making sure that they get it right . . . it just goes to show that a project may take a long time, but it’s worthwhile. We’re so happy to be a part of that.”  

Hussey appreciates that the city wants to “actually hear from individuals within the Hamilton community, from equity-deserving groups, to understand where they perceive barriers in their potential employment.”  

And it’s been a “full circle moment” for the students, Demakos says. “We get to work with these community partners. We get to give back to our community, and do it in a fun way and use our creative minds to help.” 

Click here to take the survey. It will remain open until the end of summer 2025.

This article originally appeared on McMaster Daily News.