A few weeks ago, late at night (I should say early in the morning), I wanted to apply for jobs on WaterlooWorks. My usual browser is Google Chrome, so when I tried to sign in on WaterlooWorks on Chrome, I kept getting the most hilarious (but annoying) error preventing me from signing in. I nearly gave up and was going to go to bed, but I had the idea to switch browsers, so I went on Microsoft Edge, and then I was able to log in to WaterlooWorks. I was so bedazzled by the fact it was working on Edge and not on Chrome that I instantly thought: “Who made this thing?!” This simple thought is the reason for this article, since I bet not many people actually know… who made this thing.

History of Co-op

While I would love to get right into the subject, I feel like we cannot discuss the history of WaterlooWorks without discussing the history of Co-op at Waterloo.

The University of Waterloo opened in 1957, and Co-op has been with it since day 1. At the time, Co-operative education was a new thing, so the University wanted to offer their first 74 engineering students this special learning opportunity (1). 

Naturally, as the concept of co-op grew successfully and gained more recognition, the University’s co-op program was expanded in 1962 to the Department of Physics, in 1975 to Economics students in the Faculty of Arts, and eventually to 120 programs in all faculties. Fun fact: the University of Waterloo has Canada’s only Pharmacy co-op program, which opened in 2006 (1)!

The University also created co-op alternatives such as EDGE in 2017 for undergraduate students in non-co-op programs (1) and WE Accelerate in 2021, originally to help students in their first hiring term find jobs during the pandemic, and now to help students (who cannot secure a co-op) develop their professional and work skills as a flexible work term credit (2).

The CEE department in 2019 brought together Co-op, WxL, the Centre of WIL, and EDGE. WxL, the Work-Learn Institute and formerly known as WatCACE, was founded in 2002 and studies data from Waterloo co-ops to determine research trends and possibilities. And of course, we’ve got the big Tatham Centre, TC, the HQ of co-op at Waterloo (after Needles Hall) (3). The centre opened in 2003 and was named after William Tatham, a successful and very generous Waterloo co-op alumnus. His fun fact? His first company sold for 1.76 billion $ (1)!

History of WaterlooWorks

Having our background, let’s discuss the introduction of WaterlooWorks.

A long long time ago…

WaterlooWorks was… not always WaterlooWorks! I bet that nearly all the students currently attending UWaterloo probably don’t know that the previous job board, which has now almost completely faded into obscurity, was Jobmine. Jobmine was implemented in the early 2000s to move the Co-op process to an all-in-one online interface, replacing the Access system (Author’s note: now… this one has fully fallen into darkness, I couldn’t find anything on it). On this interface, students could apply for a certain amount of jobs on their own computer, save their resumes on the system, see if they were selected for interviews and choose interview times, and employers could directly check information on applicants, such as grades and work term history, online instead of waiting for application packages to lengthily arrive (9).

Jobmine and Early WaterlooWorks

WaterlooWorks was actually implemented in Winter 2017 to replace the by-then old Jobmine. Unlike Jobmine, which was made by University staff (and also Co-op students!!!), WaterlooWorks was made by a third party and purchased by the University, but there was difficulty in accommodating for a larger number of co-op students, transferring Jobmine features to the new system, and adding in new features. Hence, WaterlooWorks had a 1-year launch delay (6).

(It did launch in 2017 for all co-op students, it’s just that it seems to have been planned for much earlier. For instance, during development, a pilot of the system was used by the School of Architecture from Spring 2014-Winter 2015, and so Architecture was the first to adopt WaterlooWorks) (8).

Jobmine was very similar to the Full-Cycle Service Board (formerly known as the Hire Waterloo Co-op Board, it contains postings that are pre-approved for co-op credit and applicants must follow the University’s timeline outlined in the CEE Co-op Calendar) (4): students would apply for up to 50 jobs, then go through interviews and a rank/match-like system (5). But unlike our current job application software, Jobmine was not well liked by many students (5). As a matter of fact, an urban definition of jobmine in 2012 was: ”A job bank used by University of Waterloo students to find co-op positions […] notorious for crashing frequently and being related to 64% of all laptop assaults from students taking out their frustrations” (7).

Once WaterlooWorks was implemented, it became the new go-to for students to apply for jobs. Multiple job boards were eventually added to the software, and after a few years of regular maintenance and updates, it has become the WaterlooWorks we all use today.

NB (Author’s note): There are surprisingly little sources on the history of Access, Jobmine, and WaterlooWorks. The few that I found are referenced throughout this section, and I want to note that this means it’s not easy to find info on how people were liking the old systems vs the new system (and I also don’t want to base my article on 7 year-old biased opinions on the Jobmine-WaterlooWorks transition). On the subject of biased opinions, note that not everyone at the time liked the transition from Jobmine to WaterlooWorks.

Conclusion

The University of Waterloo has had a history of over 60 years with Co-op. It has come a long way from 74 to more than 20,000 students, and has been the key factor in the rise of the University of Waterloo’s status as one of the best engineering schools in Canada (and one of the best places for employers to find a fresh batch of graduates to hire) (3).

These days, as WaterlooWorks gets old, it goes through regular maintenance periods early in the mornings most likely because no one is planning to mass apply at those times. If it wasn’t for the regular maintenance, who knows if WaterlooWorks could end up as bad as Jobmine supposedly was…

And along with that random fact, always remember to thank the WaterlooWorks and CEE staff (both at Waterloo and around Canada, since fun fact: There are CEE co-op support teams located outside campus around the country! (3)) for all their hard work in maintaining the software and the co-op program, helping us students get co-op jobs and develop our professional and workplace skills before graduation.

And of course, remember to thank them because if we don’t get co-ops, we don’t graduate.

References

(1) https://uwaterloo.ca/associate-provost-co-operative-and-experiential-education/about/our-history

(2) https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-work-integrated-learning/waterloo-experience-we-accelerate

(3) https://uwaterloo.ca/innovation60/blog/post/60-years-co-op-waterloo

(4) https://uwaterloo.ca/co-operative-education/find-your-co-op-job/find-job-waterlooworks

(5) https://medium.com/@marcandrsimard/test-6288bdd2960c

(6) https://www.engsoc.uwaterloo.ca/academic-news-co-op-and-the-new-jobmine/

(7) https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jobmine

(8) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PL-JgjA0ix3_pWKPDPBTFMM2s0eb8AyjO8

(9) https://bulletin.uwaterloo.ca/2004/may/03mo.html