Building a Good Supervision Strategy with Young Canada Works

Louise Pitre

Photo — Panther Media GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo.

The The Young Canada Works Heritage program, in general, expects those who supervise its interns and students to provide a positive work experience and create an environment supportive to skill development.

Young Canada Works Heritage (YCW) is offered in two separate streams, both of which provide short-term work opportunities for Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or those have refugee status in Canada and aged 30 and under. For the YCW at Building Careers in Heritage (BCH) stream, a solidly developed supervision plan is fundamental to its goals. BCH is the longer of the two streams, at four to twelve months in length compared to the 6 to 16 weeks of the YCW in Heritage Organizations (HO) stream. The longer duration of BCH is intended for post-secondary graduates who might come to their position with a basic skill set and some experience in the heritage sector. While both streams are intended to develop skills relevant to the museum sector, BCH is particularly designed to provide its interns with professional development skills and resources to facilitate their transition into full-time employment in the heritage sector. There is a high success rate of BCH interns finding full-time positions following their work term. As such, ensuring that the interns receive the support of competent and thoughtful supervision is central to the goals of the BCH stream.

There are a few features built into how the two streams are administered that illustrate this difference in emphasis. When an employer submits a funding application for a BCH internship through the Young Canada Works website, they are asked to give thought to resources they will be putting towards the internship beyond salary. The internship application asks applicants to consider the costs and the value of the time they will be contributing towards orientation, supervision, briefing, debriefing and job search support for their intern. These are all indicators of the applicant’s awareness of the expectation that their role includes providing career development opportunities to interns.

The application process for both streams of Young Canada Works requires a supervision plan and we want to ensure that supervision of both students and interns isn’t an afterthought. When employers submit a funding application for a YCW-BCH position, they are asked to describe the orientation and coaching they plan to provide and to specify opportunities for the intern to develop professional contacts through networking opportunities. Additionally, applicants must provide a plan for how they will assist the intern’s transition into the labour market by identifying employment programs and job-search services they can provide as resources to their intern. Our peer review evaluators are asked to evaluate applications based, in part, on the strength of their action plan to support the intern’s transition into the labour market.

There are higher expectations for BCH supervisors to prepare their interns for a more seamless transition into the labour market. These expectations are expressed through additional administrative support measures. At the beginning of the internship, we ask that the intern meet with their supervisor to determine and record which skills they would like to develop during the work term. Chosen skills are mapped out in a Competency Development Plan (CDP), which is provided by YCW. The CDP is also where supervisors and interns match chosen skills with tasks from the work plan which they believe will help develop these skills. We also provide supervisors and interns with a list of suggested soft skills (such as, but not limited to: problem solving, teamwork or time management); however, the intern and the supervisor can determine for themselves any specific skills which interests the former or might be more relevant to their career goals. Finally, once the intern’s work term comes to a close, we ask both supervisors and interns to provide a narrative report describing ways in which supervisors supported the intern’s transition into the labour market, which skills the intern has developed during the work term, as well as a more general account of how the internship went. Not only do these additional administrative measures ensure that skill development is a central feature to an intern’s work term, they also serve as tools for the supervisor to accommodate the intern’s professional interests.

Some of our best success stories have come from such well-supervised internships. In her Narrative Report, Kirby Ross, a recent BCH intern at Nova Scotia’s Memory Lane Heritage Village, credited the support and guidance she received from her BCH supervisor with helping her find a position following her internship. She mentioned specifically that she applied for this post-internship “position because of the encouragement [she had] received from Memory Lane’s Director and due to the growth that she facilitated over the course of [her] internship”. To our pleasure, Ross’ following comments highlight how impactful it is to have a positive mentorship experience: “Working at Memory Lane inspired me to build a career in small/community museums and pursue working in a profession where so many people are told ‘there aren’t any jobs’.” The work that Kirby performed during her internship helped reimagine one of Memory Lane’s exhibitions, the Hosking General Store, and her role benefited not only Memory Lane and Kirby, but she was also able to bring her skills developed there to her following position.

Likewise, another BCH intern at Alberta’s Western Development Museum from 2022-2023, Abby Vadeboncoeur, noted that “This experience has been invaluable to my career development. Having been given the opportunity to develop such a wide variety of skills supplements my education with experience and makes me more competitive for jobs in the heritage sector going forward, especially related to curatorial and collections work. It has also given me an interest in pursuing further education related to conservation and cultural resources management in the future.” These narrative reports emphasize that well-supervised BCH internships have the potential to influence career development. Quality of supervision and embracing the role of a mentor have so much to offer in terms of developing passion and interest in contributing to the heritage sector.

Supervision is about so much more than providing instructions and monitoring project progress. Whether within a Young Canada Works internship or beyond, good supervision involves mentorship and an ability to adapt that relies on understanding the mentee’s interests, goals, strengths and weaknesses. By paying attention to interns’ professional development, Young Canada Works supervisors benefit not only their own organization and its employees, but the heritage sector as a whole.

Louise Pitre is a Program Officer with Young Canada Works at Building Careers in Heritage and a YCW Communications Liaison with the Canadian Museums Association.