Bana Muhtadi is a fourth-year Commerce Co-op student majoring in Supply Chain and Logistics Management. Originally from the United Arab Emirates, Bana chose Dal because of the co-op program. “I knew that this program would give me the opportunity to gain experience in different fields that could also help solidify my choice of major.”

Being in her final year of the program, Bana has completed all three of her work terms. She started as a Digital Marketing Intern at Maxive, a digital services company located in her home country. For her second co-op, she decided to stay in Halifax where she worked at Traffic Tech Inc. in customer service support. Finally, she worked at Meta Materials Inc. as a Supply Chain Assistant last summer. Throughout her three co-ops, Bana gained a wealth of skills. “Some of the skills I will carry with me include adaptability, effective communication, and open-mindedness. I believe that these are some of the skills that will enable me to add value to my workplace as well as enhance my professional development.”

Bana was rated Outstanding – the highest possible rating – in her final evaluation with Meta Materials. She attributes her success to her natural interest in what she was learning. “When I started working at Meta, I already had an idea of what working in supply chain and logistics could be like and I really liked what I saw, so by the time I was offered the position, I was excited to know more,” Bana says. “I was very curious, and my manager saw that, so she helped me a lot by diversifying my tasks and exposing me to as many parts of the job as she could in the four months.”

Bana kept an open mind when pursuing her job search and was always trying to maximize the experiences offered to her. “Although I did have certain positions that I leaned more towards, I never completely crossed out anything. I knew that the three co-op terms were about experimenting, gaining experience, and familiarizing myself with the career path I could end up taking.” Though Bana was confident in her job search abilities, she often utilized the services offered to her by MCS to ensure that her experiences would be beneficial. “MCS helped go over my resume before every work term ensuring that it included clear descriptions of my experiences. They also assisted in preparing me for interviews and determining if the job description would provide me the experience I was looking for.”

Here is Bana’s advice for you:

• Be open minded, it’s not so much about the title or the company but more so about the job description and the possible learning outcomes.
• Write down any and all tasks that you get to work on to have those notes ready once it’s time to update your resume.
• Research the different fields in your desired major to try to discover which you are interested in most in upcoming work terms.