Catalyst
Catalyst
What is Catalyst?
Catalyst is a nine-week online program structure that teaches career advancement strategies to STEM-trained immigrant women to help them take charge of their career journeys in Canada. This online program was developed by TGC to support settlement agencies’ move away from resume-based recruitment strategies, a system that historically fails highly skilled immigrant women. The program focuses on the development of an online portfolio to tell each woman’s career story and informational interview technique practice as new tools for participants to look for work. The Catalyst structure and program resources are available to all immigrant settlement agencies for them to adapt and use to fit their unique community’s needs.
Catalyst aims to:
Acknowledge the power and potential of immigrant women in STEM and rebuild their confidence
Enrich the career advancement toolkits of immigrant women in STEM with alternative approaches to job searching and applications
““I feel I discovered more about myself by stopping and taking time to ask myself what I want, I feel motivated and directed to reach what I aim for!””
Why is Catalyst important?
TGC’s Workfinding and Immigrant Women’s Prosperity in STEM report shows that resume-based job search does not yield the same results for immigrant women as it does for those born in Canada. This discrepancy is even more pronounced for racialized / visible minority immigrant women, even when they are trained and experienced in in-demand STEM fields. The result is that despite their world-class qualifications, immigrant women in STEM are often under-employed and under-paid compared to their Canadian-trained peers.
Catalyst is an online pilot program designed to guide STEM-trained immigrant women in developing new strategies to advance their career in STEM fields.
How does Catalyst run?
Catalyst runs as a nine-week, online program: six-weeks of curriculum for participants to learn how to develop their career story and online portfolio, and then a three-week practice period to allow time for participants to master selling themselves to employers through informational interviewing.
Catalyst pays particular attention to addressing the following challenges identified by STEM-trained immigrant women during our research across Canada:
Career Gaps: A career gap is a period of time during your career where you were not involved with formal, paid employment in your field.
Underemployment: Underemployment occurs when one’s previous education/training/experience does not correspond adequately with one’s current job.
Over-qualification: You may find out that employers believe you are overqualified for a position you have applied for.
““I have the confidence to tell people that I am more that what is shown on my resume””
What research informed Catalyst?
The Catalyst Program builds on lessons learned from the evidence-based German pilot program “Projekt Enter” as well as the findings from TGC’s Prosperity Project I report entitled, “Workfinding and Immigrant Women’s Prosperity in STEM (2020)”.
The pilot program “Projekt Enter” ran from 2016-2018 in Nuremberg, Germany to support recent immigrants with individually-tailored placement processes. This was a sub-project of the German government’s nationwide funding program for newcomers entitled “Integration through Qualification”. Projekt Enter recognized that the majority of immigrants arriving in Germany each year already brought skills, educational qualifications and rich professional experience to the country’s economy. The program recruited local small- and medium- sized companies to support the placement and integration of immigrants with matching training and work preferences. Public recognition of this collaboration had a “catalyst effect” on the local community, encouraging other employers to hire newcomers as well.
Catalyst was further fuelled by the results from TGC’s Workfinding and Immigrant Women’s Prosperity in STEM 2020 report. This research showed that the traditional resume-based approach to job seeking does not serve immigrant women in STEM, leading to underemployment of this group.
Why did TGC lead the pilot program?
The Catalyst pilot aimed to design, test, and measure the effectiveness of new career advancement approaches that do not rely solely on resumes and job postings in helping reduce immigrant women’s under-employment and unemployment in STEM sectors.
TGC’s pilot programs mitigate the risk for organizations trying novel or alternative approaches to known problems so we can get better at addressing them in the long term.