Author: Dr. Anne-Liisa Longmore, Dean, Pilon School of Business at Sheridan College

No matter the type of business, big or small, a partnership with Sheridan can help them all.

“Relationships with local, regional and national business partners are extremely valuable to us,” says Dr. Anne-Liisa Longmore, Dean of Sheridan’s Pilon School of Business (PSB). “We are thrilled to help our industry partners resolve business challenges and capitalize on opportunities, which in turn provides exceptional applied learning experiences that are meaningful and relevant to our learners’ professional development.”

Here are some examples of how entrepreneurs, SMEs and large businesses are benefitting from affiliations with Sheridan.

Entrepreneurs

PSB and Sheridan’s Entrepreneurship Discovery and Growth Engine (EDGE) are teaming up to offer underrepresented small business owners a free 12-week digital market training program (www.digitalmarketingresearch.ca) this winter.

Funded by the Government of Canada Future Skills Centre, the collaborative research project teaches participants how to develop and execute a digital marketing campaign specifically for their own business and customer base through experiential training supported by Sheridan’s expert professors.

“We were small business owners ourselves,” says Professor Garrett Hall, “so we understand the challenges of having limited resources and investment and trying to make the most of everything.”

Small to medium-sized enterprises

The chance to participate in one of Sheridan’s integrated industry projects — interdisciplinary capstones in which PSB Honours Bachelor of Business Administration degree students work with industry partners to evaluate and refine strategic and operational plans — came at the perfect time last fall for local e-commerce business Moonbeam Trading Company.

“We were in the early stages of expanding operations into the agri-food sector, and I didn’t have readily available resources within my business that could focus on marketing, finance, logistics and other key areas,” says Moonbeam CEO Mark McDonald.

“One year later, when I look at peers in the sector who were once in the same place I was, I can clearly see how working with Sheridan augmented our expansion. The students not only challenged me to reconsider things I’d already planned; they were also able to look at things in a different dynamic.”

Big businesses

Hatch, an engineering and management consultancy company that employs 10,000 people across the world, relies on Sheridan coop and summer students to help handle the mass of onboarding, talent acquisition and other human resources tasks at its corporate headquarters in Mississauga.

“Students from Sheridan have a hunger to learn and grow. We’ve seen them put in extra hours and be willing to do or learn everything in order to prove themselves,” says Sudha Narasimhan, Hatch’s Campus Talent Acquisition Specialist for the Greater Toronto Area. “Whenever we have an open position, we try to hire coop students because we’ve seen them perform and might as well invest in them, rather than trust somebody who’s never worked with us before.”

About the Author

Mississauga Board of Trade