Update Sept 2020: Even with the pandemic and new timelines these tips all still apply for the most part.

WaterlooWorks is one of the biggest reasons so many students come to the University of Waterloo. However, despite being such a big component of the UW lifestyle, I was surprised to see how little information was easily available. All of my knowledge, came from hours of scouring through thread after thread on Waterloo Reddit and thus I thought it was a good opportunity to centralize some of the tips I have when it comes to applications.

Waterloo Reddit- The Go to for any UW Student

Side Note: If you haven’t checked out my article on how to better your resume you might find it helpful. You can check that out at:

I also have an article based on tips for interviews here:

Anyway these are the tips I have when it comes to applying on Waterloo Works:

Download Chrome Extensions for WaterlooWorks

WaterlooWorks is so utterly painful without these chrome extensions. Please do not try to go without them. I seem to have installed WaterlooWorks Works, WaterlooWorks Now and WaterlooWorks Plus and all of them seem to work for me without conflicting with one another. They have all drastically improved the UI and made it a lot easier to go through. Another extension I have seen floating around is WaterlooWorks Azure and although it does look promising I have not personally used it and thus cannot comment on it. UPDATE: WaterlooWorks Azure is all you need. It is a great extension and fixes everything that needs to be fixed in WaterlooWorks. These are all available on the Google Chrome Store so please download them.

2. Start going through postings the day they drop

CECA will have the dates that jobs start appearing on their important dates website: https://uwaterloo.ca/co-operative-education/important-dates. Typically 10 minutes after 9am you will start to see a lot of jobs start to get posted for your program and you can start going through them. What I like to do is start looking through them immediately and then after going through all of the jobs that were initially posted using the New Posting since Last Login tab to keep filtering new jobs. That way you do not have to repeatedly go through every job over and over again and will only see the new jobs posted.

Use the New Posting Since Last Login to Your Advantage

When it comes to shortlisting a job, do not worry if you do not meet all the requirements. As long as you check off a few it is probably worth throwing an application in. Quite a few companies will take two interns with one being the knowledgable older student and the other being a less experienced but eager younger student. Given that you are probably in first year these are the companies you should hope to get. One thing I will warn you on is that some big companies such as Bloomberg and Microsoft seem like they do not have many requirements by their post’s but they actually really do and are very hard to get jobs. Do not fool yourself into thinking otherwise. Also please do not go full Cali or Bust mode, especially in first year. Throw a couple of applications in for fun if you want but do not expect much more. You have a lot of terms ahead of you for trying to get to Cali. This is about getting you through the door and not straight to the finish line.

3. DO NOT IMMEDIATELY START APPLYING, just keep adding these jobs to your shortlist until all the jobs have been posted

It is tedious to keep applying while new jobs are coming out every few minutes. Instead when you are filtering through the jobs just add it to your shortlist. Apply after all jobs are posted and you have narrowed down your shortlist to 50 jobs. Typically all the jobs are posted Friday, the same week that the jobs have come out on the Monday. I would recommend to even keep jobs on your shortlist after you apply as it is easier to see their status in your shortlist than in the Applied To section.

This tip does not apply for continuous round. I would still recommend putting every job you apply to in your shortlist so it is easier to see the status but in continuous you should apply immediately after you place the job on your shortlist.

4. Find different ways to shorten your shortlist

50 applications may seem like a lot but it really isn’t and they can get used uo much faster than anticipated. You are going to have to find different ways of getting rid of jobs from your shortlist and it does really become a struggle. The easiest jobs to first get rid of are the ones which you were 50–50 on to begin. After this, you should start getting rid of the ones with external applications after you apply externally because most of the time the post on WaterlooWorks is just an advertisement for you to apply on their external company website anyway. If they like you enough there are ways through CECA to still match with them although you did not apply to them on WaterlooWorks. After these two methods, I would then start listing by the number of applications and start getting rid of ones that are above 110. Those jobs would’ve been hard to get anyway and it might make more sense to use that application on another post with less applications. Only after you do all of these I would suggest getting rid of jobs based on location. (No this does not mean go full Cali or Bust)

5. Keep Checking Your Email and Occasionally WaterlooWorks as well

One week after applications initially came out ,your applications will have been submitted and visible to employers. Hopefully you didn’t miss the deadline and leave a bunch of jobs on your shortlist because I have seen that happen before. If you did submit them, then from this point focus on school as there isn’t much you can do except wait and hopefully receive a “Congratulations you have been selected for an interview” email from CECA. If you do get an interview book a slot as fast as you can as there are limited slots and they get filled up quickly. Also this hasn’t happened to me but I do know for some people they did not get an email from CECA when they got an interview so I would keep checking WaterlooWorks daily to make sure that didn’t happen to you.

You will get one of these sooner or later

6. DO NOT BE AFRAID OF CONTINUOUS ROUND

If you didn’t get an interview in main round or did not get matched with a job, do not fret continuous is more than alright. In fact, I firmly believe that most of you can actually get a better job in continuous as a first year than you would in main round. Continuous round, especially at the beginning, has lots of great jobs available and reduced competition as many of the upper years already got hired in main round. From my own personal experience, I have used my Not Rank on a job in main round every single term and gotten a far better one in continuous. In 1A, I turned down an administration job for TTC in main round and instead got an awesome dev position in continuous despite my very little programming experience. I know too many people, much more qualified than me, that took a mediocre job in main round because they were too scared to go to continuous. Continuous has a lot of startups and midlevel companies looking for students such as you and they offer great experience. Some companies actually only post in continuous because they prefer the quick cycle that it has. BETS, a program only posted in continuous, is a great program for first years and gets them experience at 3 Velocity startups which sets them up quite nicely for their next coop terms.

I hope these tips have been useful for you guys and that applications and interviews go well. If you need any more help in anything please do let me know by connecting with me on LinkedIn or some other platform.

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Thanks for reading,

Daivik Goel