Camosun fourth-year Business Administration student Dylan Kaplan has received the 2020 Yvonne Thompson Page Co-op/Internship Student of the Year Award. The award recognizes an outstanding Co-operative Education or internship student at Camosun. Kaplan, who is majoring in human resources and leadership management, started his work experience as support coordinator for the engagement and communications group at Victoria-based charity Innovativecommunities.org Foundation.
Kaplan says that a large part of project management leadership roles involves working with and talking to people, which he loves to do.
“As much as people in leadership roles might be able to think they can do it all, they can’t,” he says. “And you definitely get a sense that you don’t have all the awareness you could use—the people around you really inform the decisions you make.”
At Innovativecommunities.org Foundation, Kaplan was responsible for recruiting new members, creating presentations, and defining job responsibilities for others. The responsibilities were situational, as was dealing with members of his team not being engaged how he would like them to be.
“Sometimes I might have an idea of what I think somebody should be working on, but I realize there’s something else they want to be working on… And a lot of the time, after sitting down and talking with them, well, there’s a reason why they think there’s something else they should be working on,” he says. “And a lot of the time, they’re right.”
In a leadership role, says Kaplan, he may not know what’s going on as well as the people he’s leading, as they’re the ones handling the day-to-day tasks.
“In their area, they might know more,” he says
If someone’s not engaged the way Kaplan likes them to be, he tries to learn more about the situation before he tells them what to do. Most of the time, says Kaplan, the solution’s obvious once you have the information to see it. Being in that leadership role has always come quite naturally to him.
“Even in situations where I’m not necessarily the leader, I end up taking on some leadership responsibility,” he says. “I’ve noticed that a lot through my time at school and a lot through my work experience.”
Kaplan says he loves specializing, which is a term he heard people use a lot at school in conversations about post-grad employment. He found appeal in being an expert on a specific topic and knowing all the ins and outs of it, but he says the variety a generalist role like project management offers kept his days fresh and exciting. He wasn’t just working on one particular area of a discipline—he was going between projects that required him to handle many different facets of his field.
“The variety helps makes things more interesting. For me, at least,” he says. “I find it’s less repetitive.”
Kaplan worked on a comprehensive engagement plan for one of his projects during his time with the engagement and communications group that’s “a plan on how the organization interacts with people and different groups.” He says that was interesting and fun.
“A lot of the time, it takes a lot of thinking,” he says. “You’ve got to make judgment calls; there’s not really a set playbook for every situation.”
After Camosun, Kaplan’s plan is to see what fits rather than forcing a specific job, he says.
“I think things tend to work out the way they should,” he says. “I’m going to leave school with an open mind, and see what opportunities cross my path that are suited to me and that seem like something I enjoy.”