ExperiencED
5.1 Nicole McLean, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, InStage
Episode Summary
Nicole Mclean is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at InStage, a company based in Canada that uses conversational artificial Intelligence simulations (i.e. avatars), which among other things, allows college students to practice their interview talks for internship or cooperative education positions before doing them. Nicole’s career began at Scotia Bank where she saw the problems of preparing junior people for presentations and applied simulations there as the head of the Calgary Training Center. However, she was interviewed here as the simulations are very useful to safely and conveniently help students gain interview skills so they can land an experiential education activity such as an internship that could be key to their career launch. In this interview, Adrienne and Nicole discuss more of Nicole’s origin story and personal affiliation for practicing public speaking, and why such simulation practice is important. They consider the fact that some 74% of InStage users report an increase in confidence on their first interview, particularly when the students come from under-served backgrounds and seek to enter technical fields but lack the soft-skills needed to land the job.
Episode Notes
EPISODE NOTES
Topics discussed in this Episode include:
- The origin story of Nicole McLean and InStage in building a safe interactive simulation operation where people (e.g. college students) can practice on-line a variety of presentation soft-skills with avatars and get feedback before going out for the first internship or cooperative education experience.
- The analogy to sports and leveling the playing field is discussed as a metaphor for the importance of practice to proper execution and success at interviews. This is particularly true for young students who lack practice and may come from underserved populations where that practice is less available.
- The amount of practice is discussed and how much or little time with the avatars is required. Sometimes as little as 15 minutes is all that is needed, but others do more. The key is marrying the technical knowledge from classwork to the soft-skills needed to present the student to an employer for the work-based experience they seek.
- The power of this approach to uplift students tripped off a conversation about the interviewer’s field of practice, Speech Pathology. and how health professions in general rely on experiences and how this could change student progression into this field.
- Some students report a great advantage in using the InStage system and wish they had had it earlier to boost their careers. The conversation turned back to leveling the field among those with learned skills but who did not have the chance to practice their soft skills like they can in this online system. They noted a joy that comes from helping – from keeping people from missing out so they can pursue their dreams and communicate effectively.
Resources discussed in this episode:
Music Credits: C’est La Vie by Derek Clegg