Our Mentorship Program creates many opportunities and pathways for newcomers to find career success in Canada. This month’s featured mentee, Wilfred, tells us about his mentoring partnership with Justin Yan of Niagara Casinos, and how working with Justin has helped him to advance his career here in Niagara.
In April 2019, I accepted an invitation from Josie Faccini to enroll in the mentorship program. I have been partnered with Justin Yan, who is the Director of Customer Experience at both Casino Niagara and Fallsview Casino resort in Niagara Falls. Justin has experience in financial journalism and research editing, so his professional background is a good fit with mine. I currently work at Canadian Tire Financial Services as a bilingual customer service representative, and have experience as a newspaper reporter from before I moved to Canada, as well as a degree in Marketing and Finance Management. Alongside our professional similarities, we are also both bilingual in French and English, which has ensured that communication at our mentoring sessions has been smooth and easy.
The success of our partnership has been in building on three concepts: communication, orientation and evaluation. First, my mentor helped me plan each step towards overcoming my initial challenges through a brief brainstorming session at our first meeting. He has a perfect habit of taking notes. Before starting our next meeting, he suggested I do a brief summary report of what we discuss at each meeting. This has helped me to increase my efficiency by improving my listening, communication and customer relations skills. My confidence has grown from this opportunity to practice communicating with accuracy and conciseness.
For our subsequent meetings, he recommended that I do independent learning online, as well as offering me the chance to do some on-site learning at his workplace. Meetings proceeded at his office, at conference rooms, and at other locations around Fallsview Casino resort. The main objective of these sessions has been to connect with others at his workplace and develop my leadership skills around customer satisfaction. He encouraged me to be a multi-skilled employee, and diversify the skills that I bring to my job applications. Finally, by introducing me to his CEO and many of his colleagues, I’ve been able to expand my professional network here in Niagara.
On the whole, this program has helped me to meet my personal goals of advancing in my current job, and improving my skills for my future career. My performance evaluation at my job from April to July has been excellent, and my supervisor congratulated me on my progress: my time on-call has improved due to my increased efficiency and self-confidence, and I was the top performer on my team in customer satisfaction for this period. I highly recommend NWPB’s Mentorship Program to others because the results, for me, are evident.
Are you interested in NWPB’s Immigrant Mentorship Program? We invite you to connect with Josie to learn more about how we’re working to foster a more inclusive Niagara.