Co-op timeline, WaterlooWorks and your first posting

The timeline

Every AFM student completes four co-op work terms, and in every stream the first one falls in the Winter of year 2 — after three study terms (1A, 1B, 2A). The figure lays out Stream 1, the default, from the Class of 2030 sequence sheet (July 2025): work term 1 in Winter of year 2, study 2B in the Spring; work term 2 in Fall of year 3, then 3A and 3B; 4A in Fall of year 4, then work terms 3 and 4 in the Winter and Spring; 4B in the Fall of a fifth year. Six streams exist and streams 2–6 shift the second, third and fourth work terms by a term; the first never moves. Four professional-development (PD) credits run alongside — PD 1, PD 12 and two electives — completed around the work terms. Two caveats, both as of 17 September 2026: check your own stream on Quest rather than this figure; and students entering from Fall 2026 are on a redesigned first year, whose published pages say nothing about work-term timing — assume the figure until SAF says otherwise.

The cycle

Co-op jobs are found in the recruiting term before each work term, on WaterlooWorks' Full-Cycle Service (FCS) board. The steps, as the co-op pages number them: search for jobs → apply (a package per posting, by the posting's deadline) → attend interviews → rank and match. Rank and match is the step nobody explains until it bites: after interviews, employers rank the candidates they interviewed, then students rank the employers who ranked them; an algorithm pairs by the lowest combined score, an employer's "1 (Offer)" against your "1" is a match, you may mark a limited number as Not Interested, and a match is binding — you have accepted the job the moment the algorithm says so. There are three recruitment cycles in a term, and after them a direct offer period in which employers contact students directly with no algorithm. Other routes exist — an Employer-Student Direct board, arranging your own job — but the FCS cycle is the one to learn.

A targeted résumé

A first-year résumé is one page and it is targeted: rewritten for each posting so that the words the posting uses appear where the reader looks first. The parts, from Smith's chapter on the job search: a header with contact details; a two-line profile naming the role you want and the two strengths the posting asks for; education (AFM, expected graduation, a course or two that matches); experience, most recent first, each entry as three bullets that start with a verb and end with a measure (reconciled a 40-item cash float daily with zero variance over eight months); skills the posting names (Excel functions by name, not "Microsoft Office"); and activities that show the five qualities of L12.8. What goes: the objective statement, the high-school awards, and anything the posting did not ask about.

A direct cover letter

The cover letter is one page and direct: it opens by naming the posting and saying, in sentence one, that you are applying and why you fit — no "I am writing to express my interest". Then one or two evidence paragraphs, each taking one requirement from the posting and proving it with a specific from your résumé (the cash float; the club treasury; the Kestrel memo). It closes with a request for an interview, your availability, and a thank-you. The pitfall is the letter that repeats the résumé in sentences; the letter argues from the résumé's facts.

Order the cycle, then the timeline

Before the questions: put the four FCS steps in order and say what follows the third cycle. Then recite the timeline: how many work terms, and when the first one is.