Fitzgerald and Co.
Employer Testimonial
Fitzgerald and Co.
Susan Fitzgerald, Owner
Susan Fitzgerald, who runs a small business in Elmira, Ont. that provides agricultural association administration and project management, partnered with the University of Guelph’s Flexible Internship pilot project in 2018 to hire an intern for a 40-hour experiential learning placement. The Bachelor of Commerce student was tasked with producing the printed materials, including an annual report, for the registration package for the company’s annual general meeting and conference.
It was really great. She was a great fit and very keen. I wanted to make sure she had a takeaway [from the internship]. It was good for her, and it was good for us because we had the opportunity to have someone to come in and take on a project that had to be done – so it was useful to us, it wasn’t just doing a make-work thing.
And there was [the chance to] expose her to our business. There’s a real shortage of skilled workers in agriculture, so it was an opportunity to expose her to agriculture and to what kinds of jobs are out there. And she liked the idea of working on a project and having something to show from her internship at the end.
For me, this was also an opportunity to gauge whether this was someone who could be a potential employee – and I I would think that’s the case for many small businesses. I have been sharing this [experience] with some of my clients and they were quite keen, have been saying ‘how can we get involved in this?’
— Susan Fitzgerald, Owner