Extern - Career Areas & Placements

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Career areas

Participating in the Extern Job Shadowing Program allows you to explore a career area of interest. If you are undecided about your career placement choice, your campus career centre can suggest workshops and resources to assist you in discovering your options. You can also access many online resources including Getting Started and Careers by Major.

The Extern program attempts to find placements in areas where students have expressed an interest.  Each placement experience is unique and students explore the career via different activities.  All placed students will receive detailed information about their placement activities prior to the beginning of their placement. The activities are determined by hosts and the most common activities are:

  • Informational interview and meeting. 
  • Tour of the department or facilities
  • Shadowing the host or observation
  • Attending meetings
  • Hands-on project

Special Considerations

It is common for some placements to limit some types of activity due to factors such as confidentiality, security, or busy season in the field/organization.  Here are special considerations for some career areas:

Medical-Related Placements, Pharmaceutical and Biotech. There are a number of privacy regulations in health-related environments. It is rare to sit in on appointments with doctors, dentists or nurses, since patients always retain the right to refuse any job shadowing during their care.  Students will usually need to provide some medical records (i.e. proof of a TB test, etc.) to do shadowing in hospitals.

Software Development. Confidentiality issues and competitor concerns means that participation by the software development industry is limited.

Teaching/Placements in Schools. Most schools require that you have a recent police check. Police checks can be done at the Toronto Police Services Head Office (40 College Street). Further information is available at the Toronto Police Services website at www.torontopolice.on.ca

We will try our best to provide students with placements in career areas of their interest.  If you have questions about the viability of any career area, please contact the Office of Career Exploration Programs and Services, extern@mail.careers.utoronto.ca

Students will be provided with detailed assistance on how to prepare for their placement during the Briefing Seminar.