Carly Ragan

1) What is your profession/industry? I’m in HR. 2) What do you do? I work for a high voltage electrical utilities contractor, where I focus on HR-related aspect of immigration law, legislation compliance, policy development and implementation, compensation and benefits analysis, records management. 3) What skills/experience do you need? I didn’t have any skills or experience in HR before joining this team. Most of the skills and experience I’ve gained is through direct training and learning through day-to-day work. I was given some guidance from my supervisor but most of the things I’ve learned is on the job learning and practice. I think obviously having HR specific foundation and experience will be highly useful but the skills I’ve gained and grown throughout my work is my ability to be flexible, continuously strive to learn and understand topics, always ask questions when you have any issues, take initiative to go above and beyond what is expected from you. 4) What inspires you? Inspiration is hard because I’m unsure if this is the profession I want to be in forever. So I can say I can answer this question with full honesty. What I do enjoy in my job is the atmosphere of the workplace and the people I work with. As far as my duties…. I enjoy the fact that I’m still learning about things, like if I don’t know about a specific topic I’ll just research it myself to get a better understanding. So there’s a something new everyday and it differs between provinces and states – which adds additional confusion and requires me to be on-point with your information and accuracy. 5) What type of person is best suited to this career? People person – you need to be able to connect with people especially when they’re not at their best. Ability to handle conflict – although I’ve yet to handle conflict directly at work, I have resolved issues and have been an open person for people to vent which minimized the potential for future conflicts. Great reader and writer – ability to read, interpret, and understand information in legislations, court cases, research articles, etc. Vice versa you have to be able to write policies, company wide communication, etc. in a way that is easily understandable to any and all people.

1) What is your profession/industry? Environmental Compliance for Construction companies and/or environmental permitting and authorizations. 2) What do you do? I ensure construction companies are abiding with federal and provincial environment regulations so that the government will give them a permit to build whatever they want to build. Day to day that means liaising with federal, provincial, and municipal government employees, and first nations through email and phone, and writing ‘environmental impact reports’ which are a long summary of any potential impact that a construction project might on the environment where it is being built. For example if machinery is being operated near water then it might spill, which means that the company needs to have procedures in place to prevent that spill or deal with it right away so that the nearby water doesn’t become contaminated therefore polluting drinking water and killing fish and other aquatic wildlife. 3) What skills/experience do you need? You need an undergraduate degree in either engineering, biology, or environmental, or some sort of earth science (mine was actually geology but that is an anomaly). Professional Skills: Good written and oral communication skills. I work from home except for visiting sites once a month. You can expect to travel a lot, sometimes to remote places and stay on site at camps or at hotels. 4) What inspires you? My pay-check. And I get to travel to cool/natural/remote places with natural scenery. I also play a vital role in progressing construction projects while protecting the environment. 5) What type of person is best suited to this career? Anybody, or someone who likes to travel.