Inicio staff call it “post and pray”: submit an application online, wait, and repeat.
For many English-speaking job seekers in Montreal, that routine can quickly become discouraging. Recent graduates may be looking for their first real opportunity. Newcomers may be starting without a local professional network. Others may be changing fields, returning after time away, or trying to understand where their experience fits in the current job market.
Momentum, a Community Opportunity Fund-supported project delivered by Inicio Employment Training Centre, gives participants a structured, in-person framework for approaching their job search. Over three weeks, they receive counseling, attend workshops, take part in mock interviews with outside professionals, and meet potential employers at networking events. The programming is built around the moments that still depend on direct human exchange: introducing yourself, explaining what you can do, asking good questions, listening carefully, and establishing a real connection.
“Employers are not interested in experience or degrees in the abstract,” says Inicio President and CEO Alistair Price. “They want to understand the value a candidate can bring to the organization. Once a candidate has made a connection, the employer may become interested in their experience.”
That is where much of Momentum’s work happens: helping participants communicate who they are, what they’ve accomplished, and what they’re capable of doing.
“Public speaking and communicating value: those areas are difficult to learn on your own,” says Inicio Career Strategist and Facilitator Rosalia Felice. “Today, someone can use AI tools to help create a CV. It’s harder to learn how to communicate your strengths in a way that shows what makes you distinctive.”
The pitch in the room
At the end of one Momentum cohort’s first week, participants gathered around tables arranged in a U-shape layout. Their backgrounds included library science, real estate, UX, marketing, teaching, and daycare management.
Their assignment was to prepare a one- or two-minute career pitch explaining where they were professionally, what they had to offer, and where they wanted to go next.
They began in groups of two and three, reading drafts aloud and sharing feedback. Every so often, the groups changed. Each participant met new listeners and heard how their pitch landed.
A facilitator opened the presentations with a trivia question. The woman who answered correctly discovered that the prize was going first. The room laughed. She walked forward with an easy smile.
One by one, participants got up in front of the group.
After each presentation, the facilitators shared what had resonated with them and what could use refinement. While unfailingly warm and supportive, the feedback was never generic. With each pitch, the facilitators picked up on specific phrases, details, or choices and suggested subtle changes to pace, wording, and focus. A detail that may have seemed unimportant to the speaker could be accentuated to help a potential employer understand their judgment, initiative, or sense of responsibility.
The exercise put Inicio’s experiential learning philosophy into practice. Presenting a pitch gave participants a chance to practice the soft skills professional settings require: working in teams, listening to others’ perspectives, organizing their thoughts, reading the room, and expressing themselves clearly.
“Participants do not learn only from the facilitator,” Rosalia says. “They learn from everyone in the room and from one another’s lived experience.”
Moving forward with confidence
By the end of the pitch session, each participant had taken a real step toward speaking about their experience, skills, and goals with greater confidence. As the programming moved closer to the real thing through mock interviews and networking events, they would have plenty of opportunities to build on this progress.
When searching for work alone at a screen for weeks and months at a time, it can be easy to lose your sense of direction. Momentum propels its participants forward, making progress feel possible again by connecting them to something larger.
“We want to reduce the loneliness of the job search as much as possible,” says Alistair. “We want to build a community around it.”
This project is part of The Community Opportunity Fund, an initiative of YES Employment + Entrepreneurship, funded by the Government of Canada’s Enabling Fund for Official Language Minority Communities.
