ThirdQuarter News Stories

ThirdQuarter Hits the Target

"I was pretty picky. I didn't want to work weekends or nights. I consider myself very fortunate to have this job. It just sort of fits my lifestyle. It fits our home lifestyle. It just works."

Ethel Van De Voorde
Office worker
SIS Propane
Victoria, B.C.


Ethel Van De Voorde was getting tired of commuting 45 minutes each way to two part-time jobs.

Then the Victoria, B.C. resident saw a story on the local news about the ThirdQuarter pilot project and decided to register.

"When I saw that on TV, I thought, 'What the heck, it's worth a try,' " she said.

She soon began getting matches to her skills as an office manager and was hired by SIS Propane in early November.

"Ten minutes I'm at work, door to door," Van De Voorde, 56, said. "It's an incredible change."

Her new part-time job doing a variety of office work is six hours a day, Monday to Friday, and she'll be laid off for the summer months when the company's work slows down.

"That's perfect for me," said the married mother of two children in their 20s.

"I was pretty picky. I didn't want to work weekends or nights. I consider myself very fortunate to have this job. It just sort of fits my lifestyle. It fits our home lifestyle. It just works."

SIS Propane business manager Geoff Cotter said the company's ad on ThirdQuarter drew about a dozen possible matches within the first week.

"This was more effective at targetting exactly what we wanted to," he said.

"Sometimes it just seems like you would put out an ad and people wouldn't even bother to read it. They would just fire off a resume and hope to get anything."

The company normally posted its openings on a job board at nearby University of Victoria, but decided to try ThirdQuarter when a pilot began in Victoria in early fall.

"We were sort of tired of the turnover that we have," said Cotter, whose company installs propane tanks and makes commercial and residential deliveries.

"With our seasonal business, what we were doing was getting the employees in for eight months at a time and then they would come in and leave and we'd just cycle it every year, having to go through the training and everything.

"Our ideal candidate wanted to be part-time and have the summers off, which was very difficult to find using a student or other traditional methods.

"It was a lot easier to line that up targetting older employees than younger."

He noted Van De Voorde's experience was evident right from the start, especially her customer service skills.

"Probably one of the bigger parts of what we have her doing is dealing with the customer," Cotter said.

"It's always nice to have people who come in knowing what to expect. She took a little more initiative to sort of set things up how it best works for her.

"When we had students coming in and it might be their first or second time in an office, they just wanted to be told what to do and exactly how to do it."

Van De Voorde said she used to look for work through word of mouth, online sites and sometimes classified ads in newspapers.

Discovering ThirdQuarter was another search avenue, and one that seemed tailored for her.

"I think it's nice to see a program out there that acknowledges a certain age group and is willing to work with them in a positive way instead of getting negative feedback that, 'Sorry you're too old.' Without saying it, people are saying that, so it's tough," she said.

"There's a lot of people out there 50-plus that are very able to work, want to work, but maybe only want a little bit of work here and there.

"I think it's great that we have this resource."

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