The unemployment rate in Canada among youth aged 15-24 rose to 14.1 percent this February, close to its highest level since 2010 (excluding the COVID-19 years).
“This rising stat is a disaster for any economy in the world,” said Saeed El-Darahali, President and CEO of SimplyCast.
El-Darahali was entrepreneurial and ambitious at an early age, starting his own cotton candy business and owning a laundromat. But after facing repeated rejections while searching for a university co-op placement due to a lack of work experience, he vowed to change the system.
“Hiring student talent is a recruitment tool for the company. It’s also training for the future generation.”
“Every time I applied for a co-op position, somebody would say I need at least two years of experience,” remembers El-Darahali. “And I thought, ‘but I’m in co-op.’ I had a lot of experience in entrepreneurship, but I think I was seen as a risk. I made a decision that as soon as I started my own companies, I would hire as many youth as possible.”
In 2009, El-Darahali started SimplyCast to become an all-in-one platform for businesses, non-profits, and governments to send messages to customers and networks across multiple channels, all from one place.
The idea for SimplyCast came to El-Darahali while he was serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. He was deployed to assess the 1998 Swiss Air crash and was quickly met with a scary reality: his unit didn’t have the communication tools necessary to reliably provide updates and instructions to the soldiers. So, he set out to build it himself.
Combining his passion for building transformative technology with his commitment to youth employment, El-Darahali grew his company using co-op placements as a core talent pipeline.
Today, the Dartmouth-based company has close to 50 employees, six of whom started as student co-ops, including the company’s CTO.
“Hiring student talent is a recruitment tool for the company. It’s also training for the future generation. Students bring new ideas, and they’re also the future consumers of our technology,” said El-Darahali.
For nearly eight years, SimplyCast has partnered with the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC), a national non-profit dedicated to strengthening digital skills and business capacity, to streamline the acquisition of student talent. Through ICTC’s Work Integrated Learning (WIL) Digital program, employers can apply for grants that subsidize up to 50% of a student’s salary over the course of their work term, significantly lowering barriers to hiring fresh perspectives.
Since 2017, more than 4,000 employers like SimplyCast have participated in ICTC’s WIL Digital program, facilitating over 23,000 student work placements, with over 65 percent of placed students identifying as belonging to underrepresented groups.
The program takes place over three terms a year: Winter (December-March), Summer (April-July), and Fall (August-November), and its flexibility in employers being able to bring in short-term help or identify future long-term hires is a key differentiator.
“Within the first three months of working with us, we can identify A-plus students,” said El-Darahali. “ICTC allows us to bring students back part-time while they’re still in school. If someone is a star and we don’t want to let them go, we’ll create a position for them.”
Saeed El-Darahali,
“Every company should ingrain student recruitment as part of their DNA and look at it as a strategic pillar of their company, not an afterthought.”
SimplyCast
At SimplyCast, students typically join working junior development or junior revenue roles. Unlike stereotypical internships, they aren’t assigned side projects; they work on real initiatives and solve real customer problems.
For example, in Phoenix, Arizona, St. Mary’s Food Bank is using SimplyCast to automate its operations, enabling food delivery to new regions that would otherwise be too expensive to serve. SimplyCast developed a communication system that connects the organization with Uber, allowing food to be picked up and delivered at a significantly lower cost.
One student who joined SimplyCast through ICTC about a year ago is now developing a use case to replicate this model in Africa, exploring partnerships with tools like WhatsApp and other relevant technologies in the region.
What began as an emergency communication solution has grown into something much bigger. SimplyCast now enables more than 15 different communication channels, from text messages and voice calls to traditional newsletters. And student talent has been a key driver of that evolution.
Students contribute to the company’s core product development, directly impacting its competitive edge. From building use cases for the African market, to pre-med students contributing to healthcare-focused projects, to suggesting SMS over email when targeting universities, this diversity of thought translates into real business results.
“They’re making an impact on day one,” said El-Darahali. “Students are essential to our business, and when they leave, we feel the pain. Every company should ingrain student recruitment as part of their DNA and look at it as a strategic pillar of their company, not an afterthought.”
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ICTC’s WIL Digital program provides employers with wage subsidies of up to 50 percent of a student’s salary up to $5,000. Learn more and apply for the Summer 2026 (April-July) here.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Mushvig Niftaliyev.