At age 29, he earns more than $200,000 with the DEP

At age 29, Étienne Parent leads a seven-person sales team and earns over $200,000. All this, thanks to a year of professional training for him… $250.

“You could say it was a good investment,” he laughs. Newspaper It will also publish a ranking of 100 apprenticeship courses that lead to high-paying jobs on Saturday.

A dreamer of becoming a psychologist in his youth, he suffered many failures before returning to professional practice. He says his transition to college was devastating.

“It didn’t really go well in CEGEP. I ended up taking it four times. In my head, I had to do it. I was never pushed to do anything other than CEGEP and go to university.

As he resigns himself to giving up, Étienne doesn’t really know where to go. After being rejected from the army, the young man continued his research and found professional training in sales-consulting and representation at the Samuel-de Champlain Training Center in Beauport, where he decided to enroll.

“When we think of DEP (Diploma of Vocational Studies), we often think of physical trades like construction. But there are many DEPs and we don’t know where they have much contact with people,” he says.

Reassure your loved ones

But Étienne had to convince those around him that vocational training was not well regarded. The challenge will be huge. “My parents behaved very badly,” she says. They refused to pay for my studies and they were really not happy.

A year later, after completing his training, he started working as a sales consultant in an electronics store. One thing led to another, and he was offered various opportunities, which led him to become a team manager at a Quebec IT company from 2021.

His salary is more than he could have imagined a few years ago. “Before doing DEP, I said to myself: It doesn’t matter if I have a job for $25 an hour, that’s my life, I’m going to be happy. Now I look back and I can’t be more ambitious than I am now,” he says with a big smile.

His parents, for their part, had completely changed their minds about vocational training. “Now they talk about DEPs to younger relatives in my extended family, and they cite me as an example…it’s really changed their perspective,” she says.

Etienne is now convinced that vocational training will benefit from being better known and, above all, more valued.

“Unlike CEGEP, in vocational training, every day we learn something that will serve us for the rest of our lives. When we do it, we know why we’re doing it, and it’s motivating. We don’t say to ourselves: I don’t need this course,” says a mentor at Academos, an organization that connects young people with professionals and workers interested in their careers.

Although he rubs shoulders with university-graduated colleagues every day, Etienne doesn’t feel the need to walk through university doors to feel “successful” in life.

“With what I have, I’m proud to have gotten to where I am and I’m showing those around me that I can succeed even without much education. I tell myself that if I can get here with this diploma, I can go even further.”

Rapidly increasing salary

Étienne’s parents’ success was no exception, according to his former teacher, Carl Baribeau, who still teaches sales advice at CFP Samuel-de Champlain.

“In business representation, we have a lot of alumni who are earning six-figure salaries,” he says.

However, according to data from the Ministry of Education, the sales-consulting program is one of the most lucrative for other graduates.

However, salary growth in this area can be very rapid, especially for those with specialized training, Baribeau says.

“I tell them: Don’t do it for the money, you’ll do it,” he says.