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ABOUT THE INSTITUTION
Fifty Years of Getting Regina Back to Work
Regina Work Preparation Centre — known locally as Work Prep — has been part of the city's job market since 1973, when it started life as a vocational rehabilitation arm of Regina's Social Services department. Half a century on, it has grown into an independent charity that has helped more than 20,000 people find and keep work.
There's no referral required and no appointment needed — anyone can walk in and get assessed for support, from one-to-one vocational counselling to group workshops for clients who aren't quite ready for the workforce yet.
It's this walk-in, no-barrier model that every Work Prep client experiences, including everyone who has ever picked up a headset to get ready for an interview.
THE CHALLENGE
Practice That Didn't Feel Like the Real Thing
For a lot of the people who come through Work Prep's doors, the hardest part of getting a job was never the paperwork. It was the interview itself — sitting across from someone, trying not to let the nerves show, hoping you sound like you know what you're doing.
Work Prep had always built interview coaching into getting clients ready for work. But how much practice someone actually got, and how real it felt, depended on who happened to be running their session that day.
For the person on the other side of that inconsistency, it meant walking into a real interview without ever having properly rehearsed the parts that are hardest to fake: how you carry yourself under pressure, and how you recover when a question catches you off guard.
THE SOLUTION
Turning Practice Into the Real Thing
When Work Prep brought Bodyswaps in, every client, whoever was running their session, started going through the same method: the CAR technique.
Consistency solved one problem. The next one came from clients themselves. Work Prep's early Bodyswaps library offered generic interview scenarios — a client could practise as a barista, say, regardless of what job they actually wanted. A lot of them said no.
That changed when Bodyswaps released its Job Interview AI roleplay template, which lets a real job posting become the basis for a custom scenario. Now, a client can bring in the job they're actually applying for, and Vaughn Dimarucot — who runs Bodyswaps sessions and interview coaching day to day — builds a custom scenario straight from that job description, so the questions someone rehearses sit close to the ones they'll actually be asked.
That shift mattered most for one client applying for a firefighter role. His practice sessions were built directly from the real job posting, and by the time he sat down for the actual interview, several of the questions he'd already rehearsed came up.
— Dan Cronan
He got the job.
USE CASES
Whatever Stage Someone's At, There's a Way In
Using Bodyswaps' Job Interview AI roleplay template, a client brings in the job they're applying for and Vaughn turns the posting into a custom scenario, so they rehearse the questions they're likely to face rather than a generic set.
For partners like the University of Regina, groups of five go through a module together, with a facilitated debrief between rounds so people learn from what their peers noticed too.
Work Prep's own VR career exploration modules sit alongside Bodyswaps, helping someone settle on a direction before they start practising for the interview that gets them there.
Work Prep's group sessions didn't come from a manual. They came from watching what happened when five learners went through a module together.
- Run the first module in groups of five. Five clients go into the headset together for the same Bodyswaps module.
- Pull the group out to debrief. Everyone talks about what stood out.
- Bridge with a short teaching session. A facilitator connects what came up in the debrief to the real topic, whether that's communication, workplace training, or interview technique.
- Send them back in for the next module. The group returns to the headset already thinking about what their peers picked up on.
- Repeat with the next group of five. The next five clients go through the same process while the first group reflects on what they learned.
RESULTS & MOMENTUM
What Changes When Clients Put the Work In
One client's first Bodyswaps session barely landed — he listened to everything but didn't practise. He went to one interview and didn't get the job. Went to another, and didn't get that one either. He called Work Prep and said he thought he needed to go back through it properly. This time, he went through the module properly, spending far longer on it than he had the first time round. He went into his next interview. He got the job.
Vaughn Dimarucot came through Work Prep first as a student, long before he was part of the team. When a VR position opened up, Dan encouraged him to use his own Bodyswaps account to get ready for it, the same way any client would. Work Prep interviewed a shortlist of candidates for the role, scoring every interview against the same criteria. Vaughn's stood out.
WHY IT WORKS
What Other Employment Agencies Can Learn From This
Work Prep's team doesn't think what they've built only works because of their size or their history. Dan's advice to anyone starting out, his own new hires included, is the same: go and use the thing yourself before you ever put a client in the headset.
That hands-on habit pays off over time in ways that matter for any organisation thinking about doing this. Referrals used to be occasional at Work Prep. These days, Dan says it's typically the case managers themselves who send clients to Bodyswaps, because they've seen it work for the people who came before.
The same approach means Dan can often tell what's going wrong in someone's session without even being in the room.
- Play with the platform yourself before you ever put a client in the headset.
- Run a small pilot, even two weeks, to see what fits your organisation.
- Spend enough time in a session that you can help someone troubleshoot from outside the headset.
- Tailor the format to whoever you're working with, whether that's group debriefs or one-to-one coaching.
- Blends a background in technology with years in human services
- Shapes how every client experiences Bodyswaps at Work Prep, from a first headset session to interview day
- Represented Work Prep at Saskatchewan's AI summit and a national VR showcase in Ontario
- Works alongside Vaughn Dimarucot, who joined the team after using Bodyswaps to prepare for his own interview
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