[27845] in resnet
Re: How to hire students who aren't afraid of IT
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brown,Adam D)
Fri Jul 20 08:52:08 2012
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Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 12:50:43 +0000
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From: "Brown,Adam D" <browad@ufl.edu>
To: RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu
In-Reply-To: <LISTSERV%201207191758466654.0034@LISTSERV.ND.EDU>
We generally have 50-60 student workers in our computer labs and computer classrooms, whose job is to help users use our resources (software, hardware, classroom equipment, etc.). It is a customer service position with a technical focus, but I emphasize the customer service aspect of the position. We can teach technical skills, it's a lot harder to teach customer service and is something we look for on a job application (past employment/volunteer experience, extra-curricular activities and involvement, etc.).
In our posting we make sure to include the "no experience required, training is provided" in our now-hiring postings, and propagate that on our website, the Help Desk website, the homepage of our Content Management System (Sakai), and in our online and print university publications. We recently migrated our applications to an online form via Google Docs (via a Duke presentation at SIGUCCS), which makes it that much easier for people to submit their apps (and easier for us to deal with). A strong source of potential employees are the current employees and their recommendations and word of mouth. One semester we had a steady influx of international grad students, another of sorority students, etc.
If you're wanting to focus on your Journalism students, do they have an internal newsletter or listserv you can put a posting on? Job board? Journalism societies or fraternities? Talk to the Dean, mention that you want to get a wider applicant pool from their college and how can that be accomplished.
Hope that helps,
Adam
-----
Adam Brown
Operations Manager
University of Florida
-----Original Message-----
From: Resnet Forum [mailto:RESNET-L@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Libby Kim
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2012 5:59 PM
To: RESNET-L@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: How to hire students who aren't afraid of IT
Hi all,
I've been pondering this a bit since we're starting to create postings for new student positions and would like some guidance from all you fine people at ResNet. :)
In the past five years we've swung between the "techs only" recruitment model where we only bring in a few students, to times when we focus solely on customer service which brings in lots of great kids who won't take on tech work. This upcoming year, due to an increased workload, we need to bring in more student workers than usual, and but I can't afford to bring in someone without at least a willingness to pick up the tech work.
I work at a Journalism and Communication school and would love to encourage some of these undergrads to come work for me. The quality of the student population have gone up and they're more tech-savvy now, but many of them turn away from our position because the post mentions "basic troubleshooting skills" and they don't think they have what it takes.
So the question is, what do you state in your job postings? How do you "lure" them in? Do you state specifically that your workers must have technical skills? Do you include phrases like "willing to train"?
Thanks for your help.
Libby
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