Students! Help!

Right now, most of us are really itching for student workers to help in our departments.

Hiring students seems like it would be pretty easy, since there's no shortage of them going from department to department asking about jobs. So what's the hold up? Why does it take so long to get new students hired?

Here's why:

Job Postings or Job Fair
This is how student supervisors find students to hire. Jobs are posted to NYU CareerNet. Student supervisors can also accept resumes and applications at NYU-hosted job fairs. Whether you post a job or go to a job fair, you usually receive 50+ applications (in a day at the fair or after 3-5 days of an active job posting).

Serious about Hiring Students
Since we want to hire students who will
a) work well
b) work when we need them to work
c) not call out sick all the time, and
d) hopefully stick around for more than a semester
it takes some time to fish through the 50-100 resumes and find the good ones.

Interviews
It's not unreasonable to want to meet the students you might hire, so you've got to interview them. Scheduling student interviews is a nightmare, especially at the beginning of the semester. They are moving into dorms or apartments and figuring out their class schedules and extra-curricular activities. Even if you're ahead of the game and post your job listing in early August, you usually can't schedule the bulk of your interviews until late August/early September because the majority of students do not live in NYC for the summer. So, there's this race to try and schedule them before school starts, which almost always ends up spilling into the first or second week of classes. Students apply to multiple jobs, have multiple interviews; sometimes your interviewees cancel because they accept another job, other times they have to reschedule for some reason or another. Pretty soon, your list of 20 potential student employees drops to 7 and then you have to go through more resumes! (You get the picture.)

The Wasserman Walk
And then there's the Wasserman form. Students who seek an on-campus job must fill out the correct form and take it to the Wasserman Center for Career Development (during their business hours) to be signed. This verifies that they can hold an on-campus student position. Part of this form requires them to verify their citizenship or visa status (I-9 verification); for this, they need multiple forms of ID. Sometimes they even need their birth certificate, which they have to have their parents mail to them. (I mean, what undergrad brings their birth certificate to college? I would have never thought to pack that.) The form has to be complete and signed by Wasserman before a student supervisor can accept the form and hire the student. If a student brings you an incomplete form, you have to send them back to Wasserman and then the student has to bring the form back to you. Faxing and scanning don't help with this process; a lot of footwork on the part of the student is required.

Wait Three Days
Once a student supervisor has a completed Wasserman form and wants to hire, they fill out some more forms and take all the paperwork (or have the student take the paperwork) to the Human Resources office on the 11th floor. Human Resources needs at least three days to file paperwork and get students into the MyTime system before they can start working. During this time, though, you can confirm work schedules and schedule training for new students.

* * *

As you can see, there are many chances for the process to be delayed. Compound this process by the number of student hires you need to make and you realize that it could easily take two or more weeks before your department has enough students. (Not to mention the time it takes to train them all!)

Streamlining the Process
There are a few things that I've done to streamline the process:

1) Before I even look at resumes, I send out a pre-screening questionnaire via email to all applicants. This narrows my prospective candidate pool by at least half. I narrow it down further by going through resumes until I have 1.5 students for every 1 position available (so I'll interview 9 students for 6 positions).

2) I send out a list of available interview times via email to all candidates and have them sign up for a time. This works better than emailing students individually. It's first come, first serve and if they aren't available for any of the times on the list, then I say "sorry, no interview."

3) I tell the students that they must have a completed Wasserman form before they come to the interview. That way, if I choose to hire them, I can go ahead and submit their paperwork.

Even with this streamlined process, it still takes a while. For example, I sent out the pre-screening questionnaire on September 4, conducted interviews September 8-13, and my first student hire is starting September 21.

Unfortunately, the steps of the process that take the longest (Wasserman form, HR's "wait three days") are things that cannot be changed. I've streamlined what is within my power to control.

* * *

The other Access Services Supervisors and myself face this student hiring process every year (and sometimes every semester). No matter how early you start, how prepared you are, or how eager you are to hire, there are a number of other factors that delay the process more than we would like.

I recall that one of our potential working group topics is to address student hiring and student shortages during crucial periods of the semester. It is still on our radar and something that Access Services is planning to organize.

But in the mean time, does anyone have suggestions/comments/questions/feedback about the student hiring process?