Many departments across campus hire students in roles ranging from food service-oriented to research assistance, peer coaching to office assistant roles, and so much more between. Supervising student-staff is rewarding and provides them with a great first opportunity to build career readiness skills.
From the time they arrive on campus, students are in the habit of looking for job, internship, and co-op opportunities in Handshake. As a result, it is strongly recommended that departments post student positions in Handshake, even if there is an internal process by which the department usually collects applications. While some students are savvy enough to search individual department pages for hiring information, many others may not realize how to find opportunities in that way - meaning you miss out on potentially great applicants and the students don’t see the full range of opportunities.
Handshake allows for both direct-applying through the platform as well as linking out to a different process, meaning that departments can easily maintain their own systems while making the opportunities available for search.
For detailed information, please refer to this guide or contact Career Services to get help.
In order to formally hire students, departments must follow the procedures outlined by Human Resources, which includes I-9 documentation, EPAFs, payroll approval setup, and more. Refer to the Human Resources Student Hiring page for detailed information.
In addition to regular hours at the Lakeshore Center, Human Resources also makes I-9 verification available to student employees in the MUB 101 on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Work-Study is a federal program that provides funds to hire students for part-time work if they have demonstrated financial need on their FAFSA. Information about work-study here on campus is outlined on the Financial Aid website - students should consult with Financial Aid if they are uncertain whether or not they qualify.
When it comes to posting in Handshake, indicating this status as a way to filter applicants can be tricky. If you check the box indicating your department’s position is Work-Study eligible, only students who are Work-Study eligible will see your posting! While this may be preferable in some cases (for instance, if your department truly only wants those eligible students to see it). However, this might be overly restrictive if you hire both Work-Study and non-Work-Study students.
We recommend either:
- Don’t check the Work-Study box: then, indicate in the posting that you are hiring for both Work Study and non-Work-Study positions, and how many of each.
- Post the position twice: once with Work-Study checked, and once without.