paper -
106 The Student Employee Saga - Episode I: A New Hope
Michael
Quiner, California State University, Chico
Michael
Lewis, California State University, Chico
Jason Musselman, California State University, Chico
At California State University in Chico the User
Services department is tasked with providing the faculty and staff with desktop
computing support. Like many schools,
increasing demand for our services, shrinking resources and competition from
the private sector challenges our ability to deliver quality support. To fully
accomplish our goal of supplying accurate and timely help, we depend more and
more on the talents and dedication of our Student staff.
As we move forward into the 21st century we find it
necessary to re-engineer our tools, policies, and procedures to standardize the
hiring, training and retention of quality personnel. This paper, the first of a trilogy on students in the workplace,
will focus on the tools used to attract, screen and track potential student
assistants.
We will cover how position openings in our support
teams are promoted and advertised to the student community. What combination of
interviewing techniques and technical tests are used to evaluate prospective
student employees. How a web based database system has allowed us to
effectively coordinate and streamline the tracking of potential student
staff. Finally, we will show what
impact these procedures and tools have on the hiring of students in insuring
that they are up to the demands of our fast paced and evolving organization.
This paper, and the ones to follow, should be of interest to those who are faced with maintaining high quality services with a staff of enthusiastic but inexperienced students.