By Arielle Gordon
Several campus offices are working together to streamline on-campus student employment.
As of Nov. 1, all student employment listings are on Handshake, a Career Center platform, and are no longer on their own webpage. Handshake is a part of Colorado College Single Sign In and uses the same logins that students and faculty already have.
“We’ve been looking at student employment in general in partnership with the Student Employment office and how we can continue to leverage those opportunities in helping students to develop their professional skills,” Career Center Director Megan Nicklaus said. “It made sense to provide a one-stop shop for students. Students can go to Handshake, which is Single Sign In so it’s really easy to get in because they don’t have to know another password or username.”
Hopefully, this change will make it easier both for students to apply for positions and for employers to fill jobs.
“Whether a student chooses to work on – or off-campus, our offices are dedicated to assisting our students in exploring these opportunities,” Student Employment and Communications Manager Kristen Clinton said. “This transition to Handshake should provide a more streamlined application process for both students and supervisors.”
Students will be able to save their resumes and cover letters on Handshake, as well as enable email notifications for when a new job is posted that matches what they have told the program they are looking for. Handshake uses an algorithm that can learn what types of jobs a person is interested in and use that information to suggest related opportunities.
Handshake will guide employers through the process of posting their job and will also enable them to archive the job so they can easily repost it when the application window reopens. That way, only jobs currently accepting applications will be open, and it will make it easier for students to apply and for employers to collect and review completed applications.
Although the job listing is moving to a platform previously only used by the Career Center, the Student Employment staff will still be involved in the hiring process.
“All student employment paperwork will need to be completed in person at the Office of Financial Aid & Student Employment located on the first floor of Spencer,” Clinton said. “While we would like to streamline this process in some way, we must maintain compliance with federal policy.”
In addition to providing a central location for employment opportunities, Nicklaus is hoping that using Handshake will encourage students to engage with other Career Center opportunities and resources.
“My hope is that students who are looking for campus jobs will be able to find them much more easily, instead of having to go from office to office and ask,” Nicklaus said. “There will be one place where they know they’re seeing all the opportunities, and that students will use us, especially as they’re thinking about applications to these jobs.”