Career Services aids departments in offering remote student jobs

Hiring Students Toolkit offers supports, tools, and workshops

Image by: Jenny Zhu
Career Services

As COVID-19 has made in-person work difficult to operate, Queen’s is encouraging its departments to create remote student jobs in the fall term.

Career Services has launched the Hiring Students Toolkit to support departments in offering remote positions for students on campus. The online resource helps departments create, recruit, onboard, and supervise remote student roles.

“We know that student positions are an essential part of the student experience—students build skills, experiences, and relationships—and this will be true this coming year just like any other,” Cathy Keates, director of Career Services and Experiential Learning, wrote in a statement to The Journal.

The toolkit offers training workshops for students throughout September, including Event & Project Management and Leading, Including, Transforming. Additional training opportunities are being offered by institutions like the Four Directions Indigenous Student Centre and the Human Rights and Equity Office.

Various Experiential Learning (EL) WrapAround workshops are also being offered on MyCareer, the University’s central job board.

The toolkit also offers workshops for supervisors, including Supervising Students Remotely and Supervise for Success: An EL Framework.

READ MORE: Work Study program to restart remotely in the fall

In creating student roles, the toolkit advises that departments consider how a student could contribute to their unit by adding capacity, not by replacing staff roles. It provides a list of examples of student roles and tips for creating a job description.

The toolkit also provides guidelines for making these roles remote such as considering the supplies and resources a student would require in such a role, using clear deliverables to require less supervision, and considering which roles could be beneficial in the context of COVID-19.

“As always, the health and safety of Queen’s student staff and volunteers is paramount,” the website says. “Where possible, remote opportunities (rather than in-person) are preferred. Extra consideration is required by departments to ensure all student staff and volunteers feel safe at work or at their volunteer opportunity during this period of COVID-19.”

To recruit students, departments are advised to use MyCareer. To supervise students, they are advised to use an EL approach. The toolkit also provides tips on equitable, diverse, and inclusive hiring and a Supervising Remotely Checklist.

READ MORE: Queen’s Rector & Undergraduate Trustee advocate for lower tuition in fall term

Career Services is also offering the Work Study program in the fall as usual, with an emphasis on remote student positions. These positions will be available to students with financial need starting Aug. 12 on MyCareer.

Some available positions will involve communications and marketing, project coordination, research, department administrative tasks, and technology.

This summer, the University’s Summer Work Experience Program (SWEP) offered remote positions to undergraduate students. Jobs were posted on MyCareer. Students can begin their fall Work Study positions Sept. 1.

“The transition to remote positions with [SWEP] went very well this summer and is great evidence of how committed departments are continuing to offer student positions, to the benefit of everyone involved,” Keates wrote.

Tags

Career Services, remote learning, work study program

All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Skip to content