Student Assistants > Student Employees

Abstract

My presentation details the planning, preparation, and follow-through of hiring student workers for more advanced jobs than typical student assistant positions in the circulation department such as working closing shifts, serving as the shift supervisor, being responsible for counting money, etc. These were positions that were previously held by paraprofessional staff members at our library., , I will discuss the entire process - from the genesis of the idea that student workers could do more than simply re-shelving and checking out books to the hiring of a student who proved to be an excellent fit for us. This includes writing the position description, writing the position advertisement & determining where to advertise, conducting interviews, the decision-making process, offering the position to a candidate, and adjusting to life with a student employee who functions as a paraprofessional. I will cover the difficulties I encountered as well as things that might be easy to overlook while completing this process., , I believe sharing my experiences will benefit other libraries, particularly academic libraries who might consider this avenue to fill their employment needs. For us, this turned out to be a successful endeavor and has opened up a lot of new possibilities for us in terms of staffing issues we were facing. We were impressed and honestly surprised that there were many students who were clearly qualified and it turned out to be a real challenge to find the best out of so many outstanding candidates.