Student employment at JSC has been changed to provide increased benefits for students, supervisors, and the Financial Aid office with the addition of applications that mimic those of off-campus jobs, pay raises that encourage employee retention, and increased communication between supervisors and Financial Aid.

Financial Aid Officer Greg Eckman initiated the changes, which increase collaboration with departments hiring student employees, enabling them to find students who are the best fit for the jobs they offer.

When Eckman first began his job in 2012 he quickly realized that if there were to be improvements in the student employment process, he was the one to do it.

After learning about the past system from his colleagues in the Financial Aid office as well as from the Business and Dean of Administration offices, he worked with his own department on finding ways to restructure the student employment programs.

One idea Eckman came up with was to make student employment mirror the employment process at jobs off campus. “I thought the student employment here at Johnson was a great opportunity to get real-world job experience,” he said. “And that starts by filling out an application. So we created a standard application that encompassed both non work-study and work-study.”

Students filling out the application indicate if they are eligible for work-study or non work-study jobs. Federal work-study aid is provided to students based on their household contribution (the amount of money a student earns that goes towards supporting their family) as indicated in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FASFA.

Given a list of the jobs available in the different departments, students fill out the top four areas that interest them.

After receiving the applications, Eckman sends copies to the supervisors of the top two choices of each student, who then contact students they are interested in hiring.

He explained that in previous years, the number of students employed at the college has gone down, while the work-study aid available and the student employment budgets of each department have remained stable. He realized that students weren’t finding the jobs available to them. “That’s what I was hearing [from students] when I started in the spring—‘I’ve got work-study, I can’t find a job’,” he said. “So there was a disconnect.”

In addition, the distribution of student employment in the different departments was uneven. Some departments would have to turn students away, while others hadn’t seen any interest.

According to Eckman, the application process helps departments that can’t usually find student employees to get them: “I made sure everyone who had a work-study or non work-study budget had an application.”

It’s not only the departments that can’t find students that have benefitted. More popular work-study locations such as the library are now able to be more selective about who will be hired.

Circulation supervisor Jeff Angione said that the application process enables him to hire students who are a better fit for working in the library. “It’s a great job to have and a lot of students want it, but not everybody is qualified for it,” he said. “[Now] I might not just hire somebody because they’re a warm body.”

Angione added that another benefit of the increased communication was that it allowed for more advanced planning. “Students could secure a job even before they got to campus, or at least have the potential to have an interview before they even arrived on campus,” he said. “That’s really a good way to go about hiring somebody—actually being able to get someone ahead of time.”

Students who are returning to jobs they have held in the past also are benefiting from the new system.

Eckman has initiated a policy to encourage retention by increasing wages for students who have worked at the same job for multiple years. “Like any job, it takes a lot to train someone,” he said. “And if we’ve got to keep training new people each year, you’re not getting the expertise that the person that just had it for a year [has].” Each year a student returns to the same job, they will get a raise.

Eckman is currently working on providing student employment resources on the Portal, so students can find out what work-study and non-work-study jobs are available.