The Student Employment Office has altered its job-search site to eliminate confusion for users, a move that comes in response to an opinion article published in The Dartmouth expressing frustration about searching for a job as a non-work study eligible student.
The new changes to the search, implemented last week, eliminate the options to search for employment positions by work study and non-work study eligibility. In the past, jobs which were work study eligible only showed up under a search for work study positions, even though non-work study students were able to apply. In searches for non-work study positions, only positions which were not also work study eligible appeared. For this reason, some non-work study eligible students who were unaware they could apply for work-study eligible jobs found few employment options when they searched for jobs.
"[The changes are] just going to create less confusion for any students who were non-work study," said Student Employment Office manager Erin Clark.
Students are eligible for work study, a government-funded program for student employment, based on financial aid. Students who are not eligible for federal work study may be eligible for campus "employment," which guarantees students a campus job. The old search did not have an option for "employment," which confused some students.
"Employment wasn't really listed as a category, and most of the jobs were work study," Katie Karas '10 said. "Since I thought I couldn't apply to work study jobs, I didn't really look at those."
Karas said that the job options for which she believed she was eligible were limited and unappealing, and ultimately decided to babysit to earn extra money.
Despite Karas' decision to take a job off campus because of the confusion, Clark said the changes would probably not greatly affect the number of non-work study student employees.
"I don't think that it's going to have an impact on our numbers. We actually have more non-work study students working than we do work study students working," Clark said. "If anything, it would be more appealing to non-work study students, but clearly [with] the old way we were attracting many non-work study students as well."
Karas said she believes that the altered search options will make it easier for students who are looking for employment.
"I think it will make it a lot easier to see all the jobs available and not make you feel that just because your not work study you cant get most of the available jobs on campus," Karas said. "It eliminates a lot of confusion because the categories were confusing and it was hard to understand what you were really searching for."
As students begin to apply for Spring term jobs, which are scheduled to be posted on Monday, the SEO will be able to better assess the effects of the changes made to the search, Clark explained. Because students often search for jobs on their own time and the SEO offers no options for formal search assessments, Clark said there is no way to assess how many non-work study students searching for employment in the past searched only under the non-work study option.
According to Clark, there are more student employment opportunities than there are students who are seeking employment. For that reason, all students, regardless of their financial eligibility for federal work study or campus employment, are able to get jobs.
"Non-work study students have the same advantage of getting a job, have the same tools [as work study students]," Clark said. "We don't tell non-work study students that they have to wait a period of time for all of our work study students to get jobs."
