How to Find a Job on Campus

How to Find a Job on Campus

By Zhengxi Tan

Working as a student on campus can be one of the best experiences you could ever have in your life. You will gain some invaluable practical skills that you probably would never have from in-class lectures and textbooks. Plus, an on-campus job is a great way to get involved in college life since you will have the opportunity to meet your peers and college staff as well as familiarizing yourself with different aspects of your college. I will share my experiences of finding different jobs on campus and hopefully this blog will provide you with useful information to help you land an on-campus job.

UM Student is THE website you must visit when searching for an on-campus job. A plethora of student jobs are posted on this site and all jobs are nicely categorized so that it makes your job search very easy. A quite amount of jobs require you to submit a most updated resume. If you are a freshman or don’t have a resume for any reason, don’t panic! The Career Center is always there to help you! You are welcome to visit with any job or career related questions and the location (in the Student Activity Building) is very easy to find on GoogleMap.

If you don’t find a perfect match on the website I just mentioned, that’s totally fine. Pay close attentions to emails you receive, especially at the beginning of every semester. Many department will be recruiting for open positions and those information will usually be released via emails. For example, the University Housing department is one of the biggest employers of student jobs. Whenever the department wants to recruit, you will receive emails containing the relevant information. So do check your emails and read them carefully!

For those who want to work as an Undergraduate Instructor Aide or a research assistant, there is no better way to get that position than connecting with your professors. I worked as a research assistant in the summer of 2016 within Emergency Medicine at UM. So I can tell you that once you perform well in class and stand out from your peers, it is highly likely that the professor will be impressed and you don’t have to get through the competitive selection process in order to work with him/her.

Don’t give up even if none of the methods above eventually works out. Be proactive and start networking! This has been proven to be the most effective way to land the job your want. If you already have a desired position in mind, google the employers and email them directly.