uConnect Roundtable: Student Employees

In this Roundtable session, University of Denver led a peer discussion on supporting student employees and their supervisors, and on using uConnect to make student employment resources more accessible. Participants joined from the University of Wyoming College of Business, Washington University in St. Louis, Mercyhurst University, New York University, and Wesleyan University. Their student employment models ranged from centralized programs housed in the career center to decentralized structures where each office supervises its own student workers.

Roundtable highlights:

• Student employment structure and ownership: Participants compared how their institutions divide student employment among career centers, HR, financial aid, and financial services. They also discussed the value of a "who does what" chart of campus contacts to help students and supervisors navigate complex processes.
• Designing for findability: The group shared ways to make student employee and supervisor pages easier to use:
  • Prominent buttons, impact quotes and data, and job feeds
  • Event landing pages that consolidate registration links
  • Hero navigation menus, anchor links, and "back to homepage" buttons on content-heavy pages
  • FAQ-style pages for students
• Involving student employees in platform management: Several institutions delegate uConnect newsletters, CRM contact uploads, video publishing, and blog writing to student employees. This gives students hands-on experience with marketing, data analytics, and web management.
• Special projects and ownership: Some participants have student employees choose and write about topics that deserve better understanding across campus, such as work-study and workplace jargon. These projects often focus on supporting first-generation and international students.
• Connecting campus jobs to career readiness: Participants shared approaches including a Credly badge built around the NACE competencies, adapted Iowa GROW reflection questions for supervisor one-on-ones, and "career capital" workshops for student employee groups. Others mentioned student employee spotlight blogs and exploring internship-for-credit options for peer roles.
• Supporting and aligning supervisors: Strategies included moving from an intensive summer supervisor cohort to a flexible Canvas orientation and running a Teams channel with monthly campus partner spotlights. The group also discussed aligning supervisors in decentralized models and cross-training student workers across desks.
• Creative uses of uConnect features: One institution uses the Handshake job feed so admitted graduate students can browse on-campus jobs before they have Handshake access. Another is planning interactive graphics to illustrate the student employee lifecycle, from recruitment through onboarding and support.
• Celebrating student employees: Participants shared ideas for involving students in planning National Student Employment Week and partnering with campus departments to showcase the range of on-campus jobs. They also stressed making sure student contributions happen during paid, on-the-clock time.

The session wrapped with participants exchanging resources, including an offer to share student employee spotlight nomination questions. It ended with encouragement to keep building connections across campus and within the uConnect community.

Roundtable Recording:

Watch the full roundtable for the complete peer discussion on supporting student employees and their supervisors. All recordings are available in our Career Everywhere Community.