While preparing for my Graduate Assistantship interviews later this month and interviewing students to be my replacement at UWM, I’ve been forced to think about what skill is the most necessary for a Student Affairs student employee. I think most of the skills that we gain in Student Affairs, and the ones we ask students to learn are trainable skills. We can interview a student who may not have specific campus marketing or residential experience, but if they’re a well-rounded individual we can hire them because thankfully, when you’re working in Student Affairs, you’re always learning.
As you can probably tell from the title of this post, the skills that I think have been the most valuable to me are time management and organization. These skills are invaluable, especially when you’re going to school full time, working full time and attempting to get into a Master’s program. It’s important for student staff to learn them so that they can be successful in their college and professional careers. Similarly, professional staff and student managers should recognize when an employee has exemplary skills or when they’re lacking in this area. We should be teaching our employees that the ability to plan your schedule, while seemingly simple, is critical to your success and the success of your initiatives.
Professional staff members can do a lot to improve their students’ skills in this area. Instead of just dealing with or penalizing a student for their deficiency in organization, teach them how to be a better student employee. One way to do this is through staff development exercises. There are several fun and effective ways to help students hone their skills through training exercises that are readily available online. I think an even better way to this is a combination of staff development and an incentive system for organized students.
Your incentive doesn’t have to be huge to be effective. Small incentives can have a big impact on student staff because over time, they’ll make a significant difference. Basically what this means is changing how you operate a little bit to accommodate special deadlines and rewards. An example of this would be to schedule your staff on a first come first served basis; people who get their availability in the earliest will be more likely to get the shifts they want. On my campus, Student Union employees are required to attend two staff development activities to be eligible for a special monetary incentive based on the number of hours they work.
These are just a few of the ways that we can reward students for learning necessary skills. One of the best things about working in Student Affairs for me is our commitment to learning and staff development. Teaching basic employability skills is one of the best things we can do for our student workers.
About Jon Tingley
