Write the best work student vacancy for your company

To stay ahead of the shortage in the technical labor market, hiring a work student is a wise choice. A work student can help you out with (temporary) projects and, once the student has graduated, they can be employed without having to make any effort at acquisition. To find the right student, it is important to post a good vacancy. This job posting should get students’ attention and be attractive to this target group. In this article we will take you through the process of writing a good work student vacancy.

How do you attract technical work students with a vacancy?

Put yourself in the student’s shoes
From my own experience as a work student, I can tell you that for me vacancies do not have to be formal at all. Write as you speak, this is often experienced as personal and students can find themselves in this. So be yourself and try to put yourself in the student’s shoes.

State the salary
It’s probably not what you want to hear, but students work mainly to earn some extra money to pay for their studies (of course the experience they gain is a good side effect). Almost all job postings talk about a market conform or appropriate salary, try to break the salary taboo and mention what the student will earn. This is much more interesting for work students and in addition you will distinguish yourself from your competitors!

Be flexible as a company
Also important to keep in mind is that a student’s schedule can vary from week to week (I speak from my own experience). Therefore, for a work student, it is very important that a company is flexible. One week the student may be able to work on Wednesday and Thursday, but perhaps the next week this will be on Monday and Thursday. Try to make room for this within your company and mention in your vacancy that the company likes to think along with the student.

Provide clarity
At EuFlex we usually assume that a work student can work between 8 and 16 hours per week. This can of course be more or less, just clearly state in the vacancy what you are looking for. It is important for both parties that the study and job go well.

No long lists of requirements
Stop with a very long list of requirements. You are hiring a work student, which means that they often do not have years of experience in a large corporate company. A long list of requirements scares off working students, because they often do not feel qualified enough for the job. While they are probably competent enough! So rather look at the character of the student, is he/she eager to learn? Do you expect the student to be able to learn things quickly? What skills does the student already have?  This is much more important to know than years of experience!

List career opportunities
There is a good chance that the working student will want to continue working for your company after graduation. So this means you won’t have to recruit a suitable candidate in the future if you have already done this now! They help you out now and you will also benefit in the future. Win-win!

Tips for writing a work student vacancy.

It is of course important that your vacancy stands out from all the others. It is also important to aim at the target group, in this case students who are looking for a job. So first think about the knowledge, experience and talents you are looking for in your ideal candidate. When you don’t have this clear it will be very difficult to write a good and clear vacancy. So take your time and write it down for yourself in keywords.

The tips for writing a good working student vacancy listed:

• Tip 1: Draw up a detailed job profile, do not use standard terms. Try to be distinctive, you want to stand out!
• Tip 2: Do research on the channels where your target group is located.
• Tip 3: Determine a clear strategy for your recruitment method. For example, are you going to use paid advertising on the different channels where your potential candidates are? Or are you going to send personal messages? Consider these choices carefully and look at the pros and cons of these options.
• Tip 4: Write a well-organized job posting. This means short sentences, clear headings, summaries and write the most important things at the front of the text. Bullet point lists often work well!
• Tip 5: Pay attention to the working atmosphere of the company. Candidates want to know what kind of company they will be working in. If you have another work student, let him or her write a personal note about the experiences as a work student.
• Tip 6: Describe the career development possibilities in the student work vacancy. Chances are that the student worker will want to continue working after graduating, so it is interesting if he or she can already read about the possibilities.

What can you offer work students?

The salary
To give you some idea of what you can offer the students as a salary, we always use the salary indication of student assistants at the TU/e. At EuFlex we are obliged to apply the ‘inlenersbeloning’ (hirer’s remuneration). The student is scaled according to your collective labor agreement or remuneration scheme. If there is no collective agreement, we apply the salary of student assistants.

Make good arrangements
As mentioned earlier, it is important to offer flexibility to a work student. Fixed hours and fixed days are difficult to combine with a full time study. Especially since the study schedule does not take side jobs into account. If possible, give the student the opportunity to work at home, so that the work student can also work in the evening or during weekends. If this is not possible, it is important to make good agreements together.

Good match? Win-win! Offer the student a job after graduation!
Offer the work student the opportunity to continue working after graduation if it proves to be a good match. This is interesting for both parties! We can’t say this often enough.

Treat the student as a real employee
Treat the work student just like the other employees, that way the student will feel comfortable the quickest. Make the side job in the vacancy interesting and attractive to the young generation.