At my university we have students work a certain number of hours a week for their scholarships after their first year on campus. They have the responsibility of finding a job and working the set number of hours (generally four a week). The jobs range from office work in departmental or faculty offices to monitoring the front desk of the library or a dorm, to doing research in a lab, overseeing computer labs and helping students with minor IT issues, providing assistance in a local museum or social service agency, or grading tests or serving as a teaching assistant for a faculty member. The idea is that students gain valuable experience at working a job, even if it is not a professionally-qualified one, and it is also a way of keeping costs down dramatically at the university. Students are paid minimum wage rates, but are often doing work that will help them get future positions on or off campus. The number of students who have listed me as a reference is very high, and they have applied for museum positions, graduate assistantships, office positions, and businesses of various sorts. I know the students who work for me in the image library I oversee for the art department and those who have worked in my office, those who have served as teaching assistants (this semester I have one who is monitoring service hours for a service-learning class she took last time it was taught), and those who have graded tests, designed websites, and developed bibliographies in a variety of fields.
I have been hiring students this past week to work in the department's image library. And I have some words of advice for students who are applying for jobs on campus. These are all concerns that have been a factor this week in whether I have hired students or not.
Read the position description, please, and do not apply for those jobs for which you do not qualify. This is always good advice, beyond a university job. At my university many jobs are only available with funding from specific sources, and we post jobs with that information. The ones I am advertising are funded with scholarships, or work study. I do not have money to hire someone with what is called "Institutional" pay, a job that is funded from a grant or specially-designated funding. Those jobs are often for very specially-qualified students. For example, someone with experience and abilities that are not generally available (web design, computer repair and programming, language tutoring, upper level standing in classes in crop genetics) or are willing to do particular jobs that require above a minimum wage (the example that comes to mind in my department is modeling for life drawing classes -- in other words, you get paid above minimum wage to take off your clothes and pose in the middle of a circle of students for an hour or three at a time).
I have found that students will often apply for anything that they can when it is possible to apply for multiple things at once. This is the case with scholarships (the number of applications from Psychology or English majors for a scholarship that specifies "qualifications include a major in studio art" is still surprising to me), as well as jobs. When I post a position that says "scholarship or work study job only" and you are only able to take a job for institutional hours, don't apply. No matter how much I might like your qualifications, I do not have funding to hire you. So it isn't really possible for me to consider your application. I tried this year to write to students who are rejected, giving them some idea why I have rejected their application. This is the first cut.
The second cut will be the hours that you are available to work. I posted the job with the provision that the office in which they would be working is open only from 8 am to 4:30 pm M-F. So if you are not available for working during these hours, I can't hire you. I was surprised at the number of students who applied who were available for hours identified as "5 pm onwards". I don't need someone and can't use anyone for those hours. Applying for this job is a waste of your time, and a small bit of mine as well when I write you and say "thank you for applying but you are not available during the times the image library is open."
If the position announcement says "Please list the times you are available below" (which all of ours do) do not list that you need four hours of work per week and these are the four hours you are available. I have people who have been working for me for three years already and their schedules are the ones I will work around. As a new person, the chances are pretty good that I am not going to reshuffle everyone else's schedule for you. And what is more frustrating is someone who says she (or he) needs to work four hours a week and only gives me two hours during which she is available. I will write you and say "Thank you for applying but your availability is too limited for me to offer you a position." That is not the time to start negotiation; your application has already been rejected.
There is a place to write a personal statement as to why you want this position and/or how your qualifications fit this job. Even if it is a generic job, pretending that you want this job (I have not taken an art class but have wanted to; this will get me a chance to meet and work with art faculty and students) will get you noticed. Saying "I need a job that won't be that challenging as I am taking a heavy load of classes this semester" is not promising. Leaving that part of the application blank is possible, but will not make your application stick out. I have 17 applicants after two days; you do want to stick out from the crowd. Don't paste a comment from every other application there. "I really want to work in the Psychology Department" won't really cut it when you are applying for a job in a non-Psychology department.
If I do offer you a job and you are not interested, please let me know. I appreciate very much the note that came back immediately from a student that she had taken a job in her major department. That is fine, and I will move on to the next person on the list. but there is someone else I did not hear from at all after three days. I assume she is not interested. Either that or she is not checking her email. Either way, she has lost the opportunity for this job. But I don't know what the reason for her not responding is.
If you are interested and contact me directly (which might bother some, but doesn't necessarily bother me), take the time to look into who I am, and address me formally. When you apply for a job and address a letter out of the blue to someone, you should probably address them as Dear Mr. or Dear Ms.. You generally don't address them as "Dear First Name" as you are trying to be formal in your letter. An email to "Hey, Annette!" is not going to go over particularly well. It might be fine for some people, but someone who writes for a favour (like a job) should always assume there is an unequal relationship between a potential worker and the potential boss. Therefore the address between them should be assumed to be formal, at least in the worker to boss position. I address my bosses (at the university) by their titles, even if I am older than they are. Letters in academia are generally addressed "Dear Dr. so-and-so" even if they are sent via email. I have carefully worked to achieve my degrees and job rank, and I have earned my age through time-on-task. I don't particularly get upset if you address me by "Dr." or "Professor" or "Ms." but I do get annoyed if you assume that I am your equal and call me by my first name when you have never met me. It doesn't take much to find out who your potential supervisor might be. I appreciate those who do make that effort.
Generally you should be polite and formal and cooperative. You should not be argumentative with potential bosses. You should look at an on-campus job in the same way as you look at any job you might have. You never know when jobs might lead to interesting professional opportunities. Don't miss those just because you think something is beneath you, and really it is important not to communicate that something is beneath you, even if you think it is. You may eventually want to do what I do (teach at a university, work as an archaeologist, travel in Asia or Africa or Europe, write books, whatever it is you think I do), and I started by doing office work for a faculty member, too. It was good to see how an office worked, what an archaeologist did when he came back from the field, and it was my first time using a computer (a K-Pro, if you remember those). Very little of it was scholarly but it was useful in the long run.
What was your first job in education? Did you work in the high school office, or in a prof's lab or office in undergrad or grad school? Did it teach you anything useful? How to interact with students who work for you? Is it worth while to oversee students?