By Alexandra Ciardella
If you open up Handshake right now and search for jobs at Susquehanna University, only ten results show up. The positions available range from dining assistant to student technician to finance office intern. Now, consider how many student jobs there actually are on campus. With the amount of departments and majors present at Susquehanna, you would expect a large amount of jobs to be available. However, there are barely any.
I myself have been trying since the beginning of the semester to find a job on campus, yet I haven’t had any luck. For jobs not posted on Handshake, I would have to either come in-person or send emails to apply; neither result has given me any luck. I’ve given up on finding a job and think that it would be easier just waiting for the next semester. I want to be able to track who I’ve asked, what jobs are available, and where I can start looking, all in one place. Handshake is the answer, yet it isn’t the solution.
Don’t get me wrong; Handshake is a useful app for students when looking for jobs or internships. But only if it’s used by employers in the first place. If all jobs on and off campus could be on one platform, it would make job searching so much easier. I’ve been on Handshake more in the last few weeks than in my entire college career. Currently, when I use the app to look for internships on campus, I get zero results. I know that doesn’t reflect the amount of internships at Susquehanna, and I would want the employers of Susquehanna to start using the app.
I know that there’s plenty of jobs at Starbucks, Charlie’s, or even in the dining hall where I don’t have to go through this whole trouble. I know that I should just suck it up and work at one of them until the end of the semester, but I can’t. I’m not good at food service jobs, where it’s a fast-paced environment with lots of customers at once. I’m sure a lot of other students feel this way, where they’d prefer to have jobs that don’t involve fast-paced environments where they’re constantly put under pressure. That’s why I’d like to have the option to choose what I do on campus, or at least know all of the options that are there.
As a creative writing student, I would love to see more jobs and internships in my department on Handshake. Or just jobs that require writing in general, like social media or website writing, for other departments. I know that most of the departments on campus hire students to do work, so there should be listings. Even if they’re not currently hiring, it would be nice to know my options ahead of the next semester.
