Beyond Grades: What To Look For in A Student Employee

As important as grades are when hiring student employees, they are not always everything. If you only look at a potential student worker’s grades, you are missing the full vision of them. Other qualities and qualifications could make this student a perfect worker for your team or even a horrible choice. It is time to look beyond grades so you see a full, well-rounded version of each candidate and find other qualities in these student employees to ensure you hire the best employees.

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Personality

One thing grades cannot showcase is the student’s personality. While good grades indicate a hard worker, it does not determine how well they work in the role, interact with the team, or operate under pressure. An interview is a good chance to gauge their personality and see if they will work in your environment. A customer service-facing role won’t do well with someone who speaks softly, and a construction job won’t do well with someone who, quite literally, doesn’t want to do any heavy lifting.

First, take their manner throughout the interview into consideration. Most student employees will be a little nervous, so don’t use that to rule them out right away. Continue to ask questions that reveal their personality, such as how they work in a team and how they have performed under pressure in the past. They can use examples from classes to put this into context, but it still separates the grades themselves from the actual job candidate.

Next, you usually want to find someone who is positive. The work should excite your candidate, not just be a means for a paycheck. They should look forward to learning something new every day and have a can-do attitude.

Find someone whose energy and ideals match that of your existing team’s personality for the best results with a student employee.

Communication

Both good verbal and written communication skills are important in every single role. All team members need to be able to thoroughly express ideas and needs to each other, as this will allow them to work most effectively together. If they are behind a computer throughout their shift, all emails should be written in a concise but well-thought-out manner. Not only should they speak well, but this also involves active listening. Student employees need to have top-notch communication skills in every direction.

In the interview, keep an eye and ear out for how these potential student employees articulate themselves and answer your questions with their kind of language and how well they can switch for different audiences, if applicable.

Adaptability

Just as a student’s grades might be great across a variety of different subjects, you need to see how they adapt to different situations, not just different styles of learning, especially if the role you are hiring for is a fast-paced role where employees are expected to wear different hats. Adaptability shows you that your student employees are able to quickly learn new skills, but also welcome changes throughout the role as they occur. If they are in the position and something happens to change, how well will they be able to handle that and manage it effectively? Can they easily pick up new skills and adapt to the ever-changing needs of the business?

Even unexpected changes can happen midday, such as a complaining customer. Student employees need to effectively adapt their language and deal with the issue themselves before it snowballs out of hand. Try to gauge how a student remains level-headed even as unexpected and difficult changes happen throughout the day. As much as we’d all like to predict everything, it isn’t always the case!

Time Management

Lastly, you need to know and understand how student employees manage their time. Do they tend to procrastinate and work on a large assignment the night before it’s due, or do they work in daily increments throughout a longer period of time to ensure they take breaks and don’t miss anything important? The latter is usually what you’re looking for! Even if their end result in the former was a high grade, you want your team to manage their time and take care of themselves. This not only helps them, but your team as a whole, as they can get easy updates on progress and provide feedback as a project continues.

Student employees have a lot to offer and can be a perfect fit, regardless of what their transcripts say. If you look for someone who has a great personality, communicates well, and adapts well to a shifting and fluid environment, you can find a great team member. Use your chance to interview student employees to discover what kind of person lies behind the report card.