Best Practices for Companies Recruiting OSC Students

In order to assist companies to most effectively recruit OSC students, we would like to share the following practices we have found to be the most successful.

• It is important to plan your interviews at a time that does not conflict with the academic calendar.  Classes begin at the end of August, just before the Labor Day Weekend, the University of Arizona observes Veteran’s Day and a two-day Thanksgiving holiday in November, and the last day of classes occurs at the beginning of December.  Spring semester classes begin in mid-January, a one-week Spring Break occurs in mid-March and classes end at the beginning of May.  A link to the academic calendar is available at the OSC student resume web site at http://www.optics.arizona.edu/resumes/default.asp.

• Timely communication with Allison Huff, Industrial Affiliates Coordinator, regarding your plans is very important in making this process run smoothly for you.  When you are ready to begin, please contact Allison at 520-626-6737 or allison@optics.arizona.edu.

• Confusion can be minimized by assigning one company liaison to interact with Allison.

• It is best to plan your recruitment process approximately one month in advance.  The most effective timeline would be as follows:

  • Initial Contact:  Send job opportunity & information session announcement to OSC

  • 2 Weeks after Initial Contact:  Company liaison contacts OSC w/names of candidates to be interviewed and dates for information session & interviews

  • 4 Weeks after Initial Contact:  Information session & interviews scheduled this week
     

• Job Opportunity Announcement -- the job opportunity announcement should contain the following elements:

  • Company Information

    • Name, location and web site address

    • Type of Company (government, military, industry)

    • Company size

    • Company culture

    • Product

    • Mission Statement

  • Job description

    • Primary purpose of the position

    • Major tasks

    • FTE (full-time, half-time)

    • Work days and hours

  • Job requirements

    • U.S. citizenship requirements

    • Degree

    • Experience

    • Specific skills

  • Compensation

    • Salary (optional for the announcement)

    • Benefits:  housing allowance, travel allowance, parking

  • Application Procedure

    • Letter of interest

    • Separate application

    • Resume and/or online resume

    • College transcript (official or unofficial)

    • Where to send application materials

    • How to send application materials—hard copy, email or online

    • To whom to send application materials—name, title, address, email address

  • Students could be directed to send their resumes directly to a company representative.  (If this person is not the liaison for OSC, it is important that these two individuals communicate in a timely manner with regard to the schedule.)

  • Students could also be directed to sign up for an interview in the Academic Programs Office, Meinel Room 403 and bring their resumes to the interview.
     

• Information Session

   

  • The students appreciate an information session to gain a better understanding of the culture of the company as well as the products and career opportunities there. 

  • The sessions usually include a power-point presentation about the company that is less than one hour in length, with a question & answer period afterwards.

  • Most companies provide the students pizza and soda, and some companies provide a full dinner.

    • Pizza & soda can be arranged by the Academic Programs Office with a local Black Jack Pizza franchise and paid by the company representative at delivery. 

    • Companies interested in providing a full dinner, or other refreshments would need to contact the University of Arizona Student Union Catering Office directly—520-621-1989.  An online ordering service is available, but the online order must be made a minimum of 10 days in advance of the event.

•      http://www.union.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Catering.woa/wa/default

  • Directly following the information session, additional resumes could be collected or a sign-up sheet could be made available so students could schedule interviews during the remaining time slots available.

• Interviews

  • Once the students are selected as candidates for positions, their names should be sent to Allison Huff, along with the dates & times the recruiters would like to interview.  Allison needs the candidates’ names at least one week prior to the interviews in order to examine each student’s class schedule, set up the interview and communicate with the student to confirm. 

  • The students could also be directed to sign up for an interview in the Academic Programs Office, Meinel Room 403.

  • Allison will schedule interview rooms.

  • If you would like to see a hard copy of the resume, college transcripts or any other materials during the interview, this information also needs to be conveyed to Allison at the time arrangements are made.

   

We understand that life happens and things will not always go according to plan.  We will be as flexible as possible and will do our best to make this a successful recruitment process for you.