It’s tough to get an on-campus job at the University of Oregon. With many unemployed students seeking convenient jobs within walking distance of their classes and homes, the hiring pool becomes competitive — resulting in hundreds of applications for limited positions.
It can seem a bit trifling not to meet campus job requirements due to a lack of experience, and it creates a frustrating cycle. If a student can’t gain experience from an on-campus job, where can they?
The hiring process on campus is difficult, from finding the right job for you and navigating the application and interview process, to getting the long-awaited decision. It takes a long time to get a response from these job listings, anywhere from two weeks to a month or just straight up ghosting altogether. The university consistently ghosts their students by posting job listings and proceeding to never reach back out.
When interviewing public relations major Ellie Acosta about this issue, she said, “I’m really lucky to have been able to be hired on campus, but I can attest firsthand to how hard it is to find open positions or even get an interview. When searching for jobs, I applied to over 20 on Handshake, and only heard back from five. Only two of those offered me interviews, and luckily, one of them worked out for me.”
Due to a lack of timely responses from job postings, students often resort to mass applying to these listings, hoping to land a position anywhere that will take them. This behavior leads to a hyper-inflated response rate for each listing, creating a paradox: the more students apply out of desperation, the harder it becomes for anyone’s application to stand out.
I’ve seen job listings on Handshake where the only preferred qualification was to be a junior, and proceeded to receive an email that declined students who were juniors, stating they didn’t want juniors or seniors because of their limited remaining time at the university. Even when you meet their qualifications, the chance of getting one of these positions seems slim.
According to UO’s Oregon News website, there were 30,539 student applications for on campus jobs in a single year, with only 11% of those applications resulting in filled positions. While UO hasn’t released updated figures since 2019, the volume of student job applications in a single year likely remains high or even higher today, given inflation, rising tuition and increased student enrollment.
With limited on-campus positions, I can’t help but think about how closely the amount of denied job applications relates to the current unemployment rate in America. Many students lose their jobs unexpectedly, and with so few on-campus positions available and the amount of denied student applications, it starts to resemble the unemployment crisis in America. As a student, seeing this epidemic reflected in the university doesn’t provide a comforting feeling for soon-to-be graduates.
Over the summer, students received emails stating that they would not have their previously held on-campus job, citing “performance issues.” The University of Oregon Student Workers Union released a statement following the recent summer layoffs stating, “… many student workers received recent notice of job cuts — either the UO deciding to not reappoint them in the fall or to replace their position entirely with students eligible for work-study.” The university points to its $29.2 million dollar budget deficit as the culprit of the deficit.
UO may promote student employment as a pillar of campus life, but it’s more complicated than that. Between long response times, contradictory qualifications and budget-driven restrictions, students are left scrambling about finding a source of income while also trying to adhere to a disheartening system of applying and getting denied time after time.
While these issues may seem small, they reflect a deeper problem for students. If you can’t get a job on campus, how hard is it going to be to get a job off campus?
