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If you need to get in touch you can contact the NASES National Office on
E-mail: nases@liv.ac.uk
Tel: 0151 794 4629
Registered charity number: 1119884
National Association of Student Employment Services
Centre for Lifelong Learning,
University of Liverpool,
150 Mount Pleasant,
Liverpool,
L69 3GD
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► Dual service - student union
Initially established as part of the careers service in the early 1990s and one of the first student employment services in the country Unistaff was originally operated as an agency-only service for the university providing part-time student staff to help out with cleaning work. The service was quickly extended to other university departments and before long all casual recruitment within the university was channelled through it. This had the dual advantage of easing the pressure on university departments and of providing paid work to students needing to supplement their student loans.
In the summer of 2001, Unistaff moved to the students’ union, merging with the job centre style service that had been set up by the students’ union the previous year. The merged service was re-named Unistaff Jobshop and now offers both an agency and job centre style service under the same roof.
During the last ten years or so, the external side of the agency has expanded. In addition to the university work, we now have lots of regular external clients (bars, restaurants, department stores and offices) who understand that students can make a valuable contribution to their workforce.
The job centre style service is much less time-consuming than the agency service and very simple to administer. Potential advertisers complete our Vacancy Notification Form and agree to and sign our Code of Practice. All advertisers are expected to comply with the adult National Minimum Wage and accordingly, we don’t advertise commission-only jobs or anything paying less that the full adult NMW. We no longer place advertisements on behalf of recruitment agencies as on occasions this has caused a conflict with our agency service. We also found that in some cases, the high street agencies didn’t always have the students’ best interests at heart. Vacancies are displayed on the notice boards at the Jobshop and the students’ union website and the details are emailed to our database of students. We also run a selection of advertisements in the weekly student newspaper. Advertisers are offered the choice of placing either a four-week advertisement or a semester advertisement.
Our agency service is much more complex that the job centre style service and takes up the majority of our time. The administration of the service involves co-ordinating work, dealing with bookings, enquiries, problems and cancellations etc. Some bookings are large and can be extremely time-consuming e.g. a booking for 35 students to flyer involves allocating the work, making sure all the students have timesheets and the necessary information, dealing with cancellations (inevitable and often last-minute!) as well as ringing around the students again the day before to ensure that they will turn up. During a weekend when a major event is being held it’s not unusual to have several large bookings simultaneously, which means it’s a case of all hands on deck and leaves little time to do anything else!
Agency work is extremely popular with students as they don’t have to commit to a regular part-time job and can just dip in and out of work when it suits them or when they see a particularly interesting assignment.
Our success is not just measured in financial terms, but in terms of our growing student numbers and the positive feedback we receive from the students who work through us and who feel they have access to an employment service that puts their best interests first, unlike the commercial agencies where profit is the main motivation.
(August 2011)
Cardiff University
