Top ten ways to NOT get a job when I'm hiring

10. Not having any ESH hours in your package.
9. Already having ten other on campus jobs (security desk, anyone?) so you don’t have enough hours left for this position.
8. Taking six classes and two labs, with no free time block longer than 1 hr.
7. Having a criminal record. Sorry, no drug dealers with access to the chemical stockroom!
6. Not answering my e-mails within a week.
5. Being a jerk to the faculty in previous classes.
4. Not including your name on your application and/or resume (yes, this happened).
3. Not meeting the requirements. There is a REASON you have to take a course in our area before you can work in the stockroom or teaching lab!
2. Not stating on your application or resume that you’ve met the requirements.
1. Not applying! (The stockroom manager knows someone is coming back, but he hasn’t applied!)

Hiring students

We have to go through the campus ESH program and post all positions on the campus employment website. This is a total pain because:
a) Not all students come packaged with ESH, so some excellent students aren’t eligible
b) ALL the students can see your listing…and don’t necessarily READ the text. So most of the applicants so far aren’t eligible (you can’t TA for a class you haven’t passed, and you can’t work in the stockroom when you’ve never taken a class in our department!)

I haven’t figured out how exactly to *do* the hires. Should I interview students myself? Have the stockroom manager interview the stockroom assistant applicants? Ask colleagues who know the students and/or are teaching the class for recommendations? Should I do “rolling” hiring, or wait until I have a selection to choose from?

I guess the answers to these questions depend on your institution. I’m at a small place—less than a thousand students, and six faculty members in my department. So my plan is:
--pre-screen applicants and decline unqualified candidates
--do informal interviews with the students who are interested, mostly to find out their schedules
--for lab assistants, ask the person who would be working directly with them if that applicant would be acceptable
--for stockroom assistants, have the students meet with the manager, and let him make the final call.

Any suggestions? Things I’m missing?

Department chair duties: hiring

There are three types of hiring I'll be in charge of as department chair:
--Faculty. We have someone retiring in the summer of 2011, so I have a while before I'll have to deal with a tenure track hire. We're also on a hiring freeze, so I'll have to push pretty hard to be able to hire a fill in for an area that we can't cover internally next year.

--Staff. I pray I won't have to do this--we've been blessed with an AWESOME administrate assistant and a very good lab prep person. I'll be working hard to retain them, despite our salary freeze (separate post later).

--Student assistants. Now is the season for hiring student assistants. Mercifully, we work with the Academic Services unit to hire tutors for the year in the spring, so that's taken care of. But I do need to hire lab teaching assistants and stockroom assistants...and I've never hired someone by myself...ever!

So any advice on hiring?