UTRGV honors student employees

UTRGV will honor its nearly 3,000 student workers with a job fair, workshops and appreciation ceremonies as part of National Student Employment Week.

“The main purpose of this event is to appreciate what the student employees do for us,” said Ana Perez, assistant director of Student Employment for the UTRGV Career Center. “What we are trying to do is give an appreciation day for the students, give something special, make something special for them.”

The National Student Employment Appreciation Week is an annual event. This year’s celebration will be the second in UTRGV history.

At UTRGV, there are 2,850 students working on all campuses, 198 of which are international students.

Today, résumé seminars will take place at noon in Salón Cassia in Brownsville and in the Student Union’s Bronc Room on the Edinburg campus.

Perez said it is important for students to attend résumé seminars.

“Many students already have their résumés, but also some students have never done a résumé and they really need to know; they have to be ready,” she said. “By the time that they graduate, they need a résumé for them to find a real job outside.”

On Tuesday, a job fair for employment on campus will take place at 10 a.m. in the PlainsCapital Bank El Gran Salón in Brownsville.

“This will be either to hire students for the summer or to start interviewing to hire students for the fall,” Perez said.

In Edinburg, the job fair will take place at 10 a.m. Thursday in the University Ballroom.

A networking/social media workshop will take place at noon Tuesday on both campuses in Salón Cassia and in the Bronc Room.

Perez said the networking workshop will show students the proper way to use social media to obtain a job. She also mentioned the effects Facebook profiles have in today’s hiring process.

“You may have a very good résumé, you may have very good experience in your résumé and everything, but these employers go in to look at your Facebook and if you have something that is not right–let’s say you are drinking or doing something that is not appropriate for a job–you might not even get a job. That’s what this workshop is about, the do’s and don’ts about the media,” she said.

Kimberly Cerbin, a nursing sophomore and student career adviser for Career Services, said she enjoys her time working at the university.

“I’m always here on campus, pretty much all day and you also get to build connections with different faculty and staff,” Cerbin said.

She said an advantage of working on campus, besides building connections, is the work experience she receives when helping students and interacting with others.

Asked what her thoughts are about the Student Employment Appreciation Week, Cerbin replied, “It is a good opportunity to get to know other student employees around the campus and you get to see the honorees, and the achievement that they have accomplished.”

The ceremonies for Student Employee of the Year and Supervisor of the Year will take place at noon Wednesday in El Gran Salón on the Brownsville campus and at the same time Friday in the University Ballroom in Edinburg.

Virginia Ledesma, a learning instructional specialist for the ASPIRE program, said it is important to show appreciation to student employees because “they play a big role in the success of the program and the students, so it’s important that we recognize their contribution to the program and to the success of the student.”

Ledesma, who spoke on behalf of the tutors from the program, said one can see the difference in student employees when they start and when they finish.

“It’s very important for them to have good communication skills, good representations of the program, create a connection with the student, so when they come in they are very cautious about it, but once they see, you see confident students,” she said. “Their knowledge increases because they practice that all the time that they were here, they create bonds with the students, so it’s important because that gives them professional knowledge, career knowledge, academic knowledge, and they create bonds with the students they get in contact with.”

When nominating a student for Employee of the Year, Ledesma said she looks for several things.

“The knowledge, how they respect and how they get along with the students, how they connect with them, how they are always willing to serve the student [are a few],” she said. “Someone that is here, aware that when once they are here, they are here to provide a service. That’s how I nominate a Student Employee of the Year.”