Hello fellow anteaters and incoming young anteaters!! It gives me immense pleasure and excitement in sharing with you my thoughts on a very important topic, which not only helps you meet you expenses, while at school, but also teaches you very important lessons in life; On-campus jobs.
To begin with few FYIs, there are two kinds of jobs which you could be looking for. One is the academic jobs such as Teaching Assistant, Research Assistant, Readership and Tutor. The other kind of job is the non-Academic jobs such as Administrative assistance, Office Assistance or Student Representative positions offered at the Library, Dining and Hospitality services and other services.
So, before starting your job search for an on-campus job, it is highly encouraged to sit back and ponder over your strengths, and the job you are targeting, as the job you might be heading can shape your entire UCI experience, and we all wish it to be great and enriching. So, a good place to start your search for an on-campus job would be the Zot-link. It is the UCI Career center page in which all the online job postings for different non-academic positions would be displayed over the entire year. The link for Zot-link is provided below: http://career.uci.edu/students/zotlink.html
As Zotlink is dynamic, a daily visit to this page has been really fruitful for many students in the past, as new positions keep popping up. Zotlink also has customization features to provide you jobs based on your interest and this had enabled several people in the past to obtain several on-campus positions.
A second place to enquire for on-campus jobs is the respective department in which you are going to pursue your education. A good rapport and knowledge of people whom we could reach out to within a department such as a Department coordinator or the Program supervisor before and during the program ensures that we could be in the radar of any possible on-campus opportunities provided by the Department, which we could make the best use when provided.
A place to look for classes and professors to whom we could reach out for academic positions apart from our home departments is the UCI Office of Academic Personnel. This page provides valuable information such as number of TA, teaching associate, Readers & tutors required by a department, and the contact to whom we could reach out to, so that we could try increasing our chances to contribute to other departments as well. The website for the page is provided: http://www.ap.uci.edu/ase/proj2016-17.html.
A very important element of job hunt for on-campus positions is networking. Though this term might not be welcomed greatly, an easier version to put the same in action, is the process of making friends. The entire process of job hunt could be made effective If we have the right friends in the right places. A friendship with a valuable senior or a fellow classmate could help in exchanging information of positions open which we might not know or obtain positions previously held by a close friend, and this being the best of all the above mentioned ways to land in a position as far as I have experienced as in my case.
To give a small peek into how I landed in on-campus positions, it all started with a firm clarity with what I wanted and what I visualize doing, if I had such a position in my mind. So I went across all the departments in UCI to get an idea of openings and rules which each place has, so that such process not only helped me understand the nuances of job search, but also a persistence to accomplish a task well fixated. In my pursuit, I finally met several different people at different points of my day who were complete strangers, but actually helped me land in a position as a Reader, in a department not to which I was affiliated, in which I continued until the end of the academic year.
To end the topic with a point to ponder, I believe that, the job is not just a part of Graduate life, but its the process of finding one, and helping out the other in the process, which is a great experience to every grad student. Good luck in your pursuit anteaters!!