Student Panel Volunteers

Last week I took part in the recruitment process, which was a completely new experience for me and I think I learnt a lot just from one day!

International Office at Aston was looking for a person for the role of international students adviser and has asked a few students to volunteer and help during this process. This job is quite challenging as given a job description it was clear that a person employed would have to be quite experienced in different areas, including work with students, being able to give a valuable advice regarding visa, organisation of various events for students, etc. As first part of their interview process, the candidates had to answer a few questions on the student panel as it gave an opportunity for employers to receive feedback from students.

There were three students in total on the student panel, including me and two other students at Aston. All of us were coming from different countries and backgrounds, studying various subjects at different levels - so I thought it was quite a good presentation of students at our university. We were given a few general questions to ask candidates and the main objective for us was to provide feedback regarding each candidate. The most important task for us was not to concentrate on the answer they were giving, but try and form an opinion based on how approachable and friendly they were as their daily job will be working closely with students and helping them quite a lot.

There were five candidates in total and it was an interesting experience to see how people present themselves in the recruitment process. They were all candidates with great work experience and skills so I thought it was useful for us to learn something new from them. Of course it was extremely difficult to provide feedback as every single candidate was suitable for this job.

Even though this step was not crucial in an interview decision making, but providing this opportunity for us to take part in it shows how important and valuable students' opinion is for Aston!