Can you look for candidates with specific technical skills? Should you? Are there particular competencies that predict success more than others? Is it best to restrict your candidate pool to students within a certain program or should you keep your search broad?
There are several factors that come into play when answering these questions.
First, we recommend reviewing what students learn to refresh your understanding of what can be expected of students at each level of their program.
Does your position require a student at a particular level or in a particular program? Are you looking for a student with specific technical skills or knowledge? If so, you'll want to establish fairly narrow eligibility criteria. Or, are you more concerned with attitude and aptitude? If so, they you may want to keep your options as open as possible so you can find a student who fits with your organizatino's culture.These approaches, or even a middle ground between them, are both completely valid.
Use the WIL Student Position Design Guide to evaluate how critical certain knowledge or pre-requisite skills are to the role. For example, if only one of the student's tasks requires knowing a certain piece of software, is that one piece worth excluding other potential candidates? Or if the majority of a student’s responsibilities require a particular competency, would it be worth it for you to provide some training in that area? None of these questions has a right or wrong answer.
A great resource for referencing competencies that might be used in position descriptions and/or evaluated during interviews is the University of Waterloo’s Future Ready Talent Framework. Based on research, the competencies in this framework are ones that ensure a person’s ability to adapt and thrive no matter what the future brings.