Student Employment Office Sets Up Skilled Labor Pool

The Student Employment Office is setting up a "talent bank" of skilled student labor to supplement its present random system of job placement, SEO director R. Jerrold Gibson '51 said yesterday.

Beginning next Tuesday, students interested in finding a term-time, casual, or summer job will sign up on referral sheets in the SEO and indicate the job fields which interest them. The agency will then contact various Cambridge employers and inform them of the skilled labor available.

Under the present placement system employers with available jobs place notices in the SEO, and students hunt for jobs which interest them among the notices. "When something works out," Gibson said, "it is sheer coincidence."

The main purpose of the new system, Gibson said, is to raise the pay that employers will give students. Instead of the unskilled-labor wage that employers presently pay, he explained, students referred to them by the skilled labor pool could receive wages merited by their skills.

"Few employers think of hiring students now because of the difficulty involved in finding the right student for the right job," Gibson said. "With a talent bank we can give employers access to students with the skills they are looking for," he said.

The Harvard Student Agency also employs the concept of matching employer with student, Gibson said, but the SEO does not now plan to train students and then guarantee the quality of their work, as HSA does.