How Salesforce Can Make Work-Study Better

Work study provides more than half a million students in the US annually with an opportunity to gain valuable job experience while reducing the financial burden of college tuition. It provides colleges and universities with a great source of dependable, eager workers, too. If you manage an advancement shop where staff is spread thin and budget is tight, work study can be a great resource. But how can you be sure that you’re getting the most out of it? The short answer: Salesforce.

Attracting the most motivated, eager-to-learn students for work study in your advancement office is crucial.

Why? These students are going to be the most productive. They won’t only tackle every task you send their way, but they can also help you come up with creative solutions to problems or inefficiencies in your business processes.  This is particularly true when it comes to your technology. Putting an eager, bright student worker on a data entry task means freeing up some of your full-time staff’s time. If you take the time to ask them what about the process could be improved, you might be surprised at what a fresh perspective can give you. But how can you get the brightest, most motivated student workers to want to work in your office?

How does an advancement shop attract student workers who will exceed expectations?

Student workers want more than just financial support. They’re doing everything they can to prepare themselves for a good career in a growing industry. They want to build marketable skills. One of the best ways to offer students an opportunity to enhance their resume is to let them use technology that is widespread, used in for-profit industries, and that is likely to continue to grow. This is one of the major reasons Sleek recommends Salesforce to higher education and nonprofit organizations. If you’re on a legacy CRM, like Raiser’s Edge, you’re going to have a harder time bringing in the most motivated and savvy student workers who want to begin working with the same technology they’re going to be using after they graduate.

Landing a work study job in an advancement office on Salesforce is an opportunity for students to get comfortable with the most ubiquitous CRM in the world.

Whether they plan to go into finance, manufacturing, customer service, sales, or the nonprofit sector, it’s likely that Salesforce knowledge will benefit them. Basic experience navigating the system, updating records, and creating reports is excellent. What’s even more valuable is basic admin experience—for example, duplicate management, simple UI enhancements (like adjusting page layouts or Lightning Record Pages), and even building flows to automate routine data entry tasks. The nice thing is students can get tons of free training through Salesforce Trailhead (and, by the way, employers looking for Salesforce-savvy graduates will want to see some Trailhead badges).

You’re probably thinking, “I’m not sure if I want a student worker to have that much power in my Salesforce org. What if they mess something up?”

It’s a valid concern. But that’s where Salesforce is truly the best platform to handle this kind of scenario. Firstly, you have granular control over what student workers can see, do, edit, and delete in your system. Sleek has helped countless advancement teams create security profiles specifically for student workers who should be able to see the records and fields they need to complete tasks assigned to them and no more. Secondly, you can make use of your sandbox environments to allow students to try their hands at administrative tasks like adjusting the UI or building simple automations in a low-stakes environment. After the changes they make have been reviewed and tested by you or a member of your full-time staff, you can move some or all of them to production.

To recap: our experience implementing Salesforce for advancement tells us that work study can be infinitely more valuable for both the student and advancement teams on the Salesforce platform.

Whether it’s simple data entry or experimenting with designing new functionality in a sandbox, students gain skills that will help them get Salesforce certified and ultimately land a good job after graduation. You benefit, too, by attracting the best and brightest student workers and then drawing from their fresh perspective to continue improving how Salesforce supports your business processes. It’s a win-win!