No guarantees, but nothing to lose

Looking for a new job is no picnic, but UCSD is the only employer in the county that offers a class on how to get hired.

“We tout that,” said Michael Yates, director of talent acquisition and community outreach services in the UCSD Department of Human Resources. In just an hour, UCSD job applicants in the free “How to Get Hired at UCSD” class can learn tips and tricks on how to market themselves on their résumés, how to match the requirements of positions they are interested in to their own skills, and how to read the university’s job postings, Yates said.

“We felt that by having this kind of program, we’d be able to serve the community a little better as it came to employment,” he said.

The class has been offered by UCSD for 20 years, but there are no statistics on whether it helps applicants snag a UCSD job.

On any given day, UCSD has 500 job openings, Yates said, for which it gets 400-plus applications for each position. More than 28,000 employees work at UCSD, the county’s largest employer next to the federal government.

“We’re a little city and we have all kinds of jobs,” he said. They include Building and Maintenance Worker at $16.47 per hour; Associate Vice Chancellor of Health Sciences, which includes overseeing UCSD’s Medical School, salary based on qualifications and experience; and College Operations Specialist, an administrative position at the campus’ Sixth College, with a salary range of $2935 to $4053 monthly. The deadline for that job closes on April 23.

More jobs are posted at jobs.ucsd.edu. The university offers "How to Get Hired at UCSD" four times a year, once per season. The spring class will be held at UCSD Medical Center on April 21. Don’t try to enroll — it’s already full, but Yates urges everyone to attend.

“There’s always standing room in the back,” he said.