Job description
Job Title: Assistant Director for Operations – Help Desk
Location: 100 Bay State Road Boston, MA, 02215 (Remote/Hybrid – Must be local to the Boston area)
Duration: 2 Months (Part-Time Contract)
Schedule: 20 Hours per Week
Job Summary
We are seeking a Temporary Assistant Director for Operations to provide part-time operational and help desk support during a professional staff member’s leave.
The primary focus of this role is to maintain routine administration and user support for Handshake and VMock, ensuring that account requests, access issues, user questions, and time-sensitive platform tasks are handled efficiently and without interruption.
The ideal candidate will be detail-oriented, organized, professional, comfortable working with web-based platforms, and able to follow established procedures while knowing when to escalate complex or policy-related issues.
Key Responsibilities
Handshake Account & Access Management
- Review and respond to routine Handshake account requests from students, alumni, and eligible users.
- Verify user eligibility based on school, program, enrollment status, and established guidelines.
- Approve, update, or route accounts according to documented procedures.
- Support alumni account requests and direct users to the appropriate career office or registration process.
- Make routine corrections to school affiliation, graduation year, email address, and other basic profile information when documentation is available.
- Identify requests involving professional students, online students, students on leave, or other specialized populations and escalate when necessary.
Handshake Support & Troubleshooting
- Monitor a shared Handshake operations inbox and respond to routine questions from students, alumni, staff, employers, and campus partners.
- Troubleshoot basic login, account activation, email verification, and profile-access issues.
- Follow established troubleshooting procedures and available resources.
- Follow up with users when additional information is required.
- Escalate technical issues that cannot be resolved through standard troubleshooting.
Appointment & Service Access Support
- Assist users with questions regarding appointment access and career services.
- Help users identify the appropriate career office, service, appointment type, or resource.
- Review accounts for potentially incorrect appointment access.
- Flag issues involving historical school affiliations, online programs, professional programs, or alumni populations.
- Escalate cases requiring policy interpretation or system configuration changes.
Employer & Job Posting Support
- Review routine employer account and job posting questions.
- Route complex requests to the appropriate staff member.
- Identify potentially fraudulent, incomplete, or unusual employer accounts and job postings for further review.
- Maintain appropriate documentation of escalated requests.
Data Quality & Administrative Maintenance
- Correct routine user information when changes are supported by available records.
- Apply established labels and administrative values as appropriate.
- Assist with small-scale data cleanup projects.
- Maintain accurate records of account changes, pending requests, and escalated cases.
Communication & Documentation
- Serve as a first point of contact for routine platform-related operational questions.
- Communicate clearly and professionally with students, alumni, employers, staff, and career development offices.
- Use approved templates and established procedures when responding to users.
- Maintain notes, trackers, and documentation of account changes, pending requests, escalated cases, and recurring issues.
- Prepare brief weekly summaries of request volume, outstanding items, and issues requiring permanent staff attention.
- Coordinate with designated staff when requests affect multiple offices or student populations.
- Participate in limited check-in meetings as needed.
VMock Administration & Support
- Monitor and respond to routine VMock access and support requests.
- Troubleshoot common login, account activation, module access, and resume-upload issues.
- Confirm users are assigned to the appropriate VMock modules and school or program groups.
- Process routine account access, extension, and profile-correction requests when eligibility is clear.
- Provide basic guidance on VMock tools, including:
- Resume
- SMART Editor
- Cover Letter
- Interview modules
- Track recurring issues and document unresolved requests requiring follow-up.
- Escalate technical problems, unusual access requests, configuration changes, and vendor-related issues.
Additional Operational Support
As time permits, the employee may:
- Update internal Handshake instructions and response templates.
- Maintain process documentation.
- Organize shared files and administrative records.
- Compile frequently asked questions and recurring support issues.
- Assist with basic communications and training materials.
- Support other routine operational projects with clearly defined instructions and outcomes.
Responsibilities Reserved for Permanent Staff
The temporary employee will not independently manage:
- Platform policy development or changes to university-wide access rules.
- Complex eligibility determinations or policy exceptions.
- Vendor relationship management, contracts, renewals, or procurement.
- Major platform configuration changes.
- Significant system or policy communications to leadership.
- Decisions involving sensitive student information or elevated administrative permissions.
- Strategic technology planning.
- Management of technology working groups.
These matters should be escalated to the designated permanent staff member or deferred until the permanent staff member returns, depending on urgency.
Required Qualifications & Skills
- Prior experience with Handshake, VMock, career services platforms, recruiting platforms, help desk systems, or comparable web-based applications is preferred.
- Ability and willingness to quickly learn new systems and processes.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Excellent attention to detail.
- Ability to follow established procedures and documented guidelines.
- Sound judgment regarding when to resolve an issue independently and when to escalate.
- Basic troubleshooting skills.
- Comfortable navigating web-based platforms.
- Ability to handle sensitive and confidential information appropriately.
- Strong organizational and time-management skills.
- Ability to work independently while maintaining accurate documentation and handoff notes.
- Professional, responsive, and customer-service-oriented approach.
Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience with Handshake or VMock.
- Experience in higher education, career services, recruiting, student services, or administrative operations.
- Experience providing help desk or technical support.
- Experience managing shared support inboxes or service requests.
- Familiarity with university systems, policies, and student populations.
Experience
Web-based applications
Career Platform Administration
User Account Management
Technical Support
Help Desk Support
Customer Service
Troubleshooting
Data Management
Process Documentation
Email & Ticket Management
Microsoft Office Suite
NIT01
Pay: $25.00 - $30.00 per hour
Application Question(s):
- Do you have experience supporting web-based applications by managing user accounts, troubleshooting access issues, and responding to customer support requests?
- Do you have at least 2 years of experience providing Help Desk, Technical Support, or Application Support for web-based platforms?
- Have you worked with a career services platform, Applicant Tracking
System (ATS), CRM, or similar web-based application (e.g., Handshake, Workday, Salesforce, SuccessFactors, Taleo)?
- Do you have experience managing user accounts, permissions, and access requests while maintaining data accuracy?
- Do you have experience troubleshooting user login, account activation, and application access issues?
- Are you comfortable responding to customer support requests via email or ticketing systems while documenting and tracking issues?
- Have you handled confidential or sensitive information in a professional environment?
- Are you proficient in Microsoft Office Suite, particularly Excel, Outlook, and Word?
- This position requires working up to 20 hours per week and being local to the Boston area. Are you able to meet this requirement?
Experience:
- Web-based applications: 1 year (Required)
- Technical Support: 1 year (Required)
- Process Documentation: 1 year (Required)
- Email & Ticket Management: 1 year (Required)
- Troubleshooting: 1 year (Required)
- Help Desk Support: 1 year (Required)
Work Location: In person
