Is offering jobs to students I'm teaching as a "representative of industry" OK? I have a simple question to which I was unable to find a simple answer. I was hired by a university as a &quot;representative of industry&quot; to deliver some courses. In my groups I have several promising students to whom I would like to offer a job after the course ends.
I think this would be OK from students' point of view (the job comes to them, instead of requiring them to spend time in job fairs etc). I think this would also be great from a company's point of view (they can get a student whose abilities and skills they can be reasonably confident in). However, this looks almost too good to be true and I have a feeling that there's some conflict of interest here.
Is such an arrangement common (i.e., hiring your students) or is it inappropriate and I should avoid it?
Edit to provide more details: the students are about half-way through their degree and the summer break is slowly appearing on the horizon, so the job would be a limited-term apprenticeship while they do not have any university obligations. The country in question is Poland.
I agree completely with the others that you should check with your university and your company. Their opinions are the ones that matter. Still, it is quite possible that your institutions will not provide guidance in either direction, so I will not end the answer there.
The only conflict of interest I can see is if you are grading (or otherwise holding authority over) students while simultaneously encouraging them to apply for a job. In this case, students could feel coerced into applying for or accepting a job (or could construe this as a reason if they don't like their grade, etc.). The simplest solution would be to wait until the course ends (and some would say this is your only ethical option). But given that a successful hire is a huge win for all involved, and that hiring is often time-sensitive, you could consider other mitigations, such as having someone else from your company handle the recruitment process, and making it clear to the student that you will intentionally be kept &quot;out of the loop&quot; until the course ends. And of course, be transparent about what you are doing by proactively informing your department chair of your plans (preferably in writing).