A firmer Handshake: 'misleading' job description raises questions of how Career Services vets employers

Until November 17, when the application closed, Handshake listed a job opening for “Youth Development Technician” with the GEO Group, a private prison organization with 141 facilities worldwide.“This entry level positions monitors clients during the overnight shift in a manner that ensures their safety and security,” the listing reads. “In addition, this position assists in the management of the morning wake-up routine by directing clients in a manner that promotes their growth and development.”In November, a few students called out the listing in posts on Facebook. Now, Princeton Career Services is investigating the transparency of the GEO Group, whose job listings are banned from Princeton Handshake. Career Services sent out a notice to Handshake about the misleading listing, according to Evangeline Kubu, Interim Executive Director of Career Services.“Any position that is being misrepresented by an employer is not one that we want included in Handshake for Princeton students,” Kubu said. “In this specific instance, the employer’s job and internship postings will no longer be appearing in Princeton’s Handshake system.”Micah Herskind '19 said the post seemed "indicative of a larger problem with the University" which has not "taken steps to disentangle itself from, or communicate its disapproval of, the for-profit prison industry."Career Services does not vet based on industry. It encourages students to make decisions about the positions they apply to based on an assessment of whether their values are aligned with the organization – a process for which Career Services offers help.“In this specific instance, there may be the question of whether or not we would have vetted a particular industry based on what the employer does within the industry. Our position is to be as broad as possible with the representation of opportunities presented in the system.”More than 200,000 employers are active on Handshake, a portal used by colleges and universities across the country. In the Princeton system, more than 18,400 jobs have been posted since July 2017, which includes close to 18,000 employers across 62 industries.When an employer asks to join Princeton Handshake, they first have to agree to work within a “framework of professionally accepted recruiting, interviewing, and selection practices,” Kubu said. The framework is stipulated by the University in terms of its nondiscrimination policy, as well as a set of national college guidelines on ethics and the U.S. Department of Labor Fair Labor Standards Act for internships.Handshake also gives “trust scores” to each employer, designed to guide career centers during the process of selecting employers. The score is meant to call out employers flagged by other institutions as fraudulent. The Geo Group had a high trust score, Kubu said. It was nothing Career Services would have flagged as being problematic.After an employer is accepted by Career Services, staff look through each job listing before it goes public.“We do review every employer and every opportunity that comes into the system,” Kubu said.Kubu said Career Services is appreciative of the students who brought this to their attention so they can improve the vetting process.The GEO Group job description on Handshake was the same as the one on the company website (and the same as the listings on sites like Indeed and Monster and the salary breakdown on Glassdoor).The job listing closed Nov. 19, but it either looks like an employee hasn’t been hired for that job or it hasn’t been listed yet on the GEO Group employee page that states all filled positions by city and state.I reached out to a job recruiter at the Geo Group, but they could not speak on the record for this story.