Hatch Students connects you with university students for paid, flexible placements, with Hatch acting as the legal employer. Posting a student job is easy, all you need is a job description and we’ll do the rest.
💡A job's type is set when it's created and can't be changed afterwards. If you want to switch a standard job to a Hatch Students role (or vice versa), post a new job rather than trying to edit the existing one.
Before you start
Check your plan's hire limit — Free plans include up to 2 Hatch Students hires a year, Plus includes 10, and Enterprise is unlimited. Hires beyond your limit are billed per hire. Speak to your Hatch contact for more information.
Know your pay rate — You choose the pay rate, as long as it's at or above the relevant award rate. Use the placement calculator to get a tailored estimate before you post.
Check your job's location — If it's remote, you'll need to be careful to ensure the candidate is located in one of our licensed states. Read our article on how labour hire works for more info.
Set up your company profile — Your company profile is visible alongside your job post, so use our guide to make sure its looking perfect.
Step 1: Choose how you're hiring
From your Jobs page, click Create job. You'll be asked how you want to hire, with two options:
Standard — Permanent and contract jobs, hired directly into your team.
Hatch Students — Internships and short-term jobs, with Hatch as the legal employer.
Select Hatch Students to continue.
Step 2: Describe the role
Paste your job description and we’ll use this to generate a polished job post with relevant application questions. Include the key responsibilities, day-to-day tasks, and any required skills or experience. The more detail you give us, the more accurate the generated summary and criteria will be.
Formatting matters too: Students will see both the Hatch summary and your original description, so make sure it's accurate and well formatted (but you can always edit it later).
Step 3: Pick your job criteria
We’ll get the ball rolling by using our AI system to draft some criteria that suit your job, as well as selecting some Hatch Students criteria. These are the skills that we believe makes a student work ready, and include:
Resilience
Communication
Learning agility
Initiative
Reliability
Problem-solving
Coachability
AI fluency
Pick whichever of these matter most for the role (we recommend 2-3) and adjust your job specific criteria.
💡Tip: You can’t edit Student criteria because they are consistent across all Student jobs, so add your own criteria if you’re looking for something specific.
Step 4: Screening and application questions
Application questions
Now its time to design the application questions students will answer. If you selected Student criteria in Step 3, you’ll see corresponding application questions in this section. These questions are unique because:
Students responses are reused — once a student has answered one of these application questions, it is reused across future applications and they can save it to their profile. They can still choose to edit it.
Questions and criteria are linked — removing one removes the other, so a confirmation dialog checks you meant to.
You can't edit the wording — just like the criteria can’t be edited, the Student questions are the same across all jobs.
Below the Hatch Students card, you’ll see any company default questions and a space to add your own job specific questions.
Screening questions
Further down, every Hatch Students job includes one mandatory screening question: "Working rights in Australia." We add this question automatically and mark it as required, since Hatch is the legal employer, so we need to confirm a candidate's visa/work-rights status before they can be placed with you. You can’t edit this screening question, but you can still add your own.
💡Tip: When you set a preferred answer for a screening question, any candidate who selects something else will be told that they may not be the right fit for the job. If you don’t want this to happen, just make all of the options “preferred”.
Step 5: Post the job
Your last step before making your job live is confirming the job details, including:
Contract length
Hours per week
Remote setup
Location
Pay rate
Because Hatch uses a labour hire system, getting these details right is really important. You can use our pricing calculator to understand your job’s specific pay rate and the other fees that go into your final invoice.
Once you’re happy, just post the job.
Step 6: Review your candidates
Reviewing candidates for a Hatch Students job works mostly the same as a standard job, with a few differences:
See their other Hatch Students answers — opening a candidate's profile shows their answers to other Hatch Students questions, not just the ones you asked for this job.
Questions are scored — each Hatch Students question comes with a score and a detailed breakdown on what they did well and what could be improved.
Filter by university — you can filter your candidate list by university.
If you’ve found someone who is a good fit, shortlist them and use Hatch’s chat feature to organise a time for an interview.
What happens next: making an offer
Found the right candidate? Send them an offer straight from their application.
Send the offer
On the candidate's application, click Send offer. You’ll then be asked for confirm some of the placement terms including their hourly pay rate and your billing information. Reach out to your Hatch contact if you’re unsure about any section.
When the candidate receives the placement offer, there’ll be a short message from your team congratulating them. We’ve pre-filled this for you but you can edit it to suit the specific job and candidate.
Once you’ve selected a pay rate, you’ll see an estimate of your fees. This contains the candidate’s pay as well as their superannuation, payroll tax, workers compensation insurance, and Hatch’s margin. If you’re unclear about any of these fees, read our pricing breakdown or reach out to your Hatch contact.
⚠️Double check where your hire will be working — Hatch doesn’t have a license for the ACT, so if your candidate is located in the ACT or internationally, you cannot send them the offer.
After you send it
The candidate needs to accept before the placement is confirmed. You'll see their application status update as they respond:
Offer received — sent, waiting on the candidate
Offer accepted — they're in; onboarding starts next
Offer declined — they've turned it down
Once a candidate accepts, Hatch takes care of onboarding, contracts, and payroll from there. See: