Christopher Bennett

Finance Associate

Department of Art & Art History

Christopher Bennett’s career at Stanford began in April 2014 as a temp working in the Student Housing Assignments Office. He went on to hold several other temporary positions on campus before being hired full time as a finance associate in the Department of Art & Art History.

Christopher praises the recruiters at Stanford Staffing Services with helping him land a new job every time one of his contracts expired.

“I was exposed to a little of everything,” he says. “I am grateful to the temp staffing services at Stanford for providing me with opportunities to experience different areas of campus.”

Christopher’s tenacious job hunting techniques also played a big role in his success. He applied to many open jobs at Stanford and worked with five different campus recruiters during the year he was a temporary employee.

The STARS training courses helped him learn the basics of each new job he took, but the mentors he found on campus were instrumental for him to get the finance position he has today.

Christopher gives credit to a colleague who sums up the work culture at Stanford this way: “If you make a mistake, or you suggest something and try it out and it doesn’t work, that’s fine. You now have new data that shows your assumption does not work and you can then make new assumptions to test them out.”

Christopher is already putting that theory to the test. He’s about to implement a new process for faculty to submit expenses with the goal of reducing the transaction processing time.

And that’s not all. He helps his friends fine tune their resumes and cover letters, so that they may possibly also have the rewarding experience of working at Stanford.