Wanna Get a Summer Job?
12 Creative Ways to Find a Summer Job
Now that school is winding down, a lot of students are looking for summer jobs. You want to find the best job possible – one in your field of interest, that pays well, and gives you a ton of relevant experience... but how?You're young, creative, willing to do pretty much anything they ask, so why is it so tough to find a job? And what can you do to rise above the rest?Here's my own secret list of creative job hunting techniques to help you with your search.
- Scripted.com Register as a Writer and get paid to write blogs, run social media, and create content for websites.
- Youtern.com and Springtern.com – Sign up for these two newsletters and try doing an Online Internship this summer. You’ll get experience to pad your resume, and you can do it from home.
- Fiverr.com Can you sing? Tweet? Speak a foreign language? Get paid $5 for any small service. Do it as often as you want all summer!
- StudentCompetitions.com – You know that "5,000 words done and 8 hours of my life I'll never get back" feeling? How about turning that essay into cash? This site has competitions from around the world for pretty much every subject -- including photography -- with BIG prizes like $2000 or a trip to Europe!
- Nanny/Babysitter – If you’re good with kids and wouldn’t mind spending your summer playing in a sandbox, put up colourful posters at local community centres. Bonus if you choose one in a different neighbourhood than your own.
- Tutoring - Parents these days are OBSESSED with keeping their kids’ brains active over the summer. Start scouting now at schools and community centres in your hometown to see if they need summer counselors or tutors.
- Queen's Career Centre – I love the Career Centre. They are honestly the nicest people in the world. Every day from 1:30-4:30pm there's no-appointment-necessary drop-in advising hours. No question is dumb. Do it. Seriously. And tell them I said hi.
- Queen's Alumni Association - Summer is a great time to find a mentor. Get in touch with a Queen's Alumni branch closest to you and ask to be connected to an alum in your field of interest. The person you meet might even be looking for an assistant, or know someone who is!
- VIA Strengths Inventory – Are you having a hard time coming up with transferable skills from student-life to job-life (ability to pull all-nighters = ...dependable?) Take this free Character Strengths test online. It really helps you discover which jobs you’d be best at AND what buzzwords to say in your interviews!
- Twitter –If you’re not tweeting yet, sign-up. Last summer, I was bumming around with no job, and then I saw it: "Downtown Toronto Social Media Marketing Internship, Apply Now." Click. Interview. And I got the job! Mind you it was a non-paid internship, but it got me off my butt and into an office every day gaining experience that I wouldn't otherwise have.
- LinkedIn – Join groups that match your major/interests and message the people in that group who are doing the job you want. Ask them 1) how they got started and 2) the type of work they do — this is a great way to put yourself on their radar, plus gain insights into the industry you might want to work at when you graduate!
Finally, don’t feel like you’re “too good” for certain jobs. I worked at McDonald’s during the summer after my 2nd year, while my friends were getting paid to be on Facebook all day at their government jobs. It’s actually a challenging job to assemble orders in less than a minute. Plus, employers respect that I got my hands dirty at the most well-known corporation in the world. Start at the bottom and remember how much you want that paycheck!Hope this helps and Good Luck!Yours Creatively,Sarah Witiuk, Arts & Science '13Image: Success
