The Summer Job Hunt: What To Do If You Are Unsuccessful
BY DANIELLE LORENZ, MACINSIDERS
What do you do if no one wants to hire you? Give up and take up photography! All you need is a camera and the great outdoors, and nature is more or less free. If you get good enough
at it, it can really pay off. Look at William Wegman. He just took pictures of his dog, and he's world famous because of it. Okay, I’m kidding. But this was the only way I could justify using this picture. And I don’t have anything that’s related to the subject. Sorry for this little interruption...the main text of the article is below...
Unfortunately, sometimes finding a job in the summer can be really tough. Oftentimes a lot of the issues surrounding employment have to do with location, but sometimes problems occur with previous experience, academic program and salary which prevent you from becoming employed.
I live/used to live/my home town is a village of 2700 people. Any towns larger than 10 000 are at least twenty minutes away. Needless to say, finding a job in a place like that can be very hard, as there is a limited amount of positions available for students. To make it worse, many of the available jobs hire the same people year after year, and many of those people have some kind of connection. Not having connections, there was a summer where I could not find work close to home. I of course mean getting paid over minimum wage. I found a job within walking distance that paid $7.50 an hour (which was minimum wage at the time), but I thought I could do better than that. It turns out that was it for where I lived (oops). I did find a few jobs that were an hour commute (one was almost two), but by the time I factored in how much I would pay with gas and parking, I would be making less than $100 a week. It simply wasn’t worth it. I also refused to give up free room and board as well as air conditioning, thus preventing me from finding work in Hamilton. So, by the middle of May I ended up giving up on finding a job.
Being well, me, and having the parents I do, I wasn’t allowed to sit on my butt and do nothing (the last time I did that was the summer between grades eight and nine). I did some tasks for my parents that they didn’t have time to do (organize over twenty years of photos into albums among others), as well as standard house and yard maintenance, but I still ended up being kind of bored. I didn’t want to take summer school classes, because that would make me a part-time student for the following school year. So I decided to do some volunteer work.
All potential employers see volunteer work in a favourable light. It shows you are willing to sacrifice getting paid in order to help others. In addition, volunteering can allow you to gain valuable skills that you may not be able to learn otherwise. This is especially true if you have never worked before: you can learn how to interact with others, communicate better, take direction, and other position-specific tasks. McMaster offers some volunteer positions during the summer as well. Most are related to facilitating the incoming first years’ transitions into life at Mac. Keep your eyes and ears open, as there are opportunities from May until August.
You can do something that many others do, or have done, or you could do something completely uncommon. There are endless possibilities for volunteering, no matter where you live. Some of them even take you away from where you live. You can even volunteer abroad, as many humanitarian organizations do work in developing countries and need lots of help. Two good websites to check out are
Volunteer Today and
Real Gap. You can find all kinds of stuff when searching on Google as well.
My other suggestion for you on the job front is to keep trying. Sometimes positions open up for the last two months of summer. And don’t be an idiot like me and refuse minimum wage. It is better than nothing, and you can always apply at other places and hopefully find something else. You can also take summer school, as I had mentioned. Taking four classes a term really decreases the amount of work you have during the year. This is extremely beneficial for your final year, as it can be incredibly hell-ish. In addition, you may also have time to devote to a part-time job during the year, so you can make up for the funds you missed during the summer.
As for what happened to me that summer...My part-time job for the following year allowed me to actually train early, so I was able to work a little bit starting in August. And the volunteer position I had actually helped me get a volunteer job for during the school year, which ultimately lead to the job I have for this summer. Which will lead to more camera stuff, which unfortunately is VERY expensive. *sigh*
