After a year of hard work, many students see the summer as an opportunity to relax, lay by the pool, and soak in the sunshine. However, some others see it as a time to enshrine themselves in more work. Summer jobs are extremely common with teens 16 and over, with 36.6% teens working for part of the summer, according to Fortune.com. But why do students choose to work over the summer? Money, structure, and fun are all major factors.
Many students choose to work for the money while others work to gauge their interest in a field before college. Jobs also look good on college applications, especially when they relate to the field you are intending to study, which according to Agnes Knott, the college and career counselor, is a primary benefit in applications.
“I definitely think that there’s benefits for having a job and being able to put that as part of your college application. So a couple of the benefits, first of all, one part of the college application asks you to include your extracurricular activities and so includes anything that you’ve done in school, outside of school,” Knott said.
For underclassmen hoping to get an early start, however, finding a job may be a struggle, with many only hiring over 16 or over 18; but with online resources that assist with the hiring process like Indeed, this obstacle can be overcome. Kayla Jakubowski, sophomore, shared her experience with applying for several jobs.
“I probably applied for 150 jobs, something like that, a bunch every day, you just gotta keep applying. You just gotta keep finding places. You can go into places and get paper applications.” Jakubowski said.
Finding jobs without previous experience in a field poses a difficult challenge for many teens and makes the application process much more difficult. However there are jobs that will hire teenagers. Most jobs will only hire 16 and up, but some local jobs will hire younger teenagers. Retail and food service jobs often hire teenagers and help them garner skills to use in the future. “Couple different avenues that we have right here at school. You know, there’s school links, which is our college and career planning system, where sometimes opportunities and jobs are listed in there, I think often for students living in Lake Zurich or Barrington, or any of the surrounding suburbs looking like the park district. District, or reaching out to people that you know, in the area. A lot of times you can find local jobs that way.” Knott said.
Many times students can struggle to find jobs that relate to their future career and end up at a food or retail business. Places such as TJ Max of many fast food restaurants hire at 16 and allow teens to garner important social skills and career oriented skills when working with customers. While these starter jobs may not be aspirational for students, jobs such as these help build future job applications after college with the skills you learned from these retail or food service jobs.
“You may ultimately not want that [job] to be your end goal, but you’re learning a lot of things. You’re making money. You might be working with other young people. You’re learning how to manage a job and responsibilities.” Knott said.
Having a job can pose a variety of challenges in a student’s life. During the school year, managing school, work and personal life can become a big challenge.
“It can get hard, like, if you have a job and you’re behind on schoolwork, or you have a big workload, like you’re in a lot of advanced classes” Jakubowski said.
Summer jobs are different however. Because students don’t have school over the summer they have access to many new jobs or new hours they couldn’t work over the summer. This gives the ability to structure your own summer around the hours provided and a new responsibility with planning and keeping the time for a social life and personal life outside of work. Summer jobs can overall be a very beneficial thing for students to do and should be highly encouraged to help learn new important skills and lessons that will help later on. Persevering through the hiring process is frustrating when applying but extremely rewarding for many when its over and accustom to the new job.
“It’s also a really great feeling as a young person, to have your own money and to be able to manage your own money. I think that kind of gives you a sense of freedom, a sense of independence” Knott said.
