work hard, work smart (Internships and Summer Jobs)

Member Name: andyneil

Product:	Internships and Summer Jobs
Date:	07/02/01 (197 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: time to enjoy university during term time, boost income

Disadvantages: Planning required

Nearly every student now has to work to pay their way through university. However many still prefer to work just in the holidays, rather than a few days a week while at university. This has many obvious advantages, the main one being that it allows the full enjoyment and benefit from university without having to worry about working weekends or nights and missing social occasions or always rushing to get course work done. In order to get enough money through holiday work it is important to plan ahead, and if you are after more than just money but a CV enhancing paid internship, applications must be considered and sent even further in advance. Internships are much harder to come by, however many companies offer them and they are well worth getting. Companies like Unilever and Price Waterhouse Cooper run highly respected schemes, and it is the value of the placements that make them so sought after. Most internships are only for penultimate year students, however many penultimate year students are not thinking about careers and therefore often unaware of the opportunities available. Your university careers service will know where to look and help find a placement. At the end of the day, if a bit of planning and investigation gets you ten weeks with a real job with useful training and good pay rates, the effort has got to be worth avoiding flipping burgers for the duration of your vacation. The fact is that as more students look for work, it naturally becomes harder to find, so to get the best paid positions it is vital to not wait until returning home to start looking.

One key benefit of working during the holidays is that as well as boosting income, it can also hope to minimise, or reduce at least, expenditure. When returning home for the holidays we all tend to catch up with school friends. This normally involves costs, be it for drinks, meals or just transport. However if you do not work during the holidays you will have more free time. This lea
ds to boredom, which invariably leads to spending to alleviate it. Jobs, therefore, help both to earn money and, by filling time, help to save the money earned for next term at university. During the longer university holidays there is the perfectly normal desire to not only catch up with old friends, but also to maintain regular contact with new friends, who may live at the other end of the country. This is especially pertinent if one has embarked on a new relationship while at university, as keeping the relationship going and missing each other means keeping in touch is very important. Absence may make the heart go stronger, but it also brings big phone bills and, depending on distance, large train fares for weekend visits. There are no easy solutions to this, and isolation from everyone until next term is not recommended. What is important is, when working out how much you need to earn for the next year at university, factor in the amount you are likely to spend before going back as well.

Agencies provide work for a lot of students during the holidays, but, as with everything else, there is only a limited amount of work to go round, and a lot of students using agencies to find it. During a typical summer agencies are inundated with work requests from students doing A-levels, those who have completed A-levels, university students and then graduates who have yet to find work. All these candidates are of very similar skill level and, unless you have a fast typing speed or vast computer experience over a range of software, it is hard to stand out. This is where, again, forward planning comes in. I would advise registering with an agency (or preferably several) a few weeks before returning home. If they insist on an interview, at least e-mail them your CV so they know who you are and can get any references they want before you return. For references it is well worth asking a tutor you get on with if they will provide one. The agency can then cont
act your tutor by e-mail and a reference can be quickly provided. Incidentally, it is worth showing your referee your CV, so they know a bit more about you when providing a reference. A friend of mine went to register for an agency in Sheffield about a month before she wanted to start work. She was told to come back about two weeks before she wanted to start and they would register her then. Due to university arrangements she could not return for three weeks (although she would still have been able to start work a week later) and when she did so she was told that they would not register her as they now had too many students on their books. This is why it is better to register with more than one agency, but also to be forceful (but not rude) as once registered and having provided the date you can start work, they can list you for suitable jobs, try not to be fobbed off.

We all have to work to get through university; it’s a fact of life. Even with the most generous parents in the world, and an understanding bank manager, the truth is students need more money and the government now thinks we should work for it. To avoid working for minimum wage with rubbish conditions the only advice is to plan ahead. Get your parents to send you up local papers just before the end of term, so you can be the first to apply for good jobs, look early for internships and register with agencies. You only need one job, but it is worth a bit of effort to make it a good one. My friend spent three months fruit packing for little money and no job satisfaction and wished she had prepared earlier. Don’t get home to find all the good jobs gone, or else the summer is torture, not a break form university.

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