Getting a Part Time Job for High School Students, Part 2
When you don’t have work experience, it’s hard to know how to get a job. In part 2, Stever gives several more tips on how to pursue and land a real job.
by
Listener Andrew is a high school student who’s thinking ahead. He Tweeted, asking about finding a part-time job, which spurred a 2-part series from your Get-It-Done Guy. Check out part 1 of my /productivity/organization/getting-a-part-time-job-for-high-school-students-part-1.
Download your favorite news, podcasts, and shows free to your smartphone with Stitcher smart radio. Use promotion code done to be entered to win $1,000! Click here: https://bit.ly/hQQhiG
Today, we’re going to learn 5 more ways to boost your resume, if you’re still in school:
Tip #5: Make a Personal Connection
You’ll notice that the tactic I described in didn’t involve a resume. In a crowded job market, everyone in the world is sending out resumes. Resumes do not help you. Resumes never get a candidate hired; they do, however, disqualify some candidates. When I suggested you pound the pavement earlier, I meant it. Get out there and meet small businesspeople in person. Get out a phone book—yes, a paper phone book—and turn to a job you’re interested in. Then go through the listings and go visit each business after doing your research, and ask to speak to the owner. If one owner won’t hire you, ask if they have any advice for getting hired at the next one you visit. Keep going until one of them hires you.
This is called “showing initiative.” It’s very impressive to potential employers, and even if they don’t hire you, they’ll probably remember you. There are worse things than having a reputation as someone who shows initiative. (There are also better things, like having a pony, but that’s a different podcast.)
Tip #6: Have a Professional-Looking, Skill-Based Resume
If you’re a high school student or just starting out, no one is going to expect you to have a resume to show amazing work experience. If they ask for a resume, they want to see that you’ve made the most of what you have done, and that you can put it together to look professional.
Organize your resume into sections around skills and work qualities. Have each section list a skill set you have, and then beneath the skill set have supporting examples. One section could be “Takes initiative in overseeing complex tasks.” As supporting evidence, you could list: “Organized 10-people to plan, sell tickets, and run Halloween dance at my high school.”
Talk with your parents, teachers who know you, and friends to get their outside perspective on what qualities you can highlight.
Tip #7: Have Good Personal and Work References
If you have little work experience, references will carry a lot of weight in your job search. Find people willing to serve as personal and professional references. Ask each to write a nicely formatted, professional-looking letter that you can print and give to a prospective employer along with your resume.
Personal references are statements about you as a person. They should highlight the qualities that would make you a good employee. Ask people to be specific and provide examples with their references. “Andrew is extremely civic minded. Whenever a little old lady crosses the street by the high school, he jumps up, yells ‘I’m coming, Granny!’ and runs out to help her.” (My heart swells, just thinking about it!)
A good professional reference talks about things someone has seen you do. Actual accomplishments. “Andrew is good with animals. Last spring, he taught sign language to a dolphin.” If you’re applying to work at a pet store or at Sea World, this is a great reference. You don’t need to mention that you taught the dolphin a limerick that started, “There once was a man from Nantucket…”
Tip #8: Don’t Bring Your Parents
I know it’s very 2012 to bring your parents to a job interview (and college interview, and college move-in, and final exam, and first job interview, and first performance appraisal), but don’t. If they want to come, tell them to wait in the car. Show up, clearly in charge of yourself and your job hunt, and you’ll make a great impression of a young adult (emphasis on the adult).
Tip #9: Consider Freelancing
If you can’t find a part-time job somewhere, consider freelancing. Think of freelancing as doing chores for money, only you get paid real money, not those slave wages your parents pay. Of course, you also have to deliver a quality product, which means it’s not enough to push the dust bunnies further behind the sofa. You actually have to vacuum them up.
You can freelance by going to all your neighbors and offering to do household chores: running errands, doing yardwork, cleaning the house, fixing broken door hinges, and holding the dog’s mouth open when feeding her the de-worming pills.
But you can also freelance professional skills through Craigslist or eLance. Andrew, here, you’re already ahead of the game. You properly hyphenated “part-time” when using it as an adjective. If that wasn’t a lucky accident, you might be able to find people to pay you to do copy-editing for a newspaper, magazine, content provider, or web site. If you’re a photographer, maybe you can take pictures for people. Or develop simple web sites. Or help a small businessperson run a social media campaign.
If you call it “doing your chores,” it’s not very impressive. But if you call it “freelancing” or “entrepreneurship” and do it for people who aren’t related to you, you can put it on your resume as legitimate work experience. It also starts building a reputation for later, when you begin looking for full-time work.
The neat thing about being a high school student is that you can charge rates that would be pretty high for you, but are a good deal for small businesspeople.
I sincerely wish you the best in getting a job. Know what you want, research companies before approaching them, and always try to show how valuable you are to have around. Bring them business, pitch yourself in person, and bring a skill-based resume to show you’re professional, even if inexperienced. Line up your personal and professional references, and remember that freelancing can be as good an option as traditional employment.
I’m Stever Robbins. I help successful people build exceptional lives by helping them use entrepreneurial principles to build organizations that become forces for change in the world. If you want to know more, visit Visit Steve Robbins official website
.
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
