By Jennifer Pagliaro | May 6th, 2010 | 1:16 pm
Macleans OnCampus

With stiff competition for school related work, many students are forced to look elsewhere to pay the bills

At the start of her summer, Rebecca Eves packed up her white pickup truck with all her belongings and drove west from Ottawa, where she’s studying restaurant and hotel management at Algonquin College, to Red Lake, Ontario. Every student is looking for the perfect summer job, and for Eves, it means living in a bunkhouse, eating out of a pack and fighting forest fires.

While experts predict the recession is turning around, students continue to think outside the box on how to land their idea of the perfect summer job. Despite the appeal of desk chairs and business suits, some students are donning overalls and aprons and getting their hands dirty, literally.

Eves said she chose to fight fires with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources for the unique experience, even though it has nothing to do with her field of study. “I thrive off that feeling of satisfaction from being sore and dirty from working hard outside all day,” she said via text message from her remote base in Red Lake.

With the labour market lacking entry-level summer positions, many students are scrambling to find summer jobs related to their field of study.

Matt Wood, the executive director for the Ontario Association of Youth Employment Centres said the reality is students are searching longer and harder for career-related work. “I think with the recession in particular, but as is always the case, students are realizing that the labour market is more competitive and that they have to put some notches in their belt in career related jobs if they’re going to pursue their own vision for what their career is,” Wood said.

Wood said the transition between students graduating and landing a full-time job in their field is getting longer. While it doesn’t mean some students aren’t able to jump into their careers shortly after graduation, in the post-recession world Wood estimates for that making the leap into the career students have been preparing could be as long as 10 years. And, he said, post-recession, once coveted internships are increasingly lower paid or unpaid.

According to Statistics Canada, the unemployment rate of full-time Canadian students between the ages of 15 and 24-years-old ranged from 16.4 per cent in August 2009 to 21.1 per cent in May 2009. That rate increased significantly from the pre-recession data from 2008, which ranged from 11.4 per cent to 17.1 per cent.

With that in mind, Wood said students should expect, not only during the transition, but also during the summers ahead to explore all kinds of job options. “Everyone’s trying to get by until everything clicks,” he said. “They have to see that 10 year transition as an adventure.” For some students, summer means just that — a chance to pack away the pens and notebooks and look for a change of scenery. While many student jobs may not be career-advancing, Wood said these “McJobs” still pay the bills.

The Manitoba Conservation Fire Program also hires seasonal employees to man four to five member attack crews, similar to how Eves will spend her summer. Crews are dropped off by helicopter in a remote region suffering from wild or human-caused fires.

Fire Control Officer Jim Martinuk said students who fight with their crews find the job both “arduous” and “challenging.” Crews can expect to be on location for at least three days, he said. But in some cases the job can exceed two weeks. First-time students are provided with extensive fire and safety training before being sent to their first fire, and are required to pass a fitness test and have their First Aid and CPR certification.

Students are perfect candidates for fighting fires because they spend the school year retaining lots of important information in a short period of time. “Usually university students are more apt to pick up on the training, because they’re in that environment of learning. They adapt very well to picking up new skills.”

Students can also expect to make a decent chunk of cash. The program pays just over $16 per hour, plus several benefits such as weekend premiums, overtime pay and an allowance while on remote location.

Fighting fires isn’t the only forest-related work that tends to draw in students every summer. Tree planting across the country has been a popular student option for years. Those looking to get a tan, but avoid the beach, will find outdoor work and a decent income working for established companies such as Brinkman & Associates Reforestation Ltd. “We’re actually turning a lot of people away right now,” operations manager and coast coordinator Timo Scheiber said. The biggest draw he said simply is: “It’s fun.”

Scheiber said students can expect to make an average of $150 per day their first summer, at five cents to just over twenty cents per tree planted depending on the area. Staying in a remote location where financial pressures like rent, food and entertainment are non-existent, students can put their money in the bank for upcoming school year.

But beyond financial concerns, Scheiber said students learn valuable life skills on the job that are sure to impress future employers. “From a company perspective, when you’re hiring people to work in your organization, what you can’t quantify is their character. It’s the extras that make the difference,” he said

Moving across the country to work in the bush is not the only option for skill-building summer jobs. Often students choose to stay closer to home and work as summer camp counsellors, lifeguards, tutors, landscapers and a whole host of other positions.

OAYEC’s Wood said there are also opportunities for students to learn entrepreneurial skills in the summer by running their own businesses. Student Works, which operates in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes, has students form crews of painters, including a student crew chief, who contract and complete their own jobs under the banner of the trusted company name.

These types of jobs force students to develop problem-solving skills and marketing knowledge in a real work environment, while making some money.

Last summer, Matt Scriven, a 19-year-old Carleton University student, created job search site Studentopolis.ca to help students find work. The site currently hosts nearly 70,000 listings. He said while some students are focused on finding a career job, some students are less concerned with finding a job in their field. “I think the main thing for students is to find something fun and interesting, but also to make some money,” Scriven said.

Scriven said his site has lots of postings for typical students job opportunities like cooking, and labourer positions.

Students, he said, are often looking for work close to where they’ll be staying for the summer, which is why his site features an embedded Google Map for students to find jobs in their area. “Everyone’s strategy is a little different,” he said. While some aspire to their career dream jobs, some just look to get by for the summer, he said. “There are lots of jobs out there. It’s just a matter of what they want.”

Kids learn things from summer jobs that they’ll never learn from their parents

Judith Timson, The Globe and Mail

What’s the first real sign of spring? A robin warbling? New buds on the trees?

What about a determinedly chipper voice mail from “Joshua” or “Megan” or, in my case the other day, Ashley, from a student painting firm? She was my first student cold caller of the season, alerting me that if I wanted to beat the HST, I should schedule an estimate right away.

Yes, it’s almost the season for student summer jobs – not just their economic necessity, but their power to transform, to inspire, to teach kids things about work that they won’t learn from their parents because parents just don’t have that kind of sway.

Summer jobs not only keep kids in college and university; they are the universal portal to a lifetime of work habits, introducing even the most affluent kids to long, confusing days, workplace politics, psycho bosses and the skills needed to survive all three – enthusiasm, punctuality and resilience being primary among them.

If they don’t learn these lessons now, we will end up with an abysmal work force.

Unfortunately, the student summer job landscape has changed dramatically for the worse. There’s the entrenchment of unpaid internships, especially in the cultural sector. These internships penalize talented students who simply cannot afford to work for free in their “dream” job environment – and they exploit the privileged kids who can.

Then there’s the recession and its aftermath. Last summer, student unemployment hit 20 per cent, the highest since Statistics Canada started tracking it in 1977.

Predictions for this summer’s job market vary from abject negativity to a sunnier outlook, such as the one held by Matt Scriven, an enterprising 19-year-old Carleton University student who last year started Studentopolis.ca. His website, devoted exclusively to students, garners 1,200 visitors a day (including prospective employers) and features a map where you can click on a location and find nearby job openings .

“I’m really optimistic my peers will be able to find work this summer,” said Mr. Scriven, who studies mass media and Web design. He found a job last summer on his own website.

What lifelong lessons does he think students take away from summer employment?

“In school, you are mainly with people just like you,” he said. “In a summer job you’re around other types of people, regular people.”

I’ll say. You’re also around unrelated adults who don’t cut you a break if you’re late (I know several students who, to their shock, were fired for failing to arrive on time) and who are definitely not chirping “good for you!” every time you finish a task.

It doesn’t really matter what kids do for summer employment. Even the most menial jobs can be important if students work for and with people who care about the quality of work being done.

No matter how many years we’ve been working, we all retain vivid memories of our summer jobs. There were sweet deals – lifeguarding at a ritzy club. Hideous mistakes – painting house exteriors for a boss who had never heard of workplace safety. Dreary endurance tests – totting up columns of numbers at a cubicle farm run by your father’s best friend. And eye openers – so that’s what will happen to me if I don’t finish my degree.

My own summer jobs taught me street smarts (running a day camp in a tough neighbourhood), how to deal with sexual harassment before there were laws against it (an Ontario newspaper littered with creepy male bosses), and how to achieve a balance between being ambitious and being, well, a jerk. Most importantly, I found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

Today, when I watch students – many of them more accomplished and poised than I was at their age – navigate summer jobs, I am struck by the poignancy of the process. They will savour forever the day that bold idea they dreamed up made their boss’s eyes light up, and they will wince years later when they remember their first major screw-up.

A charismatic student I hired lost his way spectacularly last summer. Not only did his window-washing crew leave many of our windows unwashed, but he “forgot” to invoice me for six months. The searing talk about professionalism we had on the phone will, I am hopeful, stay with him.

They call this the pampered and catered generation, but there’s another side to the story: Teens and twentysomethings have been force-fed the idea that they have to be successful – to the point where they have a generalized panic about failure.

In the past few years, they’ve also been saturated with the kind of grim economic forecasts that make even the hardiest among us want to cower in our beds each morning.

However, there’s nothing like the daily grittiness of an ordinary job to put success and failure into perspective. Because on any job, success and failure happen constantly, sometimes minutes apart. And that knowledge changes your working life. But first you have to get that job.

Hire a student this summer if you can.

Our housing section sure has taken off since it’s launch in September.  There are now several times more housing listings than ever before.  Coming this spring, don’t worry about hunting all over the place for somewhere to live.. come check out our Student Housing listings – you are almost certain to find something near your university or college.

We are also planning on sending out a newsletter to our students, employers, and landlords in the spring to detail some of the changes we’ve made.  Some potential for features in the future include job suggestions based on user activity.  Basically, interest categories will be assigned to specific users based on website activity.  Then, when they are logged in to their user account, suggestions will appear to highlight jobs they may be interested in.  We think this will improve the interface and ultimately assist users in finding what they are looking for.

Another idea is to add “Landlord pages” similar to how we currently have “Employer pages”.  These will essentially be pages dedicated to companies or individuals who post multiple housing listings with their contact information and active listings.  These pages serve as a basic online marketing presence for these companies or individuals and help represent their listings.

Studentopolis.ca has launched a new section on the website for student housing. Browsing the listings is similar to the familiar, existing interface.  Listings include property description, rent, rental size, and all applicable features.  Of course, all listings are search-able by location and by keywords in the same way jobs are now search-able.

Landlords can now post student housing listings in the housing section of Studentopolis.ca, giving them high exposure to a pre-existing and highly used student website.

We hope this new section proves to be as successful and useful to our users as the original jobs section is.  Studentopolis.ca is entirely student-run and our goal is to help other students.

Studentopolis.ca is constantly adding new features to our website to make it easier for students to find services they need. We recently added an advanced search function which makes it easier to narrow down job listings in your area.

Planned for the future, we are currently working on a housing section of our website where landlords can post housing listings.  We hope to be able to provide a “one stop” place in the future to make student life easier.

Studentopolis’ Matt Scriven, was on CBC Radio Ottawa in August for an interview.  Click below for clip:

http://studentopolis.ca/promote/cbc-ottawa.mp3

This file should open in your default media player.  If you have trouble opening this file, try downloading Apple Quicktime.

By Lauren La Rose (CP) – August 16, 2009

TORONTO — With summer jobs in short supply, many university and college students now face the prospect of trying to get through the school year on less money or looking for other sources of cash.

So it may not be surprising that along with the spike in the jobless rate, there’s been a corresponding rise in traffic to websites offering information on scholarships and bursaries.

At Studentawards.com, a free scholarship search service, the cumulative increase in registration was 15 per cent in July compared to last year, said Suzanne Tyson, president of Studentawards Inc., the company behind the website.

Parents’ RRSPs and the education savings plans they set up for their children have probably taken a hit amid the economic turmoil of the last year, she noted.

“(Parents) may be losing their jobs and their children aren’t finding jobs, it is leading us to believe that this fall will be difficult financially for a number of students,” she said.

The student unemployment rate was 20.9 per cent in July, according to Statistics Canada.

Matt Scriven is one of the lucky ones.

The 19-year-old was able to find work this summer, but says one of his friends in Vancouver handed out between 30 and 40 resumes and received one or two calls – and didn’t get a job. Another friend in Ottawa handed out 20 or 30 resumes, and got a job that gave him five to 10 hours a week – not really enough to help with his expenses in the coming school year, he said.

Scriven found his own eventual job as web designer for the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association through a listing at Studentopolis.ca – the student jobs website he founded.

The Carleton University student started developing his website after speaking with a friend who said he wasn’t able to find an easy source to access student job listings online.

“A lot of adult workers were laid off their other jobs and now people will do pretty much any job to try and supplement their income because they’ve got families and such, so a lot of students are displaced from positions that they would otherwise have,” Scriven said from Ottawa.

Bursaries and scholarships could potentially help to ease the blow to their bank balances.

Chris Wilkins, president and CEO of EDge Interactive, the company behind ScholarshipsCanada.com, said there has been a 10 per cent increase in web traffic to the site. Registrations and page views are also up.

Both Tyson and Wilkins said there hasn’t been any sign of decreases in the number of financial awards being posted.

In fact, Wilkins said the company has been working with a few individuals new to the scholarship business who have money available and want to help specific groups of students pursuing business-related programs.

“The great thing about scholarships is that it’s full of niche awards,” he said. “There are a lot of high-profile awards, but there are many more niche awards, and those niche awards sometimes can make a big difference, especially if you get two or three of them.”

Tyson said despite the existing awards available, there could always be more funds and there are gaps in the marketplace.

“Now that mature students are going back to school because they’ve lost their jobs, there are fewer scholarships available for them than for students that are coming straight out of high school going to university.”

Post-secondary institutions are also taking extra measures to help ensure cash-strapped students aren’t left high and dry.

The number of students applying for entrance need-based awards to Dalhousie University increased by 62 per cent, said Pamela Swinimer, assistant registrar, financial aid at the Halifax university.

Swinimer said the school’s president has said he will make up any kind of shortfall in their endowment for scholarships and bursaries.

“We have been told that we will be able to spend as we have in our past year.”

There is also an in-course bursary program that will begin in September where Swinimer said she is expecting to see what the real effect of lack of summer employment or parental assistance will be on student finances.

“I certainly have chatted with a few students who have run into those situations, and we’ll have to look at that individually and try and do what we can to come alongside and assist.”

Ryerson University in Toronto made the decision to allocate $800,000 in its 2009-10 budget to ensure money for students on bursaries would continue to flow. Ryerson president Sheldon Levy said a proposal is being taken to the school’s board to further increase bursaries by $500,000.

The university has also received a $1-million gift from The Birchall Family Foundation specifically to establish student bursaries.

The bursaries, designated for 75 first-year students this September, include 50 valued at $2,500 each, 25 at $5,000, and will be renewable for four years.

“My bet is that every university and college that’s out there is trying to do their best for their students,” said Levy.

On The Net:

ScholarshipsCanada.com : www.scholarshipsCanada.com
Studentawards.com www.studentawards.com
Studentopolis : www.studentopolis.ca

Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Ya, ok, so you played in a soccer league when you were twelve years old.  And you were in piano lessons until you were ten.  Unfortunately, these sorts of life details don’t really contribute much to the resume.  What your future employer is looking for is the more relevant details: specifically, the kinds of things that are going to distinguish you from the average Joe/Jill.  That is, things which make you stand out in the crowd.

1.  Volunteer Work.

Have you spent the last three years working in a Soup Kitchen serving the homeless?  Do you spend your weekend afternoons playing music for seniors in a retirement home?  Do you participate in the annual cancer run for the cure each year?  Volunteer work plays a crucial role in shaping what type of person your potential employer will view you as: if you have lot sof relevant volunteer experience, then you demonstrate a commitment to contributing to a better community for those around you without any monetary gain involved.  This is especially important, considering an employer will always look to avoid hiring those that seem interested only in “collecting a paycheck.”  So all those little detailed volunteering activities you’ve done over the years, put them in!  They’re valuable!

2.  Employment Experience.

If you’ve worked in restaurants before, and you’re applying for a job working with food, (in any capacity) put your previous restaurant experience in your resume!  Regardless of in what capacity you worked with food, your potential employer will be interested in all of the transferrable skills that you may be able to bring to this new job: you will understand what it means to work in a fast-paced environment, what it is like to work alongside others in close quarters under stressful situations, and what it is like to experience unsatisfied customers on a routine basis and how to deal with this.  Kitchens, or food-oriented customer service jobs can be some of the most stressful environments out there — if you’ve worked in one before, your employer will certainly know the value in this kind of job experience.  The same kind of thing goes for a job in retail work.  Serving the public, in these capacities, is no easy feat — and don’t worry, you’re employer knows this!

3.  Special Skills.

Can you speak another language?  Do you play an instrument?  Do you have experience working with seniors?  These kind of details are especially crucial, and, if you so desire, can be bolded in your resume.  Your employer will want to know if you speak another language, or if you play an instrument, etc, more so if it is relevant to the job you are applying for.  For instance, you are not going to stress your experience working in kitchens if you are applying to work in a retirement home.  Similarly, you are not going to emphasize your experience working with children if you are applying to work at a golf course.  If you’re experience with part-time jobs is limited, then of course you are limited in that you can only draw from the minimal job experience you have accumulated — in which case, you would want to stress the transferrable skills you gained from that job.  As any job carries with it a certain amount of transferrable skills.  For instance, most jobs require employees to be patient, hard-working and able to work in stressful conditions.  These kind of employee traits are generally needed in many job positions and companies.

4.  Training.

Have you been trained in WHIMS four times?  Did you receive special training in Health and Safety?  Have you obtained your First Aid and CPR, or your Safe Food Handling Level 1?  Depending on the job you are applying for, any relevant training you have gained over the years will be of interest to your employer undoubtedly.  It is worth including all relevant training you have received, as much of this training could potentially be needed in other job positions which you are not aware of.  Again, an individual who has received various types of employee training stands out in a crowd, as an individual that is more than just the average person off the street looking for a job.

-Written By Student Legacy.

(Original Article: http://studentlegacy.com/building-the-perfect-resume/)

For Immediate Release

TORONTO-August, 2009 –  As the dog days of summer are rapidly approaching, students continue to be challenged in trying to find employment in order to pay for their schooling, books and expenses that will soon arrive in September.

“This has been a dreadful year for employment no matter what age you are,” said Matt Scriven, founder of Studentopolis.ca.

Students are often the first to feel the impact of the employment crunch. As older workers search for “anything” to pay the bills, they are willing to take jobs that would normally be filled by students.

With over two million students looking for part time and summer employment, Matt decided he needed to do something to assist his fellow students while pursuing his post secondary education at Carleton University; he launched Studentopolis.ca mid April.

To date, with over 20,000 listings and 9,000 employers listed on the site, there is something for everyone across Canada. Therefore, if being a fish fillet chopper in Halifax, a cheese maker in Gatineau or a museum and art Gallery picture framer in Calgary interests you, then this is the site for you.

Students can post their resumes to the site for employers to view and they can give their feedback. Employers can post their jobs free and they can post co-op positions and volunteer opportunities. In Ontario, students must complete 40 hours of volunteer work before they are able to graduate.

Proudly, Studentopolis is a Canadian website addressing the needs of the Canadian students.

For more info: visit www.studentopolis.ca or www.solidit.ca

-30-

To arrange for an interview, please contact

Colleen Swider,
Direct:  (705) 358-2006
Email: cswider@bellnet.ca