<p>Wonderful! And best of all, perhaps his initiative THIS summer will pay off for him next summer or even at the holidays if he should want to go back to the same store - you never know what each summer will bring - if he does a good job, they likely will be happy to take him back.</p>
<p>Miller514 and Percussiandad - so happy to hear your good news. You both should be very proud of your kids. Those are both great stories with life lessons which will help them in the future.</p>
<p>So nice to hear some happy stories!</p>
<p>percussiondad, great to hear about your daughter…not only was she in the right place at the right time doing the right thing, she was also prepared by having a resume on hand. Well done on her part.</p>
<p>Great success stories!!!</p>
<p>Our S has been looking since he got home in early May, had a few “interviews” but nothing yet. Not giving up entirely but the chances are getting pretty slim. Unfortunately we don’t have any connections to help him out. Sure is a lot different than when I was college age.</p>
<p>After applying to 25+ jobs when she was home for March break and not receiving so much as a phone call from any of those applications, D1 has finally found a part-time job at a retail chain that our own relatives and many of her friends have turned their nose up at and even mocked her for. </p>
<p>Their reaction puts things into perspective. I am now more happy and proud that she’s mature enough to value any opportunity given to her than the fact that she even got a job at all! Thank you to those on this thread that also continued persisting and found success, you helped us keep our fingers crossed.</p>
<p>Congrats…one of my daughters took a 2 wk tutoring job with a group that tutors grades 1-8, but funding wasn’t great so they couldn’t extend it beyond that.
She is looking everywhere, from Froyo to stores to restaurants Most students I know that have them locally work all year or at least on breaks…but she’s still trying. Any job is a good job. We don’t know anyone close enough to ask, but I remember 35 years ago, that is how I got my first 2 jobs. It does help to know someone at any age.
I saw an ad in our church bulletin for volunteers for office work, isn’t paid, but she can get experience in that field that she didn’t have before, better than doing nothing and she tries to vary the volunteering to learn new things.</p>
<p>Time for me to chime in, and apologize to anyone who read some posts I made in May regarding summer jobs. (I think it was on another thread, not this one. I was SURE there were summer jobs, if only a kid would keep looking.)</p>
<p>It is a harsh world out there! Things have changed, even since last year. Oh, there are jobs, but ones we didn’t let our kid take:</p>
<ol>
<li>Pizza delivery, supply your own car (his is a gas guzzling old SUV)
2.Sales, commission only</li>
<li>Lots of jobs at the shore, but it would require paying for an apartment with a bunch of other college kids, paying for food, etc, and not really making any money. It is for the experience only, which many families look at as a right of passage, but I believe is just one long “senior beach week”, and not worth the many possible negative outcomes.</li>
</ol>
<p>My kids have scrabbled together a pretty great summer of unpaid internships, shadowing, summer abroad and summer classes, but they are feeling the pain of very, very part time jobs that aren’t paying much. Their paying jobs are restaurant jobs, not a lot of hours, and not a lot of pay.</p>
<p>Our friends’ kids and our kids’ friends are all in the same boat, very unusual in anyone’s experience as a parent.</p>
<p>I think a common thread in these posts and what we found in our home was that starting early is a must. S has been a lifeguard at the local pool for the past 4 years and in January needed to let them know he wanted to guard again this year. He has been working 40 hours a week. (that’s actually 20 working hours and 20 hours sitting by the pool or swimming and getting paid for 40 as they work 1/2 hour then have a 1/2 hour break to keep fresh)</p>
<p>D sent out massive amounts of resumes early in the spring and landed two positions - one an internship in her field that pays with a stipend and also she landed a tutoring job. I think be creative and persistant and START EARLY! June is way too late to start looking for most summer jobs.</p>
<p>True - June is too late. But many of the empty handed kids started looking long ago without luck.</p>
<p>eastcoascrazy - Yea, I’d nix the pizza job too. Tips may cover gas. But delivery jobs always seemed to risky with easily distracted young drivers. And the beach crowd is probably more rowdy than you’d like. I like the church volunteer idea… win/win (except of course for the lack of salary).</p>
<p>There was just a report on the news that there is a nationwide shortage of certified lifeguards. If you get trained, it will be easy to find a job year after year.</p>
<p>The S finally got a job…checked a temp agency in town yesterday and got a short-term assignment starting this morning helping to deliver drywall at a local store. Only a few weeks but it’s full-time (40-50 hours/week) so if he stays through the assignment he will likely make enough to get him through the rest of the summer. It was all in the timing…the agency needed someone who could start during the holiday week and there weren’t many people available.</p>
<p>^Oh hurray! And good for him being willing to work a holiday week!</p>
<p>^^^
Congratulations! Yes, it is all about timing. We had just about given up when we called son’s OOS college and the next day a company called looking for workers. The career center sent him an email and we shipped him over with the family car to start working. It’s a manual labor job, lots of hours, and lots of sweat, but hey, it’s a job!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>He’s going to have to pass on a camping trip with the family (we will miss him) but I’m sure he will get over it…especially when the first paycheck comes in.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Same situation for our S, lots of manual labor, but it’s local and it’s better than many jobs he was looking into.</p>
<p>Glad to hear some more summer job good news!</p>
<p>ckent1789, I am proud of your daughter for taking that retail chain job, too! During my son’s job search, I occasionally would mention places I noticed his friends and classmates worked at, just to put things into perspective for him. You don’t have to have a glamorous summer job. None of the kids his age were ‘managers’ or ‘bosses’…they worked in pizza joints, fast food restaurants, the cinema, local swimming pool, grocery stores…they were cooks, waitresses, ticket takers, baggers and bus boys. Like Steven Tyler of Aerosmith sings, “Everybody got their dues in life to pay”. lol</p>
<p>Oh, a job our son had been hired for but we didn’t allow him to take was as a ‘flagger’ for a construction company. He would have been required to drive up to one and a half hours one way to the job site, and the job sites would change all the time. It would have worked if the jobs were in our county in Ohio, but this was for neighboring Allegheny County in Pennsylvania, and the travelling just would not have made it worth it.</p>
<p>One more thing I wanted to mention…it does pay to mention your volunteering on your resume/job app. </p>
<p>We know several kids who got hired at the cinema because they had volunteered at concession stands during their school years. Also, our son had tutored at a homeless shelter-it was a class requirement last semester-and he put that on his application he submitted to the sporting goods store. The manager did ask him about it during the interview, and he was able to show he’d had this responsibility and learned from it.</p>
<p>Son’s best friend worked at a camp for blind children for his service project. He got a job at a school camp this summer. Sure, his uncle runs the camp, but I’m sure having the camper experience helped put him on the radar.</p>