Hey CC!
I have recently decided to start job hunting now as a senior and was wondering how heavily this will affect my financial aid.
This will be my first job, and don’t exactly now if this is something I should put on my college applications as I am filling them out. Do the jobs you start doing as a senior count or only the ones from previous years that have been documented.
Any help is appreciated 
You can earn about $6000 w/o it affecting your aid. however, if you have it in savings at the time you file FAFSA it ca hurt you a bit. It’s better to put any savings in a 529 account, because they it would be assessed at the parent rate, which is much lower.
However, if you’re just going to earn money for “pocket money” right now, and then file FAFSA in January, and then earn and save money for college, it won’t hurt you at all.
Most places don’t meet student need. While it is possible that your savings could reduce your financial aid by a bit, chances are that you won’t get much aid other than a student loan anyway. So take the job and save the money that you can so that you have it next year to help cover your expenses.
To get a more accurate notion of how any savings or earnings could affect your possible aid packages, run the Net Price Calculators at the websites of each place that is on your list. You can run the NPCs any number of times, and put in different amounts of money that you might have earned/saved by the time you file the NPC.