After finishing your college year, you’ll most likely want to enjoy your spare time and forget about books for a for a good while. However, summertime is, for many reasons, a good period to have the first professional experiences, and much better if they happen within the sector you’re training to work for.
Experts in employability concur that students who bet high on professional success make the most out of summer holidays by working in a large company, SME, institution or NGO. It’s a decision that entails many benefits in the mid and long term for the career of those students who choose this option, more so if that professional experience takes place abroad.
The benefits of a summer job
Diverse specialists in the world of business, and more precisely in the field of HR, point out that working in the summertime has several benefits -in addition to earning an extra income in the case of remunerated activities- for both students and recent graduates.
Experience
Acquisition of the valuable experience of committing to a certain duty by showing motivation, effort and responsibility, while learning from the advice of already stablished professionals that will be key to your career’s success.
Additional training
A summer job will allow you to gain knowledge that is elusive during your studies, even if it’s within sectors that have nothing to do with your Degree. Usage of new technologies is a good example of that.
Learning and/or developing skills that are very appreciated in professional environments
Such as: leadership, client orientation, communication, creativity or time management. In case of opting for international experiences, you will add others like self-reliance and autonomy to your resume.
Networking
Summer jobs provide a great opportunity to build a contact network, particularly around the sector you’re training for, that may be beneficial in your professional future. You must focus not only on permanent staffers, but also on other summer workers and trainees around you. As journalist expert on the business world Beth Braverman, points out, “you never know where your colleagues will be when you’re seeking ‘real jobs’ in a few years”.
Personal brand
You’ll start to develop your personal brand with regard to your professional future. Your summertime working experience will serve you to find out and enhance your strengths. Likewise, it will help you define your professional goals. All this, ultimately, will be extremely helpful when making your professional profile known through a proper communication strategy, even if you’re still in your training stages.
The opportunity to open up doors within the organization in the mid or long term
According to data managed by Adecco, between 20 and 25% of people who get a summertime job become staffers at the end of that initial period. So take advantage of that opportunity because you never know when a position will be vacant or whether a company will expand staff due to an incoming new project.
Finally, a summer job will help you find out which areas of the company you feel most fulfilled with and which ones do you like the most. Besides, you will improve your self-esteem and confidence.
The most rewarding summer jobs for you
Once known the benefits of working in the summertime while others are on holiday, it’s time to know where you can find a summer job and which vacant can be more useful in order to improve your profile and broaden your professional expectations.
As pointed out by Randstand, most job offers are, as usual, related with the tourism and commerce sectors. The prestigious HR consultancy firm estimates that more than 600 000 temporary jobs will be created during summer 2019 in Spain.
Working as a waiter, tourist guide or clerk can be very helpful to learn and develop customer service skills, as well as the sense of responsibility any job, ultimately, requires. Nevertheless, there are other alternatives that will allow you to improve your resume and achieve a training in professional skills with a brighter future.
– An extracurricular internship grant. It’s a great option for those who want to take their first steps into the labour market within their area of expertise.
– Working abroad. Be it as a waiter, clerk, au-pair or in a resort, this alternative is very well viewed by future employers since, in addition to learning or improving a second language, it allows the development of communication skills, getting to know other cultures, showing responsibility, autonomy and self-reliance.
– Summer instructor. During this time of the year there are plenty of public and private entities hiring young college students to work as instructors in camps and workshops for children and teenagers. It’s a great occasion to work on leadership skills and emotional intelligence, two powerful weapons in order to achieve professional success.
– Voluntary work. Despite not being a remunerated activity, devoting summer holidays to collaborate with a charity or environmental project, either in your country or abroad, is like a great cover letter with regard to future selection processes. Employers usually place great value on committed people with lots of initiative.
So, this can be the best summer of your life if you seek a future full of great professional success. The choice is yours now.