Summer is coming soon, and you might be thinking about family trips, days at the beach and long shopping trips to the mall. For some people, summer is a time to relax and to spend time with family and friends. For others, however, it can be a time to find a job and to earn money for university or for special trips or other projects. After school ends for the year, thousands of students go out looking for work at the many places that offer summer jobs. Have you started job-hunting yet?

If you are like many other students, you might already have had a paying job. Maybe you have delivered flyers or mowed someone’s lawn to earn a bit of money for yourself. However, working at a summer job is a bit different. Many summer jobs become available in offices, stores and restaurants when the regular employees go on holidays. Sometimes employers might also take the opportunity to hire students to complete special projects that take too much time for the regular employees to finish. In other cases, the work might also be something that happens only in spring or summer, such as gardening or selling plants. All kinds of jobs become available when the weather warms up.

Working for pay in a summer job is very different from doing chores at home. Most provinces have rules about the minimum age that people have to reach before they can get most types of jobs. New workers also need to get a social insurance number (SIN), which is a government number that allows people to work in Canada. Whenever workers start new jobs, they have to give this number to their employers. Once you have your SIN, you can start the process of looking for work.

When you actually start looking for a job, the first place to go might be a local student employment office. Online job banks for student are also useful. However, many jobs are never officially listed in any job centre or database. Instead, many employers fill jobs through personal contacts. By talking to people about your need for work, you might be able to get access to this hidden job market.

Finding a job that suits you is another factor in looking for a summer job. It doesn’t need to be something that you want to do for the rest of your life or even the next few years. However, it should be work that you are able to do, even if you need to learn a lot on the job. If you find a job that you can do well, you have a good chance of being hired again the next year.  You might also learn some skills that you will need to know for the future.

Looking for a summer job is an important step in the process of becoming an adult. It’s never too early to start thinking about what you want to learn from the experience of earning money during the holidays.