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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.”

One Quebec summer camp for inner-city kids has produced generations of educators

When you think of summer camp, visions of campfires and canoeing immediately come to mind. But along with roasting marshmallows and nature hikes, one very special residential children’s summer camp in Quebec is doing much more. Summer might be over, but at this camp, the impact is felt year-round.

For some university students, Camp Amy Molson has changed their lives, or at least their career paths. But the camp is also creating some of Canada’s future educators.

Susan Chisholm knew she wanted to become a pharmacist. But after working at Camp Amy Molson for a summer, that changed. For her, after spending eight summers at the camp, going into teaching became a “natural progression.” Sue says the camp taught her to “know kids as people,” and today Sue is a teacher near Ottawa. She has no regrets about changing her career path from being a pharmacist to becoming an educator.

Located in Grenville-sur-la-Rouge, Quebec, Camp Amy Molson is a residential camp for inner-city Montreal children, with an outreach program offered from its Montreal office year-round. The camp recently celebrated its 65th anniversary, holding a fundraising reunion for past campers, staff and volunteers.

Kosta Hatzis, who first started working for the camp part-time while he was a student, has been a board member since 2006. He describes the camp’s target group as “socially disadvantaged inner-city kids.” For these campers, explains Kosta, Camp Amy Molson is a safe place, a place where they can “grow in ways that they could never grow in the city.”

All five of Debbie Gunn’s children attended the camp. She says it gave her kids a chance to experience things they never could in the city. “Where I lived (in the city) there was nothing for the kids to do. Camp taught them all kinds of things. They got to go boating, swimming, and have lots of safe places to play outside.”

Shauna Joyce, the camp’s executive director, hires dozens of post-secondary students to work for the camp each summer. She says many of the camp’s staff end up becoming educators. “Social work, teachers, and education. They’re all a big trend with our staff.”

Meaghan Higginson is part of that trend. She’s worked at the camp for nine summers now, while attending post-secondary education, starting at age 15 as a counsellor-in-training. Although she describes her first year working with underprivileged youth as a bit of a shock, Meaghan wasn’t scared away. After discovering that she loves working with kids, that first year cemented her future career choice: teaching. But the camp didn’t just help her find a career path. Meaghan says it also helped prepare her for the role, giving her the skills to be a teacher. Meaghan lists confidence and dealing with classroom management as important abilities she learned from her time at camp.

Younger, flexible employees are in the best position to survive this recession

Despite standing in a line of hundreds of students desperately searching for summer employment at a job fair, 18-year-old Julia Poissant isn’t fazed.

She’s well aware that the job market is shrinking around the world, but she isn’t willing to worry.

“I know there’s problems, but I’m feeling fairly confident,” she said. “You just have to look for opportunities and be proactive, I guess.”

Amid the global economic downturn, it’s hard for even seasoned workers not to feel like the sky is falling.

The picture can seem bleaker still for people who are just starting out in the job market, or hoping to score a part-time or summer job.

These fears are partly backed up by the most recent unemployment figures, which showed an almost 15 per cent unemployment rate for those aged 15-24, the highest in 11 years.

But experts say Poissant might have the right idea – there’s hope for younger people, who come more cheaply and with more flexibility than older workers and who have the potential to stay with a company for years after the economy recovers.

“I think there’s a lot more doom and gloom than the reality,” said Kirk Hill, the executive director of the Career Management Centre at Simon Fraser University’s business school.

“Yes, the job market is probably about the toughest in a few years, but there’s a few things to your benefit, being younger.”

Those newly graduating may be able to get positions at companies that otherwise aren’t able to hire permanent workers, said Hill.

“They may be able to do a co-op or they may be able to do an internship or a short-term contract because their hiring freezes don’t affect that,” he said.

Plenty of employers signed up for the city of Calgary’s youth employment centre job fair, said Lisa Wieser, community relations liaison at the centre.

“They are still kind of looking at that generation’s perspective and the energy they bring to the workplace and that and they really see a benefit in that.”

Interested employers come from a wide variety of sectors, including health care, recreation and child care, she said. A variety of retail positions are also open.

How to land that dream job by making the most of your time outside the classroom

When she applied for her first job after graduating with an M.B.A., Keturah Leonforde almost erased her volunteer work as a choir director from her resumé. It seemed unrelated to any of the jobs she wanted. But after she scored a gig at a top accounting firm, she was surprised to find out that she owed the position, at least in part, to what she thought irrelevant.

“It was your volunteer experience that set you apart,” Leonforde recalled her new boss explaining. “On paper, your experience was quite comparable and competitive with everyone else, but that volunteer experience was far above and beyond.”

Now she is back at her alma mater, Wilfrid Laurier University—but this time on the other side of the job application game, advising students in her role as a career consultant for graduate and professional programs. And Leonforde, who is also a former recruiter, says that her experience shows that non-academic activities can be as important as academic studies in preparing students for the work world.

“Grades and diplomas are the price of admission these days,” she said. “What [employers are] really concerned about beyond that is: what have you done outside of the classroom?”

During orientation week and frosh week, new students are bombarded with scores of extracurricular options. At the University of Toronto, for instance, you can fill after-school hours with experiences from the Comic Book Club to the Bangladeshi Students’ Association. Many large universities have hundreds of groups and even the smallest schools offer recreation and sports teams, arts groups, student media, faith-based clubs, student government and activist groups, academic clubs, and many, many more.

With all these options and the time limitations of being a student, how can you pick something that will be both enjoyable and time well-spent?

Maurice Fernandas, a senior recruitment manager at Ceridian Canada, says that participation in just about any extracurricular activity can demonstrate whether an applicant is disciplined and has strong time management skills. “Rather than asking, ‘How are your time management skills?’ and hoping the student doesn’t lie to me, I tend to look at where they graduated in their class and what else they did during that time. Were you part of the student union? Were you a varsity athlete? What clubs did you belong to? Did you have a part-time job?”

The obvious choice for students wanting to boost their resumé is an activity related to their career interests.