4 Tips for Finding a Summer Job

Four things that a student can do to find a summer job at the last minute are:

• Call all of your adult family members and friends of your parents. Tell them you're looking for a summer job, what you're good at, and what type of work is of interest to you. Don't ask them for a job. Instead, ask them to give you the names and phone numbers of three people you should call. You've just multiplied your network by three fold. Repeat until someone declines to give you the names and instead gives you a job.


• Don't tell people that you're willing to do anything. Focus. Recruiters and hiring managers are turned off by people who are too flexible as it tends to mean they're too desperate and desperate candidates tend to make lousy employees.


• Be willing to work for little to no pay in a position which is in line with your career path. Getting experience is incredibly valuable. For money, find a job that pays well even if it isn't of interest to you or in line with your career path. Invest in yourself.


• Don't focus your job search efforts on advertised openings as they're only 10 percent of the job openings and 90 percent of candidates spend all of their time applying to advertised jobs. Rather than being in the 90 percent chasing after 10 percent of the jobs, be one of the 10 percent who networks and therefore is chasing after 90 percent of the jobs. Your odds are much better.

Article by, Steven Rothberg and courtesy of CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates seeking entry-level jobs and other career opportunities.

Jobs that Make a Difference

Change.org recently launched Jobs for Change, a national effort to help recruit more Americans to jobs in the nonprofit, government and social enterprise sectors.

The site has come into existence during a time when many people, especially youth, have a renewed interest in public service. Many people are interested in going green and finding new ways they can help.

The site hopes to build the largest database of social change jobs on the Web, including those for nonprofit, government and social enterprise. The site also will guide people through the process of finding and pursuing a career in social change through Change.org's team of career advisers who will run a group of career blogs focused on different demographics.

"Every day thousands of people who have been inspired by the President's call to service, many of whom would have normally pursued a traditional career in the for-profit sector, are coming to us and our partners looking to find a career in the common good," Ben Rattray, founder and CEO of Change.org, said.

"This presents an unprecedented opportunity to attract the country's most promising leaders into the social sector to address the major challenges we face as a nation," Rattray added. "But the resources for helping people enter the social sector are limited, and most people don't know where to start."

Jobs for Change is in partnership with more than a dozen leading nonprofit organizations, including AmeriCorps Alums, Campus Compact, Encore Careers, Network for Good, Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, New Organizing Institute and Echoing Green. Jobs for Change also is being promoted to the more than 500,000 users who use Change.org and its partner organizations.

Change.org also has partnered with nonprofit recruiting firms to help organizations recruit and retail top quality candidates. Partners include Commongood Careers and Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group.

"It is wonderful to see legions of young people and professionals from the for-profit sector seeking jobs that change their community, their country and their world," Laura Gassner Otting, president of Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, said. "Jobs for Change will provide so many with the necessary resources and strategies to make those mission-driven dreams a reality. It is our pleasure to partner with them on such an important endeavor."

It's Zoo Time

In the last week, Cool Works has officially ventured into a new seasonal job / summer job space and we're pretty excited about it. We are now promoting our first zoo, and appropriately enough, it happens to be the first zoo in the country, The Philadelphia Zoo, which is celebrating 150 years in 2009.


Check out their profile here to learn more about their summer job opportunities.



Find more photos like this on My CoolWorks



So here's to the Philadelphia Zoo and here's to growth for Cool Works and a new type of job for you, our job seekers. We hope that this is the first of many different attraction and zoo opportunities to come.


You can find more of the unique summer job opportunities on the Other Cool Jobs page of our website.