Students get student jobs from different reasons: the financial part, the job is fun, the job gives you relevant experience and a good network. If you just want to make money your goal is to find the best payed job; maybe a temporary job or a job as a salesman. If you just want to have fun at your workplace maybe a job as a bartender or as a Cult girl is the job you want.

If that’s what you are thinking it’s about time you stop and consider if that really is the most important. Is the most important thing at your student job to have fun right now or is it more important to improve the possibility of you getting the job of your dreams when you graduate. It’s of course fair enough if your answer to ‘fun right now’ is yes, but use just a couple of minutes to think about the following: relevant experience and a good network!

Is it not a good idea to get that out of a student job? Relevant experience and a good network are two things you shouldn’t neglect and just think about another day. At least you should consider it when you look for a student job. It may also be possible for you to combine fun and the more serious things in one student job.

Consider it for your own sake. Relevant experience and a good network can be of great importance for you when you graduate, and it’s just stupid to be an unemployed recent graduate and think back to what you could have done to improve the possibilities of you getting your dream job, but didn’t do it. What you choose to do about your student job should be a conscious choice, so you should consider it all before you write your first application.

Choose a student job based on what your dream job is

If relevant experience and a good network draws you, you should then think about what sort of job you should search for.

Of course, the relevant student job for you depends on what you are studying, and what your future dream job is. Therefore, it will be different from student to student. A student job as a fitness instructor may be relevant for a student who’s studying sport and training, but it probably isn’t very relevant for someone studying to become an accountant or an embryologist. Therefore, think about what you want to achieve from your student job: which qualifications could possibly improve the possibility of you getting the job of your dreams in the future.

Maybe you are studying a cand.mag. in Danish and religion because you want to become a high school teacher. It’s obvious what relevant experience for a future teacher is: teaching experience. If you want to become a teacher you could search for jobs as a substitute teacher or as help in a homework café or as something like that. Depending on the job, you can get experience in communication, in preparing education and in standing in front of an entire class and dealing with the fact that the students may be more interested in Facebook and Instagram than in your education.

This sort of experience will be nice to have, and at the same time look good at your CV when you as a recent graduate are searching for a job. It’s a sort of experience that shows the employer that you can handle the job, and at the same time you won’t risk being deselected because of lack of experience.

For some jobs, e.g. teacher, it may be relevant to think about the target group when you look for a student job; who are you going to teach. Maybe it isn’t the aim of your cand.mag. in Danish and religion to become a high school teacher but instead to become an immigrate teacher then the target group is completely different.

Thus, there are several things to think about when you are searching for a student job if you want to be a step ahead when you as a graduate are going to look for a job.

Choose the right direction

If it’s not a cand.mag. you wish to be, but you instead wish to become a cand.scient. in e.g. computer science it probably will be a different student job you should search for. Of course, you maybe still want to teach then the teaching experience is still relevant, but if you instead want to work with codes or programming it’s probably a different student job you should search for.

In this case it may be relevant to consider what sort of company you want to work for later. Is it e.g. a large or a small company? Maybe you even know exactly which company you wish to work for. Consider that when you are searching for a student job.

It is the same if you are a student wanting to become a cand.merc.(jur) or something entirely different. In your search for a student job look for something that looks like something you would like to do when you graduate. It may be a great help later in your career.

Therefore, use your student job to improve your professional and experiential qualifications instead of using it for partying. Maybe it can be combined, but otherwise party in your spare time, and use your student job to qualify yourself.

If you want a job that is relevant for your future job, but you can’t find a relevant payed job you may be able to find some relevant voluntary work. That too will look good at your CV. You may think it sounds tremendously boring; you’re only young once and so on. Consider it anyway!

When you are writing your CV and applications you need to be creative and focus on the things that are relevant for the job you’re seeking – also when you’re seeking a student job. It’s a good idea to do some research on how to make a good CV and a good application. It’s the same if you are called to a job interview: research on how to prepare.