Beyond Burgers

How teens can find summer jobs worth putting on a résumé.

By Vickie Elmer, Contributing Writer

From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, April 2006

Your kids want to jump into the labor pool this summer to earn a few extra bucks. You want them to find a job so they won't spend the summer on the couch. Both are admirable goals, but neither is necessarily the prime reason for working, says Theresa Kane, co-author of Career Coaching Your Kids. "The most important thing teenagers take away from a summer job is a reference," says Kane, who recommends that teens, even as young as 15, use summer employment to build a résumé.

However, kids that age don't always feel comfortable -- or welcome -- in the workplace. And not without reason. Federal child-labor laws allow teens as young as 14 to work in offices, retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters and amusement parks, among other places. But employers often wonder whether kids that young will have reliable transportation, or whether they will show up neat, on time and ready to work, says Michael Zimmerman, job-placement coordinator at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis.

RELATED LINK
	Land the Perfect Summer Job

And many employers have their own age limits. The National Park Service, for instance, generally requires that workers be at least 18 years old. Walt Disney World usually employs college students, but it hires some younger teens who live in the park's vicinity.

Younger teenagers can find work other than at fast-food restaurants and swimming pools by focusing on their own talents and interests and getting a jump on seasonal job seekers. Rayna Wright was 14 last year when she applied for a paid internship at a Detroit medical clinic. Wright, a student at Cass Technical High School in Detroit, spent the summer doing odd jobs, such as pulling patient charts and putting labels on prescription bottles, but she also worked with medical personnel and "learned a lot." Wright aspires to be a neonatologist and hopes to return to the clinic this summer.

Sell yourself. The best job qualification teens can have is enthusiasm. "Kids need to say, ÔI'll do whatever it takes,' and show that they're motivated," says Amanda Royer, director of human resources at Cedar Point, the amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. Each summer Cedar Point hires about 800 teens between the ages of 14 and 17 (plus 3,500 U.S. college-age adults). The teens work as ticket takers, food servers and cashiers, and pay starts at $6.25 an hour.

Hot Topic, a retail chain for teens that specializes in music, apparel and band gear, hires teenage sales clerks who "will just go crazy with advice" for customers on what to buy, says Al Kong, director of staffing. Kong tells managers "to recruit our best customers."

Teens aren't too young to network, and they can make the most of connections to family members, sports coaches, the adviser to the school newspaper -- even the vet who takes care of the family pooch. Malcolm Neal, a senior at Cass Tech, checked in regularly with his teachers in the school's business department. When one mentioned an internship with an auto-supply company, "I jumped on it," says Neal, 17, who one day hopes to start an accounting firm with two friends. He got his paperwork together, wrote the required essay, highlighted his graphic-design talents ... and won the internship.

Denise Barrett, 16, made the most of the seven years she attended the YMCA's Camp McConnell, in Micanopy, Fla. She enrolled in the camp's leader-in-training program and became a counselor, even though she was a year younger than most other counselors there. "I joke that I'm going to own this camp someday," says Barrett, who already owns 56 Camp McConnell T-shirts. (Summer-camp jobs are listed at www.mysummercamps.com.)

• Print
• Comments
• Email
• RSS