Finding a Part-Time Job

By Pat Donahue

One of the key responsibilities of the Career Development Center (CDC) is to help students find part-time jobs both on campus and off-campus. During Welcome Week, the CDC hosted the Part-time Jobs Fair, which was attended by over 3,000 students.

Those 3,000 students must have heard of the top five benefits of a part-time job:

1. Extra money and budgeting skills: When I was in college, I worked as a dishwasher at the dining hall, shelved books at library, gave admission tours as a student ambassador, and as fate would have it, worked at the career services office. Indiana University is the largest employer in Bloomington, so part-time job opportunities abound.

2. Networking & Researching potential career fields: If possible, find a part-time job that relates to your career goals and helps you explore careers and build marketable skills. If you are interested in a career in science, try to find a job in a campus lab conducting undergraduate research. If you are interested in counseling, work as peer advisor in Academic advising or as a Career Peer at the CDC. If you want to work in accounting, find a job in the Financial Aid office. Your career advisor can help you find a part-time job related to your career goals.

3. Time management: Fitting a part-time job into your academic schedule teaches you how to make priorities, develop work-life balance, and the importance of punctuality in the workplace.

4. On campus presence: Indiana University’s decentralized organizational structure can be difficult to navigate at first. Having a part-time job on campus teaches you how an administrative office functions and working with colleagues familiar with IU helps you acclimate to campus better.

5. Build Experience & Build Skills: Yes, a part-time job looks good on a resume and demonstrates strong work ethic, but you also learn how to collaborate with colleagues, answer to a boss, attend meetings, make deadlines, and dress and communicate professionally. You will build a variety of transferable skills like customer service, teamwork, problem solving, and leadership.

Now that you are convinced of the benefits of a part-time job, here’s how you go about finding one:

• Keep checking MyJobs every day since new jobs are listed all the time. MyJobs is the system the CDC uses to post part-time positions. Go to cdc.indiana.edu and just click in the upper right hand corner on MYJOBS. If this is your first time logging in, you will need to set up your account.

• Check with different departments on campus because many of them list their own part-time jobs on their websites. At http://cdc.indiana.edu/experience/jobs/part-time.html, we list many departments who hire students. If you don’t’ see something listed in MYJOBS or on the office’s website, go in person and talk to their Human Resources contact at that office.

• You can search for jobs through Indiana University’s Human Resource website.  Here is the link to Human Resources job postings: https://iujobs.peopleadmin.com/.  Choose the Bloomington campus in the left-hand column.  From there you will want to choose the job category “Part-time/Temporary” and then search.  Keep in mind that some of the openings in this category will still require a college degree.  However, this is where you will find any student employment that Human Resources has posted.

• There’s also a section on One.IU.edu called IU Classifieds which lists jobs.  Log into One.IU.edu and in the search bar search “classifieds.”  Choose the Jobs category in the left-hand column to see job postings.  It’s sort of IU’s version of Craig’s List. If you are not sure if a position is legit, talk to your career advisor before contacting the employer.

• Do some Networking: talk to your friends, find out where they work and if they know of any openings, and check with your professors. They may have a research project or they may know of someone who does.

• Get involved in campus, clubs, and activities. The more you’re on campus, the more likely you are to hear of part-time opportunities.

• Volunteering is a great way to find out about paid positions. It may take time, but a volunteer position can sometimes lead to a paid part-time position.

• Before you start applying for positions, you will want to work on your resume. Here’s a link to help you begin resume writing along with suggested skill verbs:
  • http://cdc.indiana.edu/doc/writing-resume.pdf
  • http://cdc.indiana.edu/doc/skill_verbs.pdf

You can always schedule an appointment with your assigned Career Advisor to talk about your part-time job search, internship search and help with building your resume. You will find their information listed in your MYJOBS account. Students who have questions about the part-time job search can also come to drop-in advising at the Career Development Center (625 North Jordan) from 1-4PM, Monday through Friday.