Time Management
Learning to budget time and to use it well is a skill that many students don’t learn until they’re in college or in their actual careers. Spend three minutes talking to a high school student about upcoming deadlines and you will quickly learn: they are NOT very good at managing their time and numerous responsibilities. Yet knowing how to handle several obligations at once helps students prepare for the academic vigor of college and the realities of work life.
Going from school to extracurricular activities and then to a job means having to do homework late at night, or, in some cases, working ahead during the weekends to ensure everything is complete for the coming week. If you are considering getting a part-time job while in high school, it is important that you watch out for over committing yourself out of a desire to make more money, because you aren’t yet adept at time management, or because you are just not very good at saying “no.”
While the line between how much work is too much may seem hard to define, experts have found that students who work more than 15 to 20 hours a week see a decrease in how well they are performing in other areas of their life. Teens shouldn’t exceed the recommended number of hours at their jobs, nor should they spend sleeping or studying time at work.
Time management has to be a factor in your schedule—the last thing you want is for your graduation or high school success to begin to falter because you are picking up extra shifts.
Learning in the field: Develop skills related to your interests
A part-time job gives you a taste of real life: interacting with the public and as part of a staff and exposure to fields you may hope to enter as adults. A job answering phones, running errands, or performing administrative tasks enables you to see how career options you’re interested in actually function in the day-to-day. You will discover what those careers demand in terms of education, skill, and time commitment. You may find that a job you were SURE you will love isn’t all you thought or you might discover a job you took (because it was the only one available to you) has some interesting long-term opportunities.
Developing Valuable Interpersonal and Professional Skills
Working a job is going to put you in a very real-world, adult environment, and you’ll be expected to adapt to that level of maturity and professionalism. This is (potentially) a great experience. Otherwise, you would take all your interpersonal cues from the social environment of your peers and school.
To be successful in your working life, you’ll need to learn how to respect a boss, be professional on the job and interact with customers, and how to develop a confident demeanor. The sooner you can master this, the better. Students who develop solid interpersonal skills are much better prepared for future interviews and jobs.
College recruiters prefer students who have worked in the field
Taking a job in something related to what you want to study in college allows you to show enthusiasm and aptitude for that field, which makes your application more desirable to college acceptance committees. Interested in teaching? Get a job working for an after-school program or as a camp counselor. What about accounting? A job in an accounting office helping with administrative work will give you a glimpse into what their future may hold. Interested in medicine? You might want to become a licensed lifeguard, which would enable you to learn lifesaving skills such as CPR. Think outside the box! There are lots of jobs which you can take while in high school that can build your skills, experience, and exposure to what you will study later in life.
Employers value experience over everything
For those who are not planning on going to college or for whom post-secondary education is not as important, building skills and experience is incredibly valuable. At the end of the day, the single most important element that ANYONE brings to a job interview is their experience.
The thing about jobs is it seems that it takes one to get one, and having zero work experience can be the biggest obstacle to landing your first job. One way to overcome this is by starting early and building up that work history, network, and reference list from a young age.
Here’s what interviewers and hiring managers want to know (even if they never come out and SAY it):
What have you ALREADY learned how to do and how will that EXPERIENCE benefit me and my company?
What you do in high school can give you a serious leg up on those who have college degrees but no work experience. What’s more, there are many positions where college is nice (but not required). All of the artisan positions (designer, marketer, culinarian, etc) value work experience over a degree. Getting started early can really help once you graduate and want to take your career into high speed. And if you fairly convinced that college isn’t for you… you REALLY need to start building your skills. Work can be brutal for those who don’t have a degree (and don’t have any experience either).
What to look out for
While working during your high school years can help help you learn responsibility and other important skills, you need to be careful and set yourself up for success.
- Set up a weekly schedule that allots time for homework and studying, for sleep, for downtime, and for extracurriculars
- Keep a monthly calendar, either digitally or on paper, to help avoid overcommitment and scheduling conflicts
As long as the job is safe, legal, and leaves ample time for academics, working during high school can be a huge benefit. You will learn skills and responsibility by working, remove some financial burden from your parents by earning your own money, and explore fields that you might never have considered as a career opportunity.
Pros and Cons of Working While in High School
Pros
- It can teach the relationship between earnings and education. Most high school students work low-income jobs that require little to no education. This can help make it clear that, to earn a good living, schooling is essential.
- It can teach the value of money. Without a job, teenagers must rely on other people’s money. Having a job gives students their own money and can help them understand the true value of a dollar.
- It can teach the importance of budgeting. Students can see how quickly hard-earned money can disappear on frivolous things.
- It can teach time-management skills. Balancing a job with studies requires students to learn how to schedule their day.
- It can build confidence. Holding down a job can make students feel more capable
- It can help teenagers stay out of trouble. Summer jobs have been shown to decrease incidents of violence, drug use, and arrests by 43%. After-school jobs provide similar benefits.
Cons
- It can hurt academic achievement. While the correlation between working and grades is not easy to measure, researchers have learned that students who work more than 20 hours a week suffer from reduced academic performance.
- It often fails to teach valuable skills. Research has found that most jobs held by high schoolers do not teach skills that can lead to any kind of career advancement.
- It can instill negative views about work. Most high school students work tedious jobs. That can impart unhelpful views about work in general.
- It takes away personal time. Some working high school students find themselves in a catch-22. They need money for a social life but holding down a job leaves them no time to socialize.
- It can lead to fatigue. Working a job and then going home to study can leave a student with little time to sleep. This, in turn, can lead to fatigue, which can impact health and overall well-being.