Part-time role: Work that fits around your studies
Part-time jobs cover a range of roles that can fit around your other life commitments, like university. They can be during term time or during the holidays and might include tutoring or working in shops, pubs and bars, factories, restaurants, etc. Employers place value on part-time work, as it will help you to develop transferable skills such as customer service experience and or effective communication as well as team-work and commercial awareness.
Think carefully about the number of hours of work which you plan to undertake; you will need to make sure that you can balance the demands of your course with any part-time work you undertake. If you are studying in the UK on a visa, then please check your visa conditions to ensure that you are only working the permitted number of hours per week during term time. If you have any queries about working hours and your visa please contact the International Student Support team.
For more information, see our Part-time work webpage.
Elena: Part-time work
Elena is looking for a part-time job to support her living costs while she studies. She has worked over her summer holidays in a range roles at festivals and events so has some experience with hospitality. She found a waitressing job, which fitted with her university commitments on the Student Union jobs board. You can read more about the role and see how Elena tailored her CV through Elenas story in the Inclusive Persona project.
Elena enjoyed her waitressing role and was surprised at how many extra skills she was able to add to her CV when she came to apply for graduate jobs. The most useful skill was customer or client service which was asked for in most jobs and Elena wouldn’t have been able to gain through her study. She could also add adapting her communication skills, problem solving under pressure and talk about her time management skills at interview. Her waitressing job made her feel more confident in talking to people she didn’t know which helped her to network and discover more about companies before she made her job applications.
If you’d like to find out more about part-time working, including what sort of roles you can undertake and where to find advertisements, visit the part-time working careers webpage.