Who’s hiring during the summer months?

Job strategy.  You might think you’ve got one, but it’s not the number of hours you spend in front of your computer applying for jobs or the number of job apps you submit.  It’s more about what companies you apply to and when you’re applying.

Think about it.  Would you apply to work at a ski resort in the middle of August? Probably not. Having a job strategy is about applying that same logic to the rest of the year by helping you truly evaluate what employers are hiring no matter what time of year it is.

March & April:

• Bars or Restaurants: St. Patrick’s Day, Easter and Cinco de Mayo fuel heavy restaurant hiring during the spring months.  Irish bars, Mexican restaurants and any restaurant that serves a popular Easter brunch is a safe bet.
• Drug stores: The Easter bunny shops at Walgreens and Rite Aid, so you better believe they stay busy the month leading up to Easter.
• Theme parks: Around spring break, theme parks start staffing up for their busy summer season.  Training is usually held on the weekends for students looking to start as soon as school ends.

May, June & July:

• Electronic stores: Most electronic stores like Hhgregg staff their stores heavily for the “Dads and Grads” season.  Father’s day, graduation presents and back-to-school computers keep these stores stay busy all summer.
• Ice cream shops: This is pretty much a no brainer, but any cool treat like those provided by Baskin Robin’s or Bruster’s is in high demand when the temperatures outside get over 80 degrees.
• Pools: Health clubs and summer pools begin hiring lifeguards and snack bar workers in the late spring to get ready for pool openings after Memorial Day.
• Vacation destinations: Any popular summer destination that has an influx of tourists during the summer months will have ample job openings for those looking for seasonal jobs.

August & September

• Office supply stores: Back-to-school season hits hard starting at the end of July.  Staples and Office Max start accepting job applications fill those open positions during the later summer months.
• Grocery stores: As many of the students begin to vacate their summer jobs in supermarkets, a sizeable number of regular part-time jobs become available after September.
• Retail: Back-to-school shopping extends beyond pencils and notebooks.  Most growing kids require entirely new wardrobes every year, and retail stores hire employees to meet those demands.

When you use this list, it’s important to remember that you’ll need to think more than a few weeks before the holiday to look for hourly jobs. Your best bet is to start looking the month before the demand for these jobs spikes to give yourself a fighting chance at the open positions.

Stress from Working Too Much

Feeling overworked? Join the millions of Americans who are in the same boat. The stress that comes from working longer and harder is giving rise to workers who are less productive and who feel drained and listless. If left untreated, stress can lead to serious health problems, including hypertension, depression, and even weight fluctuation. There is hope, however. With new techniques you can prevent stress from getting the best of you, and in turn, be a better employee.

Identify When Stress Becomes a Problem

In reality, small amounts of stress are often beneficial to us, as they motivate us to make changes that improve our lives. But when stress becomes a continual burden it can wreak havoc both at work and at home. There are two main types of stress—acute and chronic. Acute stress is brought on by immediate tasks or anticipating events in the future, such as working too many hours or worrying about a performance review. Chronic stress, however, is often the result of past events, like childhood trauma or unresolved issues. While methods have been developed to treat acute stress, it is best to seek the advice of a trained professional when dealing with chronic stress.

By learning to recognize the symptoms of stress, you can more easily manage it and prevent its recurrence. The general signs of stress include, but are not limited to, fatigue, short temper, a lack of enthusiasm, and a general feeling uneasiness. If these signs persist untreated, more serious health problems can occur. Watch for these clues to see if you’re dealing with stress:

Insomnia. If you’re lying awake at night, thinking of your work responsibilities, stress could be affecting your sleeping patterns.

Uncontrollable Emotions. Ever been stuck in traffic and just felt the urge to scream? Maybe you’ve been surprised by something and find yourself unable to stop crying. When you react disproportionately to situations, or display emotions for no reason at all, the cause might be stress.

Weight Fluctuation. Some people eat and eat when they’re stressed, packing on the pounds. Others deprive themselves of all but the barest necessities to keep functioning. Either way, stress plays a big factor in our diet and digestive issues, and to make matters worse, those who feel overworked often find their work interfering with normal mealtimes, preventing them from getting proper nutrition.

Body Aches. From that sore lower back to the jaw that clenches up, stress can be at the root of a lot of aches and pains. Stress that causes muscles to clench up can even make you more susceptible to on-the-job injuries.

Chest Pains/Sweating. Yes, stress can be responsible for heart palpitations, sweating, and chest pains. Don’t mess around with those symptoms—get yourself to a doctor on the double.

Deal With Stress

These resources may come in handy when dealing with the bouts of stress that attack us from time to time. As with all medical problems, it is best to seek the advice of a professional before proceeding with any medicated treatment. These techniques, however, are simple things we should be doing anyway, but which have been found to be highly useful to combat stress.

Exercise. It’s as simple as that. A 20-minute walk on a daily basis will help improve your cardiovascular health and make the weight of the world easier to bear. You may even try to squeeze it into your lunch break.

Relaxation. A simple rest each day can help eliminate stress from your life. Try this: sit in a dark, quiet place for 5-10 minutes, getting as comfortable as you can. Close your eyes and think of something completely unrelated to work, like your dream vacation. After a few weeks you should begin to notice a difference.

Sleep. Incredibly, Americans on the whole are vastly sleep-deprived. Try to get 8 or 9 hours per night, even if it means you have to go to bed at 9 or 10 PM. Make sleep a habit, not something to make up on the weekends.

Talk. Talk to friends, family, and medical professionals about what you’re going through. Sometimes just getting things off your chest will make your mind more at ease.

Let Someone Know

In the end, stressed-out workers are unproductive workers, so if you find your stress affecting your workplace, let your boss know. If the source is your work, try to find a reasonable solution, like cutting your hours down, working on a different project, or taking a sabbatical. By pinpointing the sources of your stress and then addressing them, you will be on your way toward better mental and physical health, and a better work life.

There’s a common list of skills and requirements for employees. This section discusses the traits that make a great employee and those that are sure ways to get fired. These are true not only for teens, but for all workers young and old in any field. After reading through this section, the things your teachers are teaching you in school might make more sense.

Hardworking – This would seem obvious, but people are fired for not working all the time.

Anne was a lazy student in school. When she passed a class, it was barely. Anne promised herself when she got a job her lazy ways would change. Anne was lucky enough to interview with an employer that didn’t ask about her GPA. She got and started the job, but she and her employer discovered habits are extremely hard to break. She was fired because she didn’t have a good work ethic.

Dependability – Most often this is tied to lateness and absences without good reason. Attendance issues are one of the top things people are fired for in this country. Businesses are strict, much stricter than your school when it comes to attendance. In order for an employer to benefit from your work, you have to be there.

Scott couldn’t seem to make it to work on time. He was never more than 3 minutes late, but the company he worked for had a very strict policy. A note went into his file after he was late two times, which meant he received no holiday bonus. After his 4th, he was fired.

If you don’t already use a planner, you need to start. Don’t depend on memory to keep track of school, work schedules and all your other activities. It will get to be too much. As a part-time worker, your schedule could be different from week to week. To avoid costly mistakes, write things down.

Dependability also has to do with doing what you said you would, when you said you would do it. As you mature, more and more people will depend on you. If you want to have value, you can’t check out physically or mentally and leave people hangin’.

Responsible – Self-motivated people are mature people. They are also the people who can make decisions and stand behind those decisions, good or bad. It’s like life rule #6 – If you screw up, it’s not your parents’ (or anybody else’s) fault so don’t whine about your mistakes. Learn from them.

Barbara’s employer knew his young employees would make mistakes. What he didn’t expect was his inability to discuss those mistakes with Barbara. Each time he tried to teach her something about her job she interrupted him to explain why her mistake was someone else’s fault. This grated on the nerves of her employer and her fellow employees until he was forced to let Barbara go.

In school, being responsible is really a suggestion. There’s truthfully not a lot educators can do if you decide to do nothing. In the world of work, employees must be responsible. If you cannot meet that expectation, you will not have a job.

Honesty and integrity – If these are not two of your qualities, then please don’t get a job because you give all teenagers a bad name.

Flexibility and willingness – Adapting to new situations and things you are asked to do is important. You are going into an entry-level position, which means you will do some things you don’t like to do. We’ve all been there. Ask your parents about their first jobs. Have the ability to be willing and flexible in your job. Do the things you don’t want to, pay your dues, and someday you won’t be at the bottom. As life rule #5 says, Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.

Jared was hired as a receptionist in a dentist’s office. He wasn’t told when he was hired that one of his responsibilities was to clean the bathroom. Jared refused when his boss told him to grab a toilet brush and get busy. He stated, “That’s not what I was hired to do.“ Jared quit that job, but found that no matter where he went to work, he was expected to do tasks he didn’t necessarily care for.

Respectful – Without respect for others, you can’t get along in the workplace. This inability to demonstrate respect shares the top spot with dependability for the reason people are fired. All jobs require you to be a member of a team. It can only be a team if there is respect between its members. And as you’ve probably been told a number of times, you can’t get respect until you give it.

Chris knew copy machines very well. When his employer gave Chris and his fellow employees a big project to do, he emphasized the need to work as a team in order to meet the deadline. Chris didn’t have respect for the others’ ability to get things done. Chris tried to take over the project himself, ignoring another employee when she pointed out a typo to Chris. He was fired when he printed ten thousand business cards with a mistake on them.

Positive attitude ­- You can’t be depressed, mad or moody while you are at work. Many of you will be working with customers who expect a positive attitude ­- not to mention your fellow employees have to be around you too. A negative attitude in the workplace is like cancer in the body: it spreads. In order to return to health, the cancer has to be eliminated, just as the employee has to be fired.

Kara was having a lot of problems at home. Instead of embracing the time at work as a time to be away and think about something else, she stewed about the issues. Kara snapped at customers and her coworkers, and generally made everyone around her tired of her attitude. When her mood became so destructive that customers began to complain about her rude behavior, her employer fired her.

What it really comes down to is remaining an optimist rather than a pessimist. This is not an easy thing to do, particularly if there are negative things going on in your life. There are several choices you get to make on a daily basis; your attitude is one of them. For the sake of remaining employed, choose to have a positive attitude.

Life-long learner – If you’ve ever read your school’s mission statement, it probably includes something about creating life-long learners. What this means is that you are willing and able to learn new things throughout your life. In other words, just because you get a diploma doesn’t mean you’re done learning. Jobs are going to require you to keep training and keep learning. Otherwise you cannot advance within your company, or in some cases, even keep your job. My job as a teacher, at least as I see it, is not to cram information into a kid’s head as much as it is to teach them to learn without me.

Focus – Having ADD or ADHD will not work as an excuse at a job. Employers need you to be able to focus and pay attention to detail. Not only is this needed for quality in your work, but it’s for your safety as well. Work accidents happen when employees lose focus.

Lee was not known for his ability to listen. He tended to daydream instead. He was doing just that when his boss was explaining the company’s filing system to him. When she finished, she left Lee to file a stack of documents. He completed the task, but did it wrong. Needless to say, Lee’s inability to focus lost him a job.

Focusing, like a lot of things, has to do with habits. What are you used to doing? Are you used to listening when being spoken to? Are you in the habit of completing tasks, or do you quit when you lose interest? If you want to experience success in life in general, you must form good habits.

Read more in Jennie Withers’ book for teens, “Hey, Get a Job!“

All those who have worked for any reasonable length of time can tell you that there are days when they feel like the weight of the world has just been placed on their shoulders. While it shouldn’t happen, we all have felt the pressure of unreasonable expectations at one point or another. Think about how it feels when you’re under the gun and you know you won’t be able to finish in time but you can’t admit it to your boss because your job is on the line. Now think about feeling like that every day you come to work. For the millions of employees who daily deal with an unreasonable boss: there is now help for you.

Opening Lines of Communication

If you’re consistently being given new and more difficult assignments, one technique that often works is speaking with your boss one-on-one. Any discussions should take place in private and should reflect your feelings, not ultimatums. Present your points in a positive manner, but remember that positive results are not guaranteed. Bosses are people, too, and they don’t always take to criticism well, no matter how constructive. Your case should include why you feel overburdened and what you would like to see happen. Make sure to give examples, and point out what you have been doing every day at work, so your boss doesn’t think you’re just a slacker.

Take it Higher

If your boss isn’t responsive to your pleas, and you think you have a good enough case, take the issue to your boss’s boss. This should only be used, however, in situations that become extremely unbearable. To avoid your boss telling his or her boss about you coming, let as little time as possible lapse between talking to your boss and to your boss’s boss. In some cases, your company may have a Human Resources representative act as a mediator. Beware, however, that you may be caught on the short end if your boss’s boss agrees with your boss.

The bottom line is that you must determine whether the situation is fixable or whether it would be best for you to look for a different job. In the situation explodes, the chances are great that your boss will be considered more valuable to the company than you are, and you may be let go or worse, fired. Either way, be prepared to do some job-hunting.

Ah, the freedom of summer! Freedom to stay up late, sleep in, wear sandals, go on vacation. Freedom from schoolwork, classes, teachers, detention, and that annoying thing called the alarm clock. But wait, are you truly free? Not if you have determined it to be in your best interest to get a summer job. Summer can be your favorite time of the year, or your worst nightmare. It all depends on what you make of it. Here are some tips to help make your summer enjoyable (even while working).

Find A Job You Enjoy

For many, the advice to “find a job you enjoy” is sheer nonsense, and I can appreciate that reaction. I had my fair share of real winners during my years as a student. But that’s not to say it’s impossible to find an enjoyable summer job—it isn’t. Ultimately, the summer job you accept is going to fall in line with your priorities. If your top priorities are good wages and flexible scheduling, don’t be surprised if the actual work isn’t all that exciting. Conversely, if your top priority is enjoyable work, don’t be surprised if your wages are low and your schedule is inflexible. Enjoyable summer jobs are out there; it just might take a little re-ordering of your priorities to find one.

Enjoy the Job You Find

Ideally, we’d all be able to find the perfect job to fill up those warm summer days. But the fact of the matter is that many of us will end up settling for something… shall we say… less than perfect. If luck has dealt you a bad hand, you have two options: learn to enjoy the job or don’t. Learning to enjoy it involves separating the activities, responsibilities, and routines that you like performing from the ones that you dislike. Of course, make sure you do each part of your job to the best of your ability. But, by concentrating on the enjoyable parts of the job, you begin to see the entire job in a better light. Let’s say you work in a clothing store and really appreciate the time you have to chat with customers as they purchase new clothes. Instead of trying to make it through your six-hour shift, view the whole workday as a series of pleasant encounters with interesting people. Trust me—your shift will fly by.

Take Vacation

Finally, remember to take a break from your summer job. Oftentimes, it’s difficult to justify taking a week off when it also means a week without pay. But trust me, vacations are extremely important for your health and sanity. A summer vacation without an actual vacation won’t exactly get you geared up for heading back to school. And even if you’re family isn’t planning to take a vacation together, it’s still good to get away from work for a short time. You can plan day trips with friends or spend your time doing what you enjoy. Come Labor Day, you’ll be glad you took that time off. And you’ll be more prepared to hit the books.

Keep Perspective

The most important thing to remember about your summer job is this: IT’S ONLY A SUMMER JOB. There’s no need to get all bent out of shape if things don’t go according to plan. Before you know it, summer will be over, and school will be back in session. Now that’s what I’m talking about.

All teen jobs are not created equal. Lucky teenagers grab jobs at high-dollar restaurants, laid-back coffee shops or clothing stores like Hollister and American Eagle. Unlucky teens get jobs frying fish sticks at Uncle Leo’s Seafood Shack.

How can you be sure you get the job you want? Here are a few tips especially for teens.

Defy stereotypes. Many managers almost expect teen job seekers to be less professional-and even less respectful-than older applicants. Show them you’re different. Arrive on time to the interview. Shake hands firmly. A suit’s appropriate for an interview at an office job; for more casual jobs, an ironed shirt and a nice skirt or pants are fine.

Be what the company’s looking for. Read job descriptions carefully to get a mental picture of the employer’s ideal candidate. Take these two:

“Enthusiastic servers wanted for fast-paced, high-energy and FUN environment.“

“Responsible individual needed for highly visible front-desk position at downtown law firm.“

The smart teen job seeker will tailor his or her interview style to match the tone of the job description. Naturally bubbly? Play it up for the server job; put on your serious face for the receptionist post.

Tell them what they want to hear. Teen job seekers should practice interview questions ahead of time with a friend or parent. One you’re guaranteed to hear is “Why do you want to work here?“ This is a trick question – it’s not really about you, it’s about the company.

Wrong answer: “Well, I think I’d enjoy working here. My friends say it’s a pretty chill place.“

Better answer: “I’m excited about working for one of my favorite stores and I really like the team atmosphere here.“

One more classic: “Why are you a good fit for the company?“ Again, think about what you can offer them, not the perks they’ll offer you.

Wrong answer: “I like the flexible work hours and the uniforms aren’t too hideous. Besides, how could I say no to free burritos?“

Better answer: “I’m a hard worker and I have a lot of energy. I think I would be a strong addition to your team.“

Don’t be scared to talk about money. Money’s a good thing. Money’s the reason you want a job, right? However, many teen job seekers-and adults too-find it difficult to bring up the subject in a job interview.

Be brave and do it! Ask about the hourly wages. Ask how long it takes, on average, for an employee to get a raise. Ask about vacation days, sick days, insurance and benefits. If you don’t ask now, you won’t find out until after you have the job-and by then you could be stuck in no-paid-vacation-ever-land.

Be realistic when you’re talking about your pay, however. Use an online wage calculator to figure out what the average wage is for the job you’re interested in. And keep in mind that if the employer won’t budge on salary, maybe you can negotiate flexibility on other things, such as scheduling or sick days.