It’s official: Here’s our complete guide to finding part-time work as a Lancs Uni student

The uni years are supposed to be the best years of our lives: A time of VKs, failed flat Christmas dinners, making new friends, caffeine addictions and late nights in the library with your course mates. But with increasing inflation, housing crises and student loans failing to cover the cost of rent, a lot of students’ plans for the so-called best years of their lives aren’t quite what they’d hoped they’d be.

A lot of students will be turning to part-time jobs to get through deadline seasons and it can be really difficult to find a job that you can balance with your course load while also being able to pay for everything you need. For those of you who haven’t quite figured it out yet, we’ve compiled this handy guide on how to access careers opportunities and advice as a Lancaster University student – hopefully, this will make job-hunting slightly less stressful than trying to get a seat on the 100 bus.

Where are the jobs coming from?

Most people are familiar with some of the biggest job sites like Indeed and Google for Jobs, but Lancaster University’s Employment and Recruitment Service actually has its own website dedicated to helping students find part-time jobs. Sometimes it posts jobs for university-owned establishments like LUSU Shop, and it also regularly posts paid internship opportunities that are perfect for filling some gaps in your CV, particularly if you just want a short-term job while your course load is a bit lighter and you’re not relying on Greggs coffee and the library C floor to get you through deadline season.

These job postings don’t even have to rob you of Sugar nights and day trips because they often include casual work like student ambassadors or digital content ambassadors. With these, you can set your own availability or choose when to request a shift (of course this depends on demand and when open days or other events are taking place). The great thing about this type of casual work is that you can get some extra money, but don’t have the added pressure of committing to set shifts every week, and some jobs even pay you to travel to UCAS fairs or uni events as a student ambassador!

TargetConnect is another jobs board available via your uni login, and it currently has over a thousand job postings from external employers on top of the ERS postings – there are loads of internships, placements and other job opportunities that are perfect for students and recent graduates. Don’t worry, though, you won’t have to scroll through them all – it also has the option to filter the results so you’re not scrolling through random placement postings when you should be planning your dissertation.

Working from home

There are also lots of online jobs perfect for students and a particularly useful one is online tutoring. There are loads of online tutoring websites where university students can pick a subject they’re particularly good at and then choose how often they want to work every week. These also have the advantage of being completely online, so you can still work when you go home for reading week or the end-of-term breaks. It’s best to do some research into the websites you tutor through though, because some of them are less reliable than others and your tutoring sessions can be cancelled last minute: but overall, it’s a good casual job for Lancs students who may just want some extra cash for their Costa runs.

Don’t know how to apply?

Writing CVs and cover letters can be time-consuming and stressful, so we’d recommend taking a look at the example CVs and cover letters on CareersConnect, where there’s are also opportunities to book careers advice appointments either online or in-person on campus.

Have nothing on your CV?

It’s a pretty common issue that entry-level jobs always ask for an excessive amount of past experience. But there are opportunities to gain work experience without having a list of references as long as the Greggs queue. GROW Your Future is a widening access program for university students who meet a certain set of criteria, including your parents not having completed higher education or having had access to free school meals. They offer a lot of career advice and resources, but more relevantly, they post a lot of short-term jobs on the ERS website for GROW Your Future participants, which are designed for people with little to no work experience. It only takes a few minutes to fill out the survey required to sign up, and you can check if you’re eligible here.

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