Studying should never be the opposite of working; doing a part time job as a full-time student makes you experience the best of both worlds. If you go to any job portal in Singapore, you will be amazed by the range of part-time jobs companies offer. Which one should you choose? That seems to be a legitimate question, given the wide variety of choices. While your choice depends on your personal preference, Digital Senior would like to give you a list of top five jobs recommended by many of your peers.
Tuition
Probably this is the most popular job among university students. There is a thriving market for tuition, such as home tuition, from primary school level all the way to junior college level. One can find a tuition job via numerous tuition agencies.
If you want to avoid the fee charged by the tuition agency, you can advertise on the Internet, such as the Kiasu Parents Forum, where parents often congregate. Or you can ask your friends who are currently teaching if they have additional contacts that you can tap into. However, the self-source method of finding a tuition job usually takes up longer time. Considering that you also need to take into account the location of the student’s home and other non-monetary benefits, it is advisable to use a tuition agency’s service that brings you wider variety of choices.
If you want to teach, you can refer to this table for the fee that you can earn. Over there, you can also find the general requirement for teaching, which does not differ much across the industry. If you consider home tuition, the schedule is rather flexible, depending on how you negotiate with the parents. Hence Digital Senior would think of this job as a very good one as you can earn decently with reasonable time and effort coming from you.
Pay: $24-$40+ /hour
Office work
Many companies actually offer part-time job on an irregular basis. Students doing part-time jobs with them get to experience the real work environment where one takes up real responsibility. The idea of doing “real work” that is valued and paid for is an excellent reason for you to apply.
One can find such jobs in many job portals in Singapore. You may want to subscribe to their newsletters for regular update so that you always stay in tune with the market. Sometimes even the career office in your university may advertise some of the jobs. If you are looking for part-time jobs in a branded company during the semester (not holidays), experiences show that final year students tend to get favored as many graduating students can afford to spend 3-4 days a week for work.
Pay: $6-$10 /hour
Research participants
This is probably where part-time jobs really get unique. Occasionally you may receive emails asking for participants for some study done by a professor or some project group. One is usually paid on an hourly basis, ranging from 5 dollars an hour to 10 dollars plus an hour. The nature of participation of course depends on the research project, and that is where the fun comes in. Not only you get to earn money, you will also learn something interesting about the research. Moreover, some research programs actually require long-term participation. For example, there may be some weight losing research programs going on, and you are required to exercise as instructed and are monitored for your bodily condition. What can be better than getting paid for losing weight?
However, you need to know where to find such research programs. Mostly your school will advertise such activities for their own professors. Beyond that, let your friends in other school know your interest so that they can update you information that you may not know. Some organizations or institutes on campus actually have a mailing list for their research participants. Be sure to park your name there.
Pay: $5-$10 /hour
Student caller
How about sitting in front of a telephone and talking to some strangers over the line? There is always an element of surprise in being a student caller, which is an increasingly popular job in Singapore. University students are considered the perfect fit for such a job, as it doesn’t really require a college degree but it does require a fair amount of communication and language capability that university students mostly have.
The easiest way to find such a job is probably to look around in among various organizations in your university. Some research institutes periodically conduct telephone surveys for their research projects and they pay students on an hourly basis. If such opportunities don’t exist on campus, you can always look for private companies that have similar demand. They may need callers to find out about customer satisfaction, do market surveys or even promote their products.
Pay: $7-$12 /hour, sometimes with variable commission per closure.
Other on-campus jobs
Your university surely has a variety of on-campus jobs and some of them are targeted at students with financial needs. The more popular jobs include being a library assistant where you help shelve the books. Some administrative offices also need manpower to speed up their work. In addition, many shops in university may have agreed to offer part-time jobs to students.
Typical pay: $7 / hour
Your university will have a centralized system for you to find out such jobs, usually known as ‘Work Study Scheme’. You will be surprised once you log in and find out how many jobs are actually available there, ranging from being a logistics helper to a writer to even an emcee! However, if such a system is not available or if you want to have access to unadvertised jobs, it is always a good idea to ask directly. Go into the shop and ask the person behind the counter, “Hi, do you offer part-time job to students?” That’s probably the simplest job application in the world.
Being a full-time student and a part-time employee is not easy. You have to juggle between your study and your work. But the reward is always proportional to hard work. And you are actually rewarded beyond the pay, since you have acquired the right work ethics, valuable work skills and important awareness of what the working world is like.