Opinion:
We need more summer jobs
Finding a job, or in this case a summer job, is already hard for people who have lots of experience and a few year of university/college studies behind them, or maybe a degree of some sort. But what about a high school student with very little or no experience then?It seems almost impossible to find a summer job of any kind.
There are of course people who'll tell you they had no problem finding a job for the summer. In most cases though these people are the lucky ones who have loads of connections or a parent or a relative who owns a company or something to that matter, and can easily offer a good job.
Then there are the majority of people who have very little connections to the ”business world” and are often left without a job.
Many cities in Finland do offer a fair amount of summer jobs, even for 15-year-olds, but there are just too many applicants. In 2012 over 10 000 students applied for the summer jobs offered by the city of Helsinki, but only about 3000 were hired. And of course a majority of the people hired were the ones with previous experience or studies of a certain field. Although the description of the job may say ”no previous experience required”, on the next line it'll read ”we view previous experience as a plus”. In other words that means ”we only hire people with lots of experience.” And same goes with the big chains such as HOK-Elanto and Suomen Lähikauppa OY. It would be only fair to give a chance to those who have no previous job experience because you only learn the job by doing the job. The problem is that in the future when it's time to find a ”real job”, nobody will hire a person who never had a summer job or a part-time job. The employers will think you're some lazy couch potato since you have no experience.
It is understandable with the bad economy and all that companies don't want to hire. But why do the companies that do hire require so much? And why do they advertise themselves as a company who offers jobs to everybody, when they clearly don't? For example a gardening job where you water the plants and trim the lawn requires studies of the field or previous experience of gardening jobs. Or a job for a cleaner requires a drivers license because according to the job description ”a few of the locations can not be reached by public transport.” And on top of that many of the employers that list their open jobs under ”summer jobs” are looking for people who can commit to the job full time for 3 months or longer. A high school student with a two month summer vacation is obviously not suitable for these jobs.
It is indeed very hard to find a summer job with all 1the obstacles. Then there are all the company bosses and politicians and whoever complaining about how this generations is lazy and non-achieving and how there are so many unemployed young people living off of Kela. Well I wonder why...
There should be more summer jobs available for students who need experience in order to get hired for full time jobs in the future and get financially stable.