How to find seasonal jobs

People have lots of reasons for seeking seasonal jobs. Some people want to supplement their income from their usual jobs, while others may seek a seasonal job to further their employment prospects.

However, still, for others, a seasonal temporary job may have motives other than earning a bit of an extra income.

A seasonal job may be way to pay for all those presents that you would need likely to buy during the festive period for family and friends.

Way to a permanent job

Some people may take seasonal jobs in the hope of impressing the managers enough to offer them a permanent contract. In fact, may firms hire workers through temporary jobs in the holiday periods and then offer many of them full-time contracts.

For some people a seasonal job may be way to gain experience in another area. This could act as ways to gain enough experience to eventually leave the current job and seek employment in another field.

Requirements for seasonal jobs

• Flexibility - One of the big requirements for a temporary job is that they often require a great deal off flexibility. This is quite expected since most seasonal jobs become available because of the extremely busy sales period. An employee may be required to work unusual or very long hours.

• Experience – For many job positions, you will be required to have some experience, for many others, experience isn't really a factor.

• Confidence – The ability to interact well and demonstrate a confident personality is very important in most of these seasonal jobs because they often tend to be very customer-facing roles.

• Teamwork – The ability to work with others is again very important as you will need to work with other members of staff quite regularly.

• Fast moving environment – This is an extremely busy period, therefore, you should have the ability to withstand difficult customers and be able to pace yourself in a fast moving environment.

Some common seasonal jobs

Here are some tips where to look for seasonal jobs

• Courier industry - Seasonal jobs are aplenty in the courier industry. With so many people sending letters, cards, gifts, etc, in the run up to Christmas, this is an especially busy period for the delivery companies like FedEx, UPS and other couriers. These companies hire a lot of extra short-term workers during this period.

• Clothing and electronic retailers - If you are a budding salesman/saleswoman, then there are plenty of seasonal jobs available in the run up to Christmas as people buy gifts.

When should you start looking for seasonal jobs?

Although seasonal jobs will be mainly for the busy period around Christmas and New Year; in order to ensure you have a chance of lending a job, you will need to start applying for jobs well in advance because

How to apply for seasonal jobs

There are two main ways to go about finding and applying for seasonal jobs.

• Applying directly to an organization - You can go to individual companies and ask if they have any jobs for the Christmas period. Ask at a store front e.g. reception.

• Recruitment agency - You can go to a recruitment agency and ask them to find a temporary seasonal job around Christmas and New Year.

• Local press – Many employers take out advertising space in local newspapers/magazines and other localized publications to promote jobs that will be available for busy holiday periods. You should be on the lookout several weeks in advance though.

• Local job sites – Find websites that provide job listing for your city and search on that as many local employers use such sites.

• Internet job sites – You can search through temporary sections of the employment database using your chosen local areas as filters to find jobs within close proximity to where you live.