Students and part-time jobs – they go together like lock and key. Night and day. Cheese and wine. According to a 2018 survey from Save the Student, a whopping 76% of students have a part-time job to help fund their studies.
Say ‘student job’ to a room full of people and you’re likely to hear mutterings of bartending, waiting tables and shopkeeping. Flyering for nightclubs, being a brand ambassador or a library assistant are also commonplace student jobs today. These ‘traditional’ university jobs all have one thing in common: the student working pre-arranged shifts for minimum wage. No flexibility, no autonomy and not much say.
The rise of the gig economy
Take a closer look at the wider world of work today though, and the rise of the ‘gig economy’ is changing how it’s all done. There are three parties involved here: the worker paid by the gig, the customer paying for it, and the company facilitating it all. Today it’s as easy to go online and pick up a gig (a one-off job) as it is to order a meal on Deliveroo.
The convenience that this has given customers and workers has drastically changed the world of work, especially for students. In 2018, the National Census found that over 4% of the population in the UK had worked in the gig economy in the last 12 months – that’s around 2.8 million people! Although it’s nothing new for people to work freelance (babysitters have been around for a while), the last decade has seen the amount of new tech-enabled work sky-rocket, with platforms such as Uber, TaskRabbit and Deliveroo changing the way taxis, odd-jobs and takeaways are done for good.
A game-changer for students
The tech-savvy students of today are in the perfect position to take advantage of this. With flexible working hours, there’s no need to skip lectures or miss out on nights out. And as workloads fluctuate over the year, you can adjust when you earn accordingly – there’s no Manager controlling your life with weekly shifts. When you’ve got more time at the start of term you can maximise your hours and save, then when coursework deadlines and exams approach you can rein it in. When it’s time to knuckle down with your degree, you can relax knowing you’ve got your hard-earned cash backing you up.
Working like this not only gives students the flexibility to fit work around their studies – it empowers them with a sense of entrepreneurship and control over their lives. For most, university is the first time they’ll have lived alone and taken full responsibility for themselves. Add in working life as well, and you’re basically a fully fledged adult.
How do you choose where to work?
What do you do, though, when flexibility is everywhere? There are more than 600 student Deliveroo drivers in Cambridge alone. How does a student, then, pick whether to be a Deliverooer, a TaskRabbiter or an Uber driver?
Well, whatever job you take it’ll most likely end up on your CV once uni’s over. So you should pick the ‘gig’ that looks best to your dream employers. Unless you’d like to be an Olympic cyclist, delivering takeaways by bike probably won’t give you relevant experience for the future.
Tutoring on your CV however, opens up a lot of doors. Organising and planning lessons, managing private clients and communicating concepts to your students are all great skills to have on your CV, and could help you land your no #1 job.
And MyTutor is always looking at ways to create more value for its student workforce. From loyalty programmes to graduate networking events and career mentoring.
Why MyTutor is the best work for uni students
1. It fits around your life
With online tutoring, you’re in control of when you work and where. So you can fit lessons around your uni timetable, social life and any extra curricular stuff like sports matches and societies. No shift-work, no minimum wage. Just log on and earn whenever you like.
2. You can see the positive impact on your students
Over a quarter of kids in the UK have received one-to-one tuition. That’s a lot of kids needing homework help for Maths, English, Science and every other subject under the sun. Whether for GCSEs, A Level, IB or Scottish Highers, there’s a lot of need for tutors who know how to ace their exams. It makes for really enjoyable work too. One of our tutors, Selin, told us, “seeing the children you tutor improve week by week is such a rewarding feeling – MyTutor is the perfect student job!
3. You get the chance to give back
If you tutor with our Schools Programme, where we partner with disadvantaged UK schools, the extra help you give can help a child get the exam results they need for their dream job or university. MyTutor gives students the chance to have a real impact on someone else’s life whilst earning good money and building up useful work experience.
4. It sets you up for the future
When you tutor with us you’re self-employed, so you can already write ‘ran my own business’ on your CV. You’ll have skills employers always love to see (communication, organisation, people skills), and you’ll show how you can empathise, teach, lead and plan. As it’s all online, you don’t even need to leave your room to do it. And with pay up to £24/hr, it’s a pretty sweet money-earner compared to the Minimum Wage (around £6) you’d normally expect in a student job.
Think your child would enjoy tutoring? If they’re at uni, get them to sign up and we’ll have them earning in no time.
Written by Rose Collard