Summer Jobs for Teens

From the Wall Street Journal | Mar 9, 2010

The summer job market for teens has been tough for so long that few people under 25 can remember a good year.

The last time summer jobs were easy to snare for adolescents-a
decade ago-today's teenagers were still in elementary school. And the
gloomy trend may get worse. The proportion of 16- to 19-year-olds
landing summer jobs this year is expected to slip below last summer's
record-low of 28.5%, says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor
Market Studies at Northeastern University; that compares with 45% in
2000. The Economic Policy Institute says one million teens have simply
left the labor force-they're neither working nor looking for work-since
the recession began, an unprecedented number.

Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal

Jennifer
Martinez, 18, of New York City, center, landed a summer job at
McDonald's last year, and continues to work there part-time to pay
college costs.

Therein
lies a huge risk for today's youth. Holding down a job, or volunteer
work that replicates the demands of employment, can be an important
growing-up experience, lending self-confidence, responsibility and
basic job skills, teen-development experts say.

But several damaging myths about teen summer jobs have taken root in
the sour soil of recession. Before you let your teenager sit out the
summer-job market, make sure none of these false notions is at work:

• It's not worth trying. In a talk to 33
California teens last November, Renee Ward, founder of Teens4Hire.org,
a job site for adolescents, says most had an attitude that "there are
no jobs and nobody's hiring." But none of the teens in the group had
even tried, she says. "They're just hearing it in the media and among
their friends."

Kids get jobs in a recession the same way jobless adults do-by
trying, trying, and then trying again. Early in 2009, Spencer
Dickerson-Carey, then 16, started applying for summer jobs, contacting
more than 100 employers; he got two callbacks, both rejections.
Finally, last July, the Long Beach, Calif., teen landed a part-time
position selling skin-care products at a mall kiosk, where he made
enough money to buy an old car. "Hopefully this summer, I'll be able to
get a better job because I already have sales experience," he says. His
advice to job-seeking teens: "Don't stop looking."

Among the best places to look, Ms. Ward says, are government-run
youth programs; resorts and vacation spots; camps and amusement parks;
child- and elder-care providers; moving, packing and lawn-care
companies; movie theaters, restaurants, and clothing or accessory
stores. "Don't buy into the idea that nobody is going to hire a
teenager, because some will," she says. "Show your enthusiasm, your
ambition and your drive."

Cheryl A. Guerrero for The Wall Street Journal

Spencer
Dickerson-Carey, 17, applied at 100 different employers before landing
a summer job last year. Throughout the year, he donates his spare time
to California Families in Focus, a nonprofit. Here he works alongside
the group's founder, Maria Angel Macias.

• Summer jobs won't help you get into college.
Too many teens and their parents assume a carefully assembled montage
of bought-and-paid-for camps or overseas service trips will be their
admission ticket to a competitive college. In fact, Seth Allen,
immediate past president of The Common Application, a group of 400
colleges and universities that use a standardized undergraduate
application form, regards this as a widespread misconception, "that
getting a paid job isn't nearly as valuable an experience as going to a
physics boot camp or building homes for the less fortunate on a
Caribbean island."

At many colleges, admissions officers' regard for such elaborate
camps or group service trips, vs. earning a regular paycheck, "has
flipped a bit. Students who work may stand out more" in a big applicant
pool, says Mr. Allen, who is also dean of admission and financial aid
at Grinnell College in Iowa. Paid jobs can provide the training and
context teens need "to connect the education they will have in college
to the real world," he says. If a teen can't find a paying job, serving
"as the low person on the totem pole" as a volunteer with assigned
duties and a regular work schedule at a nonprofit organization can
deliver comparable experience.

Finding a volunteer job as a teenager may take some work, but many
organizations accept volunteers as young as 16, says Erin Barnhart of
Idealist.org, a nonprofit that posts volunteer and internship
opportunities on-line. Among them: some chapters of Habitat for
Humanity, the American Cancer Society and the American Red Cross. Some
teens are finding volunteer work helping nonprofits with social
networking or Web marketing efforts, says a spokesman for
VolunteerMatch.org, another Web site that posts volunteer opportunities.

• Flipping burgers is beneath me. Many adolescents dismiss fast-food jobs as un-cool. But teens can learn a lot in a summer behind the fast-food counter. Yum! Brands'
5,600 U.S. Taco Bell restaurants, for example, train teens as young as
16 in customer service, production skills and teamwork. Shawn Boyer,
chief executive of SnagAJob.com, a Web site posting hourly jobs, says,
"Having that kind of job on your resume is not a knock," because such
jobs entail real work, not just serving as a go-fer. He adds, "You can
get firsthand experience interacting with customers," and opportunities
to get promoted as well.

On a job last summer at a McDonald's restaurant in Manhattan,
Jennifer Martinez, 18, of New York City, discovered she likes customer
service, she says, adding, "you're not going to get bored" meeting the
public. She has advanced to a training position, in addition to serving
as a cashier, and continues to work part-time while attending college.
"I don't understand why people don't want to work in fast-food places,"
she says. She is learning the same customer-service, teamwork and
time-management skills as required by any retail job, she adds.

• The paper route is out. It is true that
kids aren't peddling newspapers door-to-door any more. But selling
needed services to neighbors still works. Although they aren't on an
employer's payroll, many kids still learn accountability, initiative
and responsibility by selling their window-washing, trash-picking,
housecleaning, lawn-mowing, baby sitting or other services.

At age 11, Jeremy Furchtgott, Chevy Chase, Md., started a
snow-shoveling business with help from his three younger brothers,
earning from $15 to $100 per driveway on school snow days. That
expanded to doing yard work for neighbors in the summer. By age 16, he
started another business buying used bikes, fixing them up and selling
them. Even while offering customers bargain prices, he still earned a
hefty profit, splitting the proceeds with charity, says Mr. Furchtgott,
now 18.

• All teen work is unskilled labor. Many
teens think of career skills as something they will get in college or
thereafter. But plenty of teens make money applying high-tech know-how.
William McCraney, 18, has a business converting home videos to DVDs on
his laptop. The Midland, Texas, teenager spends up to 20 hours a week
working for clients during the summers. His profit has enabled him to
buy a television and a new computer, and to pay half the cost of his
car, a 2005 Yukon. (His parents paid the other half.) The biggest
challenge, he says, is holding down sales volume during the school
year. "I have to tell a lot of people no," he says.

-E-mail sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com.