Finding a job isn’t just hard for alumni and new graduates these days. Many Auburn University students searching for a part-time job this semester are finding that job opportunities are limited for them, too. Typical student jobs, everything from waiting tables to working retail, are hard to find in the Auburn area. According to Bankrate.com, 57 percent of college students hold jobs. For that majority, it means giving up free time to focus on making money. Whether they’re working for money to spend on books and tuition or just extra spending money, Auburn students are searching for jobs, and sometimes desperately. Rachel Powell, a senior majoring in psychology, is one of the many Auburn students looking for a job. “It could be anything,” says Powell, “fast food, sales associate at a clothing store. I’d settle for a janitorial position.” Powell says since her father works as a pastor and her mother as a secretary, they don’t have the money to help her and her brother with their expenses while they are in college, so Rachel is responsible for all of her expenses, including rent, utilities, gas and food. Powell knows that she’s not alone in the ranks of unemployed students. “I just got laid off, along with a whole bunch of other friends, from an Italian restaurant that shut down because they didn’t have enough money to make the electric bills,” says Powell. For her that means that her friends and former coworkers are now her competition. At the restaurant, Powell was among 20 servers, as well as hosts and kitchen workers. Since the restaurant’s closure, all of those employees are put to the task of finding new jobs, creating an even more saturated Auburn job market. If she doesn’t find a job soon, Powell doesn’t know what she’ll do. “If I can’t find a job, I will probably be living in my car,” she says. Although Powell has submitted 10 resumes and plans to apply to between 17 and 20 more jobs, she has yet to receive any calls back from potential employers. “This is just depressing,” says Powell, with a look of frustration and sadness. Fortunately, Powell realizes she has overlooked one potentially useful resource available to Auburn students searching for part-time work. Career Development Services offers their online job database, the Tiger Recruiting Link, which provides listings for full and part-time jobs as well as internships. “I didn’t use it before because I didn’t know it existed,” says Powell. All students have to do is register for the site with their TigerMail account and submit their resume to have access to the site’s current job listings.
For now, Powell will continue her job hunt, but hopefully soon she’ll be folding clothes or serving food between classes, and she’ll have a little less to worry about.