It’s getting ever nearer the time to start that summer job hunt. Yes, it’s only January, and you’re right: maybe it is on the early side to be considering summer jobs.
Of course, those of you currently attending the U of M may have recently taken in the job fair on campus and are probably now all the more cognizant of the fast-approaching summer employment period. Many employers are already headhunting ripe young minds from our university corridors.
Personally, I have always found late January and early February to be crucial times to start looking for those highly sought-after summer student government jobs.
Allow me to share a few experiences.
I like nature. I’ve worked all over Canada, gaining valuable work experience in the area of ecological field research with multiple government and not-for-profit organizations. The first two positions I attained were with the Canadian Wildlife Service and Environment Canada.
One position was based out of Winnipeg working with waterfowl and wetland birds, the other in the remote boreal forests of the Northwest Territories studying how a particular migratory songbird species was responding to industrial resource exploration.
The way I managed to get such eccentric, exciting, and, for the most part, well-paying summer jobs was firstly through the Federal Student Work Experience Program (FSWEP).
FSWEP is a federal registry whereby students attending post-secondary institutions full-time are able to create a profile, tailoring it in accordance with their current academic interests and background, previous employment experience, and so on.
Depending on the student and profile, various sectors of the federal government may express interest in interviewing someone with your skill set and interests, which may lead to a summer position somewhere in Canada.
According to the FSWEP home page, annual FSWEP campaigns span from, for instance, October 2012 to October 2013. Years where I’ve made (or reactivated) my profile in January or early February have yielded the most queries from various federal departments across Canada. Years where I’ve waited until late March have yielded far less queries.
Departments that hire summer students include, but are not limited to:
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; Fisheries and Oceans Canada; Parks Canada; the Canadian Transportation Agency; Environment Canada; library clerk positions and guide-interpreter positions at the Supreme Court of Canada and Rideau Hall, as well as various other parks and heritage sites across Canada.
If you’re a general sciences or liberal arts student in your first year or two of university and have yet to decide on what path suits you best, be sure to construct a profile that demonstrates your general interests in the sciences or arts and you may luck out and find yourself working somewhere in government that clarifies a few things for you.
And to those even less sure of themselves: I too was once like you. I drifted in and out of the arts and sciences; I am currently completing a degree in the biological sciences after spending four years completing a degree in communications at the University of Winnipeg. I feel your pain.
But FSWEP really did open a lot of doors for me, and it provided me with a licence to travel across Canada, where I was able to work eccentric backwoods jobs with unique folks in wild, remote places.
The province of Manitoba has a similar student employment placement service known as STEP, while the City of Winnipeg also employs rafts of undergrads in the summers.
FSWEP:
http://jobs-emplois.gc.ca/
STEP:
http://www.gov.mb.ca/cyo/studentjobs/
City of Winnipeg:
http://www.winnipeg.ca/resumeol/peoplesoft/job_category.asp
