Semester breaks vary in length by university and colleges. However, finding a job during the semester break can be challenging for a student.
Today, D. Simple Life put together these Top 10 Semester Break Jobs for Malaysia University & College Students.
2017 Update: The world is changing, so do the job market. In June 2017, we update this post to include more information and resources to help university & college students find their desired part time job.
This update include new information & resources such as:
- Skills Required,
- Experience & Training,
- Additional Benefits, and
- Where you can find the job
1) Restaurant Waiter
Skills: Working as a waiter or waitress during your semester break could be the best and easiest job ever. This job involves mostly practical and customer service skills (check here for more waiter or waitress skills).
Experience & Training: Restaurant owner often welcome candidates with no prior experience and On Job Training will be available. As a higher education student, who manage to ‘survive’ through the examination and the abundant of assignments, should not find this job especially difficult.
Additional Benefits: Some restaurant even have the tipping system, which collected tips will be equally distributed among the staffs, but as we acknowledged that this system only applied for full-time staff. So don’t be disappointed if you didn’t receive any tips (Malaysian does not have the habit to tip).
Despite not having the tips, you will still get free meal for working as a part-timer (most restaurant & cafe provide at least one meal). So, work at your favorite restaurant and you can eat the free food until you get sick of it.
If you doubt about the benefits & costs of the job, you may read the Pros and Cons of Being a Waiter or Waitress to find out more!
Where to find: You may apply for a part-time waiter or waitress position at any restaurant nearby your neighborhood. New cafe or coffee house usually welcome university and college students to join their workforce.
Facebook Group is another wonderful resources for waiter or waitress part-time job. Join Facebook Group such as – Malaysia part time & full time jobs, Freelance & Part-Time Jobs Malaysia, Malaysia Part Time and Full Time Jobs, and many more – then check for any available vacancy. Just keep in mind that jobs are limited and there are thousands of individual like you searching and applying for the same job, so remember to state your strength and competitive advantage in the application. Also, approach the person-in-charge in a courteous manner and make a good first impression may win you the job.
Lastly, hundreds and thousands of jobs are available on the online job portals. Part Time Post is one of the famous Malaysia part-time job platform. Just search for the waiter in the search bar of ‘Any Job Function’ and you will find several jobs (mostly in Klang Valley).
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| How to search for part-time waiter job in PartTimePost |
Job Street is another well-known job portals. Again, search for terms ‘waiter part-time’ in the search bar and select your location to seek for open vacancy. Please note that most open vacancy only accept full-time staff in Job Street, so make sure they accept part-time staff before you drop your application.
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| How to search for part-time waiter job in Job Street |
2) Babysitting
Skills: Babysitting job not just being a nanny who spent days and night watching after the kids, you can also work at a Daycare center. At Daycare, you will be responsible to take care of the children’s homework, playtime and other daily activities. If you are excellent in taking care of children, this would be the place you want to look for your temporary work. Check for Skills and Qualities for a Babysitter, if you were unsure about your quality being a babysitter.
Experience & Training: The demand of Day-care has been rising as the economic raise (Malay Mail Online, 2014); so did the job market in this field. Working parents now expect these Daycare centers to take care of their children while they were busy working for the living. This open up more opportunities for higher education students with minimum experience to get a part-time job in the Daycare center.
On Job Training will be available, and once again, university or college student will not have hard time to deal with the children’s homework, all you need is not to lose your patient with these little angels (or demons, sometimes).
Remember, despite you only work as a part-timer there, but kids may see you as important as anyone in their life, so your words and actions are going to influence them, now or in the future. Be a good leader and role model is important to work in a Daycare.
Additional Benefits: You will definitely learn much about patient and anger management working in a Daycare center. Additional leadership skills may be developed, as you now are the ‘mother hen’ for these children. Other parenting skills such as changing diapers, child safety and health and relationship skills can be learn as well. If you would like to know more about parenting skill, check out Better Parenting site.
Lastly, this could be a well-paid work for student, however, it’s not an easy task after all. As the saying goes, “Children are Angels, until they learned to speak”. But, if you are a super child-lover, there no job like this one would fit you best.
Where to find: One awesome site to find for a babysitter job is GreatAuPair. Go to the site and click on the cities to check for available babysitter job. Parents will post their request on the page with the information include – weekly rate, hours per week, experience required and the time frame for the job. Most weekly rate is negotiable and depending on the hours per week required to take care of their child. Try look for jobs that required shorter time frame and limited experience (None or 1 year).
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| Search for babysitting job that require shorter time frame and limited experience |
More information (nationality, child’s age, religion…) will be shown after you clicked on individual post. Sign up is needed to apply for the job. Please be careful when you disclose your personal and credit information to the site.
Secondly, you can search for Daycare job at Job Street and Part Time Post. Enter ‘part time daycare’ in the search box to find suitable vacancy.
We did not manage to find much related job in both Job Street and Part Time Post, so let go back to the traditional method, head to the Daycare center nearby your house and ask for any available vacancy.
Some may not have any listing or notice about hiring, but you can also walk in and ask them politely. Optionally, give them a call or WhatsApp (recommended) to see whether they need an extra hand to deal with those little angels. Last reminder, don’t hesitate to show your love to the kids!
3) Data Entry Job
Skills: Data Entry Job is where an agency/company having too many workloads and required a part-timer to complete their simple information entry works, as their full time (Professional or Experienced) employees can work on more skillful tasks. This position is in a high demand as the Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) would like to save their cost and hire a Part Time Data Entry.
It basically involves entering information into an electronic form using word processing or data processing software. Require minimum computer skills and basic knowledge to work with the software. Students should have learn these skills either in their secondary school or in their higher education. If you’re not so sure or want to advance your skills in these softwares, check here out these training course for Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word or PDF.
The data entry job ranging from arranging sales data, financial data (more like bookkeeping), and other customer’s information. You may work with a company, which some required to be on-site (to be in the office), while some allow you to work at home.
Working with company you can expect at least RM 300 (small company) and up to RM 1000 for skilled-position (e.g. Account Clerks). While the work-at-home usually paying lower rate and pay for the quantity of work completed, no matter how much time you spent on it.
Experience & Training: Require no prior experience, as long as you know how to use the software that they requested on. Basic explanation on how to arrange the data will be discussed, formal training will not be required.
Additional Benefits: Many part-time jobs are not suitable to be include in the resume (working experience as waiter when you apply for accountant position may not be relevant), data entry, however, is another case. Let say you’re applying for an accountant position, having data entry working experience means you may have experience with bookkeeping, arranging financial documents, and ability to use financial software (Excel is usually the basic).
Your manager will understand that learning these in the textbook is totally different from learning practically. Therefore, these data entry jobs may just filled your job application and make you a more ‘experienced’ candidates.
Just bear in mind that the data entry job may be quite boring and monotonous. For people who seek interesting and challenging jobs, this is definitely not going to suit you.
Where to find: There are many places that you can find a data entry job. The less formal place to go is Facebook Page (example: Jobs – Data Entry / Admin Malaysia). But, lets be honest, we don’t 100% recommend this source. There would be a higher chance that you put yourself in danger or contributing free work for others if you get a data entry job through Facebook. A reader shares his experience of working long hour working with abundant of data and end up earning just a little.
Hence, we encourage students to search for this job with more established channel – freelance site – for instances. At these sites, the income or payment is secured by the third party (the site). The client must has sufficient credit in their balance to hire someone, and once you’re hired, the site automatically keep the specific amount of pay in their system and will release to your account once the job is completed and accepted by the client. There are thousands of freelance site, but some popular one are Upwork, Freelancer, Truelancer, PeoplePerHour, Guru, Project4Hire, and Freelancing.
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| Register and search for data entry jobs in these freelance sites. |
All these freelance platform required registration and one works differently from others. The first model is where clients post their jobs and you (as a freelancer) apply to the job and place your best price for the service. The another model is you post your service, and your clients approach. Later model can be seen in Fiverr, Fourerr, and Zeerk.
Whatever how the freelance site works, we encourage you to understand how the site works and the terms and condition before putting your head into the freelance world. Remember, violating some rules may risk penalizing your account and freezing your income.
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| Fiverr is a freelance site that you can post your data entry service for sale. |
Lastly, don’t forget to check out the online job portal – Job Street and Part Time Post. You may sometimes found one or two part time data entry job here.
Related Reading: How to Manage Your Finances
4) Promoters
It is undeniable that the most common job for students is the Promoter. Shopping centers are looking for extra help around this time of year (Festival Season). It not an difficult task to get a promoter position. After all, we would advise you to understand your interest and work for what you passionate in. To make it simple, if you doesn’t like pets, make sure you don’t work in a pet store.
Moreover, always understand the terms and condition before working. Promoter is not a well-paid job (Except for Luxury Product’s Promoter), so if you really want to earn more, you will need to work hard to get more sales in order to earn more commission. Remember, “commission” is the gold mine in promoter job. Always ask for the basic pay and the commission pay, mostly are 5 ~ 10%, depending on the product selling.
To get a promoter job, head to the nearest shopping and search for any shop that paste the notice of available vacancy. Walk in or call the person in-charge to arrange an interview. The other way is to stay alert on the internet for any Event, Fair or Exhibition that recruiting promoter.
Just a quick reminder, if you’re not an extrovert, then promoter would not be the best choice for you.
5) Bookstores
Another great working opportunity for university student would be in bookstores, usually as a store assistance or general employees, where basically do all the book arranging, stock managing, cashier, and customer service. They may shift you from one position to another when needed, so don’t get surprised when they ask you to help with those heavy boxes.
D. Simple Life has made a little survey on the market as Popular offers the part time opportunity, especially during their Exhibition, which run throughout the year at different location. Check out their page for more detail.
Secondly, Pustaka Rakyat will be the runner-up who also providing working opportunities for part time student, however, their branch are relatively fewer, compared to Popular and other.
Other options would be Borders, MPH, and Kinokuniya which offers a limited number of part time position. There are also small local bookstores around your residential area, contact them to inquire about part time position.
6) Paid Seasonal Internships
Alright, there is companies looking for interns to fill their empty position in the company. These positions are always available because companies would spend less to employ an intern compared to a full time employee. Don’t get fed up when you heard the lesser pay, some company pay up to RM 1000 for intern, especially for skilled position, including, programming, accounting, technician, construction, science-related, engineering-related and other job.
Get in contact with the HR department of a company related to your field and propose an internship for an extra hand help at the office during your semester break.
7) Tutoring
If you are very patient (or strict) and love to teach, why don’t consider to be a tutor. There wouldn’t be much problem for a university/college student to teach secondary or primary students. All you need you to get your mind, refresh on those syllabus learnt back in the days.
There are basically 3 ways to get a tutor job. First, head to a Tuition Center and ask for a position. This way is the most effective (perhaps, the fastest) way to get a tutor job. The particular center will be testing your teaching ability before they actually employ you. Moreover, you stand a chance to get a long-term part time position here.
Secondly, Home Tuition is another way of getting a tutor job. To be a home tutor, you will require own transportation to travel to your student’s house. You may register on the Home Tuition Website to post your skill and experience allow parents to approach you. These are several sites: Tuition Job, My Private Tutor, and Tuition Plaza.
You may also consider teaching near your neighborhood. If you are staying in an apartment, the boy and girl next door would be your customer. Ask their parents kindly to offer your service. If you have been treating them well, they will definitely accept the offer.
8) IT Freelance
As we have mentioned-above, IT-related field could bring great pay for student as they are skilled-position and highly demanded in Malaysia Market. Bear in mind, most SME just started to take their step forward to this IT field and require some help (especially the cost-saving one). So it’s time for all the IT expert to grab their gagdets and head to the front-line. Freelance Job Platform such as Freelancer and Upwork are the best sources for students who like to work at home. You can also search for local Part Time Job Site like Part Time Post.
The job ranging from programming, web development, mobile development, designer, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM)…. Remember, the pay-scale depends on your skill, quality of work, and the difficulty of the tasks. (Of course, it’s also depends who you work with)
9) Be a distributor
Being a distributor may not be everyone favors, but it’s no doubt the easiest job that you could get. Advertising companies are consistently seeking for flyer distributor to give away their handbills.
The distributor is not limited to distributing flyers, there are also distributors work for handing out sample, usually during the events or exhibitions.
To get a distributor job, head to any flyer printing shop around your house and ask for any distributing position.
10) Writer
This is always my favorite job during the semester break! Working as an online writer is challenging, especially when you were asked to write topic out of your niche. This happens quite frequently when you are working with an article writing company. So, get yourself out of the comfort zone and start learning something new today!
Just like other freelance job, freelance writer can enjoy flexible working hour and environment (mostly in your room or on your bed). Despite everyone can write, but not everyone can create quality contents.
Freelance writer jobs can be found at any of the Freelance Job Platform. If you think that you’re a skillful writer, why don’t you consider to offer your writing service on Fiverr? For an entry-level writer, don’t expect online writing is just the same as writing an essay in your examination. You will need to equip yourself with some SEO Writing Skill before you can get your step into this field.
Wrap Up
That’s the end of the list. For students who would like to have ease of finding part-time job in the next semester break, we suggest you to start building your network. Networking is so important when looking for employment opportunity, not just for part-time work, but for your career building as well.
Many open vacancies do not published on website or any channel. Having more friends will help you to secure some of these precious working opportunity. Develop you networking skills with these 5 steps from Entrepreneur.
Lastly, we kindly remind you to ensure your safety when approaching new employers or conducting transaction online. When in doubt, don’t accept the job, better to be safe than sorry.
We will continue updating this blog, just show us your support by sharing this blog post, using the social button on the left. To keep yourself update with our blog, subscribe to our email list. D. Simple Life wish you a Happy Semester Break and All the Best!
