Top 5 Office Jobs For Students

Office jobs are just great for students. There are many entry level office roles out there, so previous experience isn't always demanded by the companies hiring. Also, office jobs supply you with a lot of skills that you can take into other jobs when you leave college or university. Office jobs, for the most part, tend to be full time positions, so they are the sort of vacancy that you could pick up for a few weeks over the summer holidays. We advertise lots of those sorts of opportunities ourself on the e4s website. There are also some part time vacancies in offices, especially within smaller organisations, so you might be able to find some office work which you can do during term time too. If that’s what you are interested in then maybe you should sign up with a local agency which specialises in recruiting office staff on an ad hoc basis. You could be cover for companies who have staff that have phoned in sick or who have taken holidays. With that sort of office work, you could end up working for lots of different companies over the course of a year, picking up skills which you can use in other office jobs later on. Lots of businesses take on extra office workers for their ‘year end’ periods when extra work needs to be done for financial, legal or regulatory reasons. For lots of businesses this can be in the run up to, and the period immediately after 5 April (when the tax year ends) but different companies have different year end periods so there can be surges in the number of temporary office jobs on offer at any time of the year. So, let’s look at 5 office jobs which students can do on either a full or part time basis...

General Admin Office Jobs

General admin office jobs come in many different guises - indeed, no two general admin jobs ever seem to be exactly the same. General admin office jobs can cover everything from secretaries to receptionists, personal assistants to mail office staff etc, etc. Responsibilities can sometimes be quite focused, or, with other companies, can encompass a whole range of different tasks. Depending on the company you are working for as a general admin in an office, you may be required to do some, or all, of the following jobs:

• Photocopying
• Filling printers with paper
• Sorting petty cash
• Filing documents
• Taking phonecalls
• Welcoming visitors
• Arranging meetings
• Taking notes
• Making drinks
• Booking taxis for other employees
• Opening mail and getting it to the right people
• Sending outgoing mail from the company

Data Entry Jobs

Data entry jobs are an example of the sort of office work you might be able to pick up without previous experience. If you can use computers and have good attention to detail - and accuracy - then you could hold down a data entry job. Indeed, there are even some data entry jobs that you can do from home on your laptop. So, what is data entry work? Well, it’s pretty much exactly what it says it is - you enter data into some sort of system for the company you are working for. The data can be anything from invoices to information about employees, or from sales figures to names, addresses and contact details for customers or suppliers. If you know your way around a keyboard then you can become very quick at this sort of work over time, making you very employable in the future for similar sorts of work

Credit Control Jobs

Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business, so making sure that customers pay up on time is a very important function within any company. And that’s where credit controllers come in. These guys keep track of who owes money and when they should be paying it. If a customer doesn’t pay on time (often 30 to 60 days after invoice date), then the credit controller will start to chase for the debt, either by telephone, email or letter. With particularly stubborn customers, credit controllers need to get even more serious, sometimes putting another business on ‘stop’ (blocking further goods or services from being supplied) until the debt is paid. In serious cases, the credit controller may even have to resort to legal action, but, obviously that is a last resort as you are pretty much guaranteed to lose the customer. Credit control jobs can be quite high pressure at times, but the pay is pretty good and there are opportunities to progress towards qualifications and make a good career from this line of office work.

Purchase Ledger Jobs

The Purchase Ledger team are the mirror of the credit control function. Instead of getting the money in, the purchase ledger department is in charge of paying suppliers. If a firm has good cash flow, then purchase ledger jobs can be quite stress-free for students. You’ll be writing out cheques, paying money via the banking system, checking invoices and dealing with purchase enquiries. If, however, the company you are working for has weak cash flow and there isn’t much money available for making payments at certain time, then purchase ledger jobs can also be a bit stressful. If your employers can’t afford to pay their suppliers on time, then it’s you that will be getting it in the neck from those pesky credit controllers above!

Payroll Jobs

Unless you already have some quality experience in payroll behind you then you aren’t going to get a high level job in a payroll department. But lots of companies, especially bigger organisations, offer some entry level jobs within their payroll functions. You’ll be working alongside people who have many years experience of payroll, as its quite a specialised function in the world of work. The payroll department is responsible for making sure that employees are paid, either on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis, and for making deductions such as National Insurance or Income Tax, where applicable. As long as employees are paid on time, the payroll department tend to be quite popular with other employees of the company! So, those are our favourite ways for students to make money and gain experience from office work. Have you done any office jobs yourself? Did you enjoy them? Let us know in the comments below...