Moving Up to Maximum Hours Required Persistence — and Some Luck

Blogger Ayomideji Israel-Akinbo, an engineering science student from Nigeria and South Africa at Jamestown Community College in New York, is documenting his employment journey while he’s studying in the USA. Read his first post here.

Where I started

I was employed with a six-hour working schedule at SUNY JCC as a night desk assistant. This job required us to man the front desk of the resident halls from 12 – 3 am and sign in any people that don't live in the Res halls. A great time to catch up on work but quite unfortunate when you have an early morning lecture. I was able to get a good balance between classes, work and socialising, and I was ready to look for another job to get more hours and more pocket money. 

Next steps

At Jamestown Community College we are allowed to work up to 15 hours per week as an international student. The goal was to reach this limit. Since I'm not the only person with this idea, there would be competition. 

Unfortunately, most jobs have been filled, furthermore, there are only 7 days a week which need to be shared with other employees so asking for more hours at my current job was not an option. I needed to think outside the box and a stroke of luck. 

Most offices need/want a student assistant in some capacity and have budgets allocated for such. The jobs usually are highly contested and aren't as available as one can get max hours working in an office.  Now I had a task laid out in front of me: ask every office on campus if they were hiring a student worker. Started with the library — fully hired, campus life — fully hired, global learning? You guessed it. Fully hired. In the dust there was hope.

The stroke of luck I needed

Kerri had given me a tip that Career Services might be hiring a student worker. This was the stroke of luck I needed. I hurried to Annie, the Career Services advisor, to find out if they were hiring and fortunately, the position had opened up that morning. 

Since I was already in her office I had my interview on the spot and was hired immediately. In hindsight, I should have gone to Career Services to look for employment first and save myself from rejection but we needed a few L's for a massive W. 

Coupled with NDA and being a student worker I managed to get maximum hours as an international student at JCC. This was thanks to the support of Kerri Brown 🙏. 

Ayomideji Israel-Akinbo is an engineering science student from Nigeria and South Africa at Jamestown Community College in New York.