In this Careers & Coffee, Dan and Liz return with some ideas for summer jobs that are currently available in the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City area.

• Recreation jobs
• Retail jobs
• Service tech jobs
• And a new feature announcement!

Part-Time Jobs available

Hey, Liz. Good morning. How are you? I'm good.

Drinking coffee this morning.

Out of that out right now

Right on, oh, shoot. Well, we'll welcome you

back whenever that time comes. It's been a little bit since we

done careers and coffee, but we're back. We're still moving

along here. I think since we did the last one, we had a career

fair. Yeah.

We hopefully we saw some of you there.

Absolutely. Yeah. We had ended April, we had

a career fair at Cedar Rapids Public Library. Over 100

jobseekers, I don't remember the exact number but and 38

employers. So lots of activity going on at the spring career

fair. And I'm happy to announce we've made plans for a fall

career fair. Yay. So we'll be back at Cedar Rapids Public

Library in early September. So be on the lookout for that.

summer progresses here, we'll get some information out. So

yeah, we're happy to have the library as partner. Yeah,

They were super great to work with. And every

job seeker that we spoke with was like, Oh, I'm so grateful

that you guys are here doing this and having all these

resources at the ready to help. And hopefully a lot of people

made some good connections, whether it was with an employer

or with a resource. I mean, that's what it was all about. So

went really well. And I'm excited that we can continue to

partner or partner with such a great partner like the Cedar

Rapids Public Library. But don't wait for the career fair.

No reason to wait,

Yeah, so they're, they do have a workforce center

at the library that's open and ready to help at any day.

So use your resources. If you're a job

seeker right now and looking for something, plenty of resources

sources out there. So well, we do have a topic today. But

before we do that, I do want to talk about a new feature that we

have on Corridor Careers

New feature alert! This is super exciting, and a

brainchild of Dan, he has wanted this for a while and we finally

were able to make it happen. So take it away.

Well, this feature is called swipe a job.

So once you are if you're on your mobile phone, this guy

right here, right? If you're on your mobile phone, once you get

into a job listing on Corridor Careers, you can just swipe

right or left to go through that category and see all the jobs in

that category. This is kind of nice, because before you

actually had to scroll, like all the way to the bottom of that

job posting to see like similar job postings, or you had to hit

the back button, you can just swipe in between jobs. You can

browse a little quicker, you also have a nice little heart

right at the top of each job posting. So even you don't need

to log in, you can just click the heart to save that job and

come back to it whenever you'd like. So if you're you know, if

you're scrolling through jobs quick, just at the heart, if you

see if you are interested at all, I mean, come back.

Yeah, that's kind of like totally in alignment

with our DNA at Corridor Careers like our mantra is like we love

guest checkout, we do not want to make you log into our site to

have to have it be useful. Because we know, as a job

seeker, one of the scariest things is the fact that you're

so many things are out of control. When you're looking for

a job, you don't know who's going to call you back and ask

you for an interview, you don't know what stuff is going to

resonate with an employer. That's enough for you to think

about like you shouldn't be worried about whether the job

site that you're looking at is going to take your information

and give it to somebody else. So that's one of the things that

differentiates Corridor Careers from products like indeed, you

don't have to log in to get a benefit from our site. And we

know that about about you that you would prefer not to have to

share your information all the time. Now, if you do choose to

create a profile and Corridor Careers and log in, there are

additional features that are available to you like quick

apply or being able to use a resume builder. Those are all

free free to use, but it should be your choice whether you use

those features or not. So just throwing it out there that

that's this is key to who we are at Corridor Careers.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that about

us. Not to toot our own horn or anything but yeah, and make sure

to check it out. Feel free to give us some feedback. We're all

ears and we're constantly trying to develop this product into

something that's super helpful for local jobseekers and Eastern

Iowa.

So hopefully even though you weren't asking for

it, it's a feature that you love and just find very easy to use.

If you don't find it easy to use, please let us know. We'd

love to improve on it. We're always tweaking things a

Corridor Careers. It's not like there's development that happens

every day on our job board.

Yes, absolutely. So Well, I think that's enough

Corridor Careers updates, enough talking about ourselves. How

cool we are. So we're, we're in May, summers, basically here

right around the corner. Yeah. Schools ending very soon. So

let's want to chat about summer jobs today. And on Corridor

Careers, we have a lot of jobs right now. Lots of employers,

anxiously looking for people. But some of those jobs that you

see, I guess, let me pose a question to you as I guess, what

are what are some jobs that you see that become available more

so in the summertime?

Well, sure. We saw it last year, the city was

really struggling to fill all those positions, that recreation

area so differently, all the pools in town need to hire all

of the positions. So from lifeguard to concession stands

to attendance, those positions need filled and those are great

positions for younger workers entry level. You know,

obviously, you need to have lifeguard training in order to

be a lifeguard, but they do probably have some training

that's offered in the summer to help them fill those slots. And

just continuing on with the city. There are lots of golf

courses that need people working at those as well. So Twin Pines

is the new mini golf course. Is

that right? Yeah, Mini Pines is that

Mini pines. I can't wait to go out there with my

family. But yeah, they're gonna be looking for people as well.

And all of the, you know, of course, you see hiring signs

everywhere with regards to retail. They're always going to

be looking for workers. And sometimes they're okay with

seasonal workers too. So they know that you're going to just

make work for them for the summer, and then you'll maybe do

something else in the fall or those flexible type positions

are going to serve you as you're trying to negotiate whether you

know, the other things that you do in the summer.

Yeah, yeah. And that's a nice thing, too. A lot

of these a lot of those summer jobs are part time. But yeah,

I'm scrolling through what the city of Cedar Rapids has

available on Corridor Careers right now. Recreation

supervisors, camp counselors, cashier, cashiers, at aquatic

centers, rec center assistance, you know, different things like

that. And there are some more permanent full time jobs as

well. But golf seasonal labor? There you go. So, you know, lots

of lots of opportunity. Yeah,

Besides like, just working for the city, you know,

there's there's plenty of landscaping and construction

positions available as well, you know, oftentimes, people will

work, construction in the summer, and maybe they would do

snow removal in the wintertime, you know, they could just flip

flop between those two things or work in the interior in the

wintertime too. There's a lot of painting, roughing and service

type organizations with service service companies looking for

additional workers as well. So if you have that skill set, it's

in high demand.

Yeah, and I think one thing we've seen as of

late with the tough time that employers have had hiring is on

the job training, especially something like this, and you

were seeing it even in more professional positions as well

now is employers number one, they just want to hire the right

person, right? They want to get somebody that's going to fit in

well with their team. And then they're willing to do on the job

training for you know, a couple of months if it takes it or you

know, pay for continuing education or something like that

if that's needed. But yeah, I'm looking through our just

construction, skilled trades, job postings right now. And

there's there's all sorts of different jobs both full time

and part time that are available right now. kind of pick your own

poison, like you could go work for a big organization like the

University of Iowa doing this stuff, or you could work for

somebody, you know, a lot smaller organization. Eastern

Iowa airport is hiring. So, oh, yeah, a lot of construction

companies. Yeah. Yeah. So lots of different options. If you are

looking if you'd like to, you know, work outside or work with

your hands. There's plenty of opportunity.

Yes, It's true and probably wages are higher this

summer than they have been in the past. So we are seeing an

uptick in applications, people are starting to apply more for

roles, I think, just the feeling, we don't know how long

it's gonna last. And hopefully at last, but like this feeling

of the less, there's less pandemic feeling happening, like

there's more in person activities people are getting

out, it also might be a good time to try a new job that

requires training that might be a little bit more challenging in

the wintertime. So I'm thinking of like an outside plant

technician for like I'm on are in media calm, you know, if

you're going to be stringing cable lines, you might want to

train to do that in the summer or similar. Like if you work for

like a garage door company as a service tech, any of those

service technician roles, it's probably better to just on you

physically to like train in the summer. And that way, when, you

know, the weather's a little bit more challenging in Iowa, you'll

you'll be more skilled in your position, you'll feel more

comfortable and you won't have to like battle the weather at

the same time as you're trying to learn your job. So

that's a really good point. Yeah, I have a

friend that does similar type work for Alliant Energy. He's

mentioned that before just the change a difference in what it's

like being out in the summer months versus the winter months,

for sure. Yeah.

I mean, those can be very rewarding jobs, because

if you hate working in an office. It's, it is great to be

able to work outside with your hands. And, and it's just, it's

better to not have to fight that first couple of months at least.

So I encourage you to look at those positions now and consider

them because yeah, it's never been a better time as far as pay

and on the job training as it is right now.

For sure. Okay. Do you have anything else before

we sign off? For the session of careers and coffee?

I don't know. Any, any parting motivational words,

just to keep us going?

Yeah, I mean. Yeah, I mean, I guess if you're

a job seeker, just keep your head down. And, you know, keep

exploring, I think is my main thing for today. Like, maybe, or

maybe you're just a little down, like you haven't found that, you

know, something that you're super interested in, but, you

know, just just keep exploring, and there's just so many

opportunities out there right now. In great employers that are

hiring and like I said, Well, you know, willing to do on the

job training and good wages. So I encourage people to just keep

exploring right now and, and, you know, until you find that

something that you really enjoy it or find certain things in

your current role that you really enjoy and try to apply

those to something that you're looking to do in the future.

Great, well, at least it's sunny and we got

weather on our side right now. So good luck out there. If you

have any questions for us, please drop it in the chat. And

how about you like and subscribe to our YouTube channel while

you're at it?