Louise Saviker: Student Job Search CEO on the number of students struggling to find work

Students are still battling to find consistent work leading into the summer break. 

Fifty thousand people applied for work through Student Job Search in November – the highest number this year. 

Chief Executive of Student Job Search Louise Saviker told Heather du Plessis-Allan while there are more jobs being listed, these are largely one-off or casual roles. 

She says this means students need even more jobs. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Spare a thought for students job hunting at the moment.
Got new data from Student Job Search which shows there
were nearly fifty thousand applications in November that is up
thirteen percent year on year. Luis Avaca is the chief
executive of Student Job Search and is with us now, Hi,
Luise Mardan, hell mate, that sounds a bit demoralizing, is it.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well, look, it's fantastic to see so many applications coming in.
Students are keen and eager to work, and the job
market itself is recovering. So there are four two hundred
jobs available for students in November, which is also up
fifteen percent compared to twenty twenty four. So when we're
talking about the volume at the tail end of twenty
twenty five, we're continuing to see really strong recovery around

(00:43):
the volume for student employment. But the main issue, or
the flip side of this, is that the student employment
landscape has completely changed, and while we have the volumes
back to pre COVID levels, the nature of the employments
shifted to more short term and casual work, which means
students need even more jobs to make up the necessary
hours to fund their study and life.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
I mean, look, if I'm looking for a silver lining here,
would it be that this kind of tough process separates
the whek from the chaffin and sort of teaches you
how to sell yourself to an employer.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Well potentially, and students are so eager. You can see
from the level of applications that students are really keen
to be working. They're absolutely fantastic resource, they're innovative, fantastic
problem solvers, they're just brilliant. We just hired six recently
at student job Search and they just lifted the place.
They're incredible. They're really hard working, diligent, they got the

(01:36):
job done.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
What do you guys give the kids advice on how
to land a job? And if you do, what is
the key piece of advice we do?

Speaker 2 (01:43):
And we really encourage students at this tough time to
just keep persisting. You jump on our websites, continue to
apply for jobs, sharpen up the CV, work your networks,
and just persist and take on any opportunity. What we
know is that once students get a start, then it
often leads to more work or something else down the line.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Youah, very good advice, Louise, Thanks very much. Louis Savaca,
chief executive at Student Job Search. For more from the
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