Hellloooooo everyone! Salam sejahtera 🙂 Hope everyone is doing good. So for FRESHERS 2016, a warm welcome to UNIVERSITY OF SURREY! 🙂 For those of you that has opt to attend the international orientation week, you all should be here already in campus since 2 days ago and should be having fun getting around in the campus and town and meeting new friends! I have moved to Harrow, London since last week and came back for a short stay with my friends yesterday and guess what, I met Yoshie and Ivy from the international recruitment team leading a group of new international students in touring Guildford town! I was so glad to see them and of course the new students. 🙂 This again remind me the scenario when I first came to UK last year. OHH I almost forgotten, HAPPY 1st ANNIVERSARY of arriving to UK to me! 😛 Last year today was the exact date I arrived in the UK. oh gosh. How fast time flies and its already been a year. So freshers, don’t think one year is long and you still have a super long time to enjoy life in UK cause in reality it just passed in a blink of an eye. 🙁

Okay lets get back to the topic of the day. As we know, the RM is not performing really good compared against the GBP (although it’s slightly better now as compared to previous year), so I guess some of you might be interested in securing a part time job to earn some extra pocket money 😛 Especially for those of you that just arrived, I still remember the feeling when I first arrived in UK- everything is beautiful, everything is amazing, everything is nice, but everything is EXPENSIVE as well. I could still remember the stunned expression I gave when I first saw the cheapest sandwich selling in the convenient store cause me GBP3, which is equivalent to almost RM18! Even eating a spicy chicken rice at the cheapest takeaway Asian meal in town- Kokoro also cost me GBP5.50, which is considered really cheap, but after conversion it’s still a huge amount, imagine eating a bowl of rice for RM30! I was so depressed and wouldn’t allow myself to buy anything unnecessarily and I almost never eat out. And of course I know I couldn’t allow myself to live such a miserable life in UK for the remaining 12 months so I decided to look for part time opportunities. It really makes a huge difference when you earn GBP here and then spending the money here. And of course when I started to earn my own pocket money, I don’t feel that bad when I spend and thus I started to treat myself better by doing some shopping and of course occasionally attending gathering with friends and also even started to travel! 🙂

And so today, I will give you all some tips and suggestion on securing part time jobs while you all are doing your full time course here in Surrey. There are many kinds of part time jobs available on campus and also at the nearby Guildford town center to suit everyone’s need. And good news is, this time of the year is the perfect time to search and secure part time jobs as the previous batch of students have already left, including the postgrads and thus most of the shops and restaurants are recruiting new people to fill in the place. And also as this time of the year is getting near to Christmas, which is a major celebration and festive season in UK, most of the shops are starting to get busy and thus many of them will recruit Christmas temps to work during this season. And from the previous experiences of my friends, if you perform well during this season, most of the shops will be very happy to extend your contract to become a long term part time job! 🙂

Before explaining on how to secure part time jobs in restaurants or shops in University or town center, I would like to strongly recommend the world’s best part time job ever- becoming a student ambassador for University of Surrey! 😛 So I guess since most of you have chosen Surrey as your institution to further studies, you all must definitely love Surrey right. 🙂 I mean, Surrey is really good and I really love the university with all my heart and therefore for me working as a student ambassador is the perfect job as I could share my passion for the university with people all over the world! Becoming a student ambassador has so many perks, ie: it looks nice on your resume, you get to meet the nicest people in the world- the international recruitment team, you get to be friends with so many other amazing student ambassadors- shout out to my best friends Ecclesia (Singapore ambassador), Tejasvi (India ambassador), Vy (Vietnam ambassador), and of course one of the most important reason- you are really well paid too! 😛 There are basically 4 strands in the student ambassador scheme, which include the UK/EU Student Recruitment, International Student Recruitment, Marketing and Communications and also Widening Participation and Outreach. As for Malaysians, we are mostly involved in the International Student Recruitment. Some of the jobs I always deal with in regards to my role as an International Student Ambassador is blogging (like what I am doing now), managing the FB page (please LIKE the page if you haven’t do so), leading campus tours, providing country specific information to the Uni’s international team and also assisting in events on campus such as Open Days, Applicant Days and etc. In short, I’ve never regretted and also feel really honored and blessed to able to be part of the team! Once again, if you’re thinking of finding a part time job, do consider the student ambassador scheme! 🙂 Applications for 2016-2017 will open from 26/9/16 onwards which is next Monday so do start preparing your application and all the best! For more information on the application process, please refer to following link: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/currentstudents/career/ambassadors/.

Besides the student ambassador scheme, there are also many other types of part time opportunities available on campus and also in town. For example, some of my friends have worked in the University’s convenient mart- Simple Fresh, Hillside Restaurant or on campus Starbucks which is really convenient. The Unitemps is the main service provider for the university’s part time jobs so it is also highly recommended for you all to register an account with them by clicking here (on a side note, you will also need a Unitemps account to get paid for student ambassador’s job so just register an account with them!). There are also many shops and restaurant in town that is currently recruiting too such as Primark, Marks and Spencer, House of Frasers, Giraffe, Five Guys, Greggs, Pret A Manger and so much more. Some of the websites that are useful to search for part time opportunities in town are: http://experienceguildford.co.uk/vacancies.php, http://www.studentgems.com/, http://www.indeed.co.uk/, http://www.reed.co.uk/ and https://www.gumtree.com/. The university has also put up a page on part time opportunities and feel free to click in to have a look: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/careers/current/work/parttimework/. 🙂

Besides, it will also be very handy if you could just print a couple copies of your resume and have a walk in town whereby you will see many shops that put up recruiting adverts on the window and you could just go in and ask for more details! 🙂

That’s all for this week. 🙂 Hope this post gives those of you that are thinking of securing part time jobs here in Guildford a general idea on what is available and how to apply. 🙂

Have a good time exploring Guildford Freshers!

See you all again soon. 🙂

Lots of love xx

Adeline