How many hours a week can I work as a student?
Student life isn’t cheap. Tuition fees aside, you’ll generally have accommodation, bills and travel to pay for and, of course, nights out. Sure, parents will help out where they can. But even with their help, your student loan will only go so far. That’s why most students have to find part-time work to support themselves financially while they’re at uni.
Pub work is popular with students for many reasons. You don’t always need experience and it can be flexible—most places will let you reduce your hours when you need to during exams or when your dissertation deadline is looming too large to ignore. But even in a typical week, most students will work between 15 and 20 hours per week.
The great news for students is that, right now, pubs are recruiting. Read on find out why working in a pub could be the perfect job for you while you’re at uni.
👉Can I fit a pub job around my studies?
👉Can I increase my hours if I need to?
👉What if I need to go home for the summer?
Can I fit a pub job around my studies?
Right now, the employment market is buoyant—especially in the hospitality sector. In case you’re not a business or economics student, that means there are plenty of job vacancies and employers are especially keen to retain staff. It also means that pub managers are being more creative in finding ways to accommodate employees with different needs when it comes to the hours they work.
So, in short, yes you can fit a pub job around your studies. Student-friendly employers (like Greene King) will do everything they can to accommodate good members of staff with specific rota needs. Usually though, because pubs tend to do most of their business at evenings and weekends (when there aren’t any lectures) there won’t be too much need for special shift patterns. So it’s not like you’ll be constantly pestering your manager about your shifts. But if you need to—pester away.
Can I increase my hours if I need to?
Flexibility doesn’t just mean having the ability to drop shifts when exam time comes around or your dissertation is due in. It also means having the freedom to take on more shifts if that’s what you want–or need–to do.
Pub work gives you that flexibility, particularly when things ramp up in the industry around Christmas and over the summer if your pub has outdoor seating. That’s why it’s good to work somewhere that gets really busy. Because, although places like that might be a tougher gig than working the bar at the Dog & Duck in Tweebury-on-the-Nice, it means that it can be a case of ‘fill your boots’, hours-wise when you need it to be and it makes that totally epic trip to New York, Nepal or wherever, much more achievable.
Even when it’s not peak pub season, if you’re up for doing more hours, your manager will be only too happy to hear it. Don’t overdo it to the point that you’re falling asleep in lectures or missing deadlines but the demand for hospitality workers at the minute means that there’s a good chance you’ll be able to get as many hours as you want.
What if I need to go home for the summer?
Pub managers know the score when it comes to uni. If they haven’t been students themselves, they will have worked with enough to know that, come summer time, you might be off. And though they can’t guarantee ‘keeping your job warm for you’ for when you return after summer, if you’ve been a consistently solid performer they’ll be only too happy to give you a call when a vacancy comes up. And, in some cases, you might just find that they have kept your job warm for you after all!
That’s why it’s as important to build up a great relationship with your manager as it is with your colleagues. In an industry like hospitality, though, building great relationships and even becoming buddies with your colleagues—managers included—is par for the course. They can, and will, sort you out wherever possible—they just need to know a bit about your circumstances so that they can figure out a solution that works for both you and the business.
Returning to work after an extended summer break can be a lot easier when you work for one of the bigger pub chains like Greene King. That’s because, in the event that your former manager can’t help you with a job when you come back to uni, they might be able to recommend you to another pub owned by the same umbrella company. With your experience, you’ll be a shoe-in and ready to pick up where you left off. You’ll also have a whole new crew of people to get to know. That’s what hospitality is all about, after all.
Looking for something else to read? Check out our article on everything you need to know about temporary pub jobs.
From Apprenticeships to management, from the north of Scotland to the far west of Cornwall, if you’re looking for a role in a hospitality, the huge range of opportunities that Greene King have are definitely worth a look.👀
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