The seventeen-year-old Kristiāna Vilciņa works at a McDonald's restaurant for one month. She is one of eight thousand pupils participating in the State Employment Agency's summer employment program, in which employers offer jobs to young people.
“The hardest thing, I think, is agility. We need to do everything very quickly and communicate. I'm not used to it. I haveto communicate with my colleagues a lot so that I don't have any misunderstandings, but I'm getting used to it and I'm starting to do better,” Kristiāna said of her summer job.
Her job is to fry chicken fillets and fries. She plans to invest the money earned in a driver's license in the future. In total, McDonald's employs 41 pupils this summer.
McDonald's restaurant manager Vitalija Kliujeva said: “It's a great pleasure that young people come to us. It's their first experience. They're trying hard and we're trying to help them learn and get the first experience.”
Meanwhile, the shop network Maxima has allocated 400 jobs to students this year. One of them is Ivars Jurkēvičs.
“My responsibility is to sort out all the shelves with fruit and vegetables so that everything is of normal quality and isn't rotting. The main thing is that people are satisfied and no complaints come,” Ivars said.
Meanwhile, the fifteen-year-old Stella Krūmiņa works for one month in the private pre-school “CreaKids” this summer.
“My job here is to help look after children, arrange things, clean up sometimes after children. The hardest thing is when children are supposed to do something and they start to protest. The hardest thing is to control them and get them to do what needs to be done,” Stella said.
According to the State Employment Agency, 680 employers offer jobs to pupils this year.
Vineta Leončika, deputy director of the NVA Employment Measures Department said: “The most common professions are auxiliary worker, assistant sales officer, goods placement, waiter. They are the most popular. There are also different exceptions. Children also work in airports and offices, are data entry operators, work in libraries, museums, archives. A number of employers have told us that it is a great opportunity for them to prepare future employees, because there are often cases of returning to employers as permanent employees after getting education.”
This year, the number of people working in the summer has been higher than the employers' offer. Most pupils have used the opportunity to work for one month so they can both earn and enjoy the summer holidays.
