“We've actually gotten some more serious things, internships, and actually, recently Stanford reached out, we've gotten lots of, we got like a request from the law firm for intern social media internships, so that was really big, and we've gotten several requests to, like, set up websites, which are kind of like bigger things,” said Eeva Teytelman, a Berkeley High School sophomore, and president of Jobs for Jackets, a club focused on assisting students in cultivating careers by finding odd jobs around Berkeley.
The club itself is fairly new to campus, making its debut appearance at the Fall Club Fair. However, the idea behind the mission of this club has been around for far longer, originating from a local Berkeley senior citizen who was being taken care of by a BHS student. He believed that other senior citizens might benefit from receiving assistance from BHS students as well, and Jobs for Jackets was born. “She had the idea to have a system where we could match old people up with people, and then it just expanded to, like, general housework and jobs like that,” Teytelman said. “Maybe I'll see if there's a demand for this, I'm sure lots of them would like to help, so then we were like, we could make this a club so we could kind of reach other students besides just us in our friends.”
The club’s 100+ members support and assist over 60 clients in a multitude of areas. Using surveys, students and clients are matched, offering support with communication, preferences, and specific needs of both parties being met. Teytelman and vice president Amaya Simic, also a sophomore, work on matching clients and students regularly, hoping to expand their reach and provide as many opportunities as possible for students to help elderly citizens. “I think we're hoping to maybe expand too and get other people involved, it's a lot of work. Because we have to now manually match people,” Simic said. Simic also floated the idea of branching out to other schools where new chapters could be started. “We have lots of people asking us if they can join from other schools, which we haven't done yet since we need more jobs, but maybe it could grow into something that other schools start, which would be really cool.”
In terms of expansion, the club leaders have many ideas on how to grow Jobs for Jackets to its fullest potential and help cater to as many students as it possibly can. For leadership, that begins with promoting the club as much as they can through mailing lists, school-sanctioned reports, club fairs, and more. “On the student side, we got a lot of sign-ups at the club fair, and we have a really good attendance, like, pretty much all the time, they all like filled out a survey about what they wanted to do,” Simic said. “For the job side, we go to elementary schools, preschools, where they can do babysitting jobs, and then also that organization that the elderly lady helped us with, we use neighborhood mailing lists like a lot of the time.”
Though Jobs for Jackets operates their system manually with scarce amounts of outside help, it is an extremely efficient way of helping students get employment. Students who work are taught life skills, gain more experience in the real world, and get a chance to explore their own independence. These connections help students acquire these skills and experiences in a timely and structured manner. “In meetings they go over guidelines and rules you should follow, when you're talking to a client and when you're working, so that we can act as professional as possible,” said Olivia Dillon, a BHS sophomore and club member. “I've gotten three jobs so far, and one of them is ongoing. It's a babysitting opportunity and it's really helped me kind of just figure out how jobs work, how I should interact with clients, and I think it's just a really good experience overall.”
Through their determination and persistence in acquiring jobs for BHS students, founders Teylman and Simic have created a helpful resource for BHS students to understand the job market and get a head start in the workplace. “The leaders, they respond really fast and they're just really helpful and they actually wanna get people jobs, which is what I think is so important about the club,” Dillon said, “It's such a good way to get into the job market.”