Getting hired
What employers actually look for in high-school students
An employer offering a casual job to a 15-year-old generally understands they're meeting someone with little or no work history who will need to be trained. They are not necessarily comparing you to an adult with ten years behind them.
So what might they be weighing up? Often it is whether you'll turn up, whether you'll learn, and whether you'll be easy to work with. Everything below is a version of one of those three.
Different jobs weight these differently — a kitchen hand and a swim teacher are being judged on quite different things — so read this as a menu, not a checklist.
Reliability — often near the top of the list
Can the manager build a roster around you and trust that you'll do what you say?
Show it with anything you've stuck at over time: three seasons at the same club, a weekly volunteering shift, a part in the school musical that required rehearsals every Tuesday for a term. Duration is the evidence.
Punctuality
Related but separate. Managers notice quickly whether someone turns up when they say they will.
If you catch two buses to make 7am training, say so. It gives more useful context than the word "punctual" on its own.
Willingness to learn
Employers generally expect to teach you. What they want to avoid is having to teach the same thing repeatedly, or someone who goes quiet rather than asking.
Show it with: picking up a new position in your sport, learning an instrument, teaching yourself a skill for a project, moving into a subject you found hard and sticking with it.
Communication
At this level this usually means: speaking clearly to customers, listening to instructions, and telling someone when there's a problem instead of hoping it disappears.
Show it with: debating, drama, customer-facing volunteering like a canteen or market stall, tutoring or mentoring younger students, taking phone bookings for a family business.
Attitude
Hard to describe, obvious in person. It's whether you seem interested in being there and whether you're pleasant when a shift goes badly.
This one is often demonstrated in the interview more than on a résumé. Turn up on time, put the phone away, make eye contact, answer with more than one word, and thank them at the end.
Honesty
Employers hiring young staff may have cash, stock, or an unsupervised closing shift involved. Honesty is an important hiring consideration, not a nice extra.
It also cuts the other way on your application: don't inflate your history. A manager who catches an exaggeration in week one has to wonder what else was exaggerated.
Teamwork
Working alongside people you didn't choose, during a rush, without friction.
Show it with: team sport, band or ensemble, group assignments, cadets, working bees, running a stall with other students.
Responsibility
Being trusted with something that mattered, and it going fine.
Show it with: caring for younger siblings, looking after equipment for your team, handling money at a fundraiser, managing a class account or a club's social page.
Following instructions
Especially safety instructions. In hospitality, retail, warehousing and agriculture this is genuinely serious.
You can show it before you're even hired: if the job ad asks for something specific and you do exactly that, you've already demonstrated it. Applications that ignore the instructions may be filtered out early.
Initiative — but read the room
Initiative is usually valued once you know the job. On day three, it may be too early. A new staff member who "improves" a process they don't understand yet can create work for everyone.
The version employers often want early on is small: seeing the bins are full and emptying them, wiping down a bench during a quiet moment, asking "is there anything else that needs doing?" rather than standing still.
Show it with: starting something yourself — a club, a fundraiser, a project nobody asked you to do.
Turning this into an application
Take the three or four qualities the specific job most needs, then find something you've genuinely done that demonstrates each. Not adjectives — examples.
Instead of "reliable, hardworking, good communicator", write "played club football for four seasons with near-full attendance" and "worked the canteen at home games most Saturdays." Same message, but a manager can believe it.
If you're not sure which of your experiences demonstrate what, work through What counts as experience when you've never had a job? and How to complete your Strive profile.
A reference from a teacher who can speak to your effort and behaviour is one of the few things that genuinely verifies these qualities for a student with no work history — see how to ask for one.