Plenty of places here hire students all year, and English is fine at most of them.
They ask for a BSN, a Dutch bank account and your ID on the first day. Get your BSN · Open a bank account
Nothing in that group here. Try another.
Restaurants, cafés and bars barely post online. For those, walk in with a printed CV between 15:00 and 17:00 and ask for the manager, or email the address on their own site. That is still how most of them hire in Rotterdam.
Shelf stacking and checkout start at 15 or 16; the store manager decides fast. English is fine at Albert Heijn and Jumbo in student cities, Lidl and Aldi want basic Dutch on the floor.
Albert Heijn · Jumbo · Lidl · Aldi
Zara, Massimo Dutti, Bershka and Pull&Bear are all Inditex: one portal, pick the store. Weekend and evening shifts, English-speaking teams in the big cities.
Zara / Inditex · H&M · Primark · HEMA · Action · MediaMarkt · Decathlon
Fastest hire in the country. Uniform, training, 20 to 30 hours possible. Ask for the vestigingsmanager between 14:00 and 17:00.
McDonald's · Burger King · Domino's · Starbucks · KFC
Thuisbezorgd employs riders with a contract and hourly pay; Uber Eats is freelance (needs a KVK number). Flink and Picnic pay by the hour with a contract. Bring your own bike or use theirs.
Thuisbezorgd · Uber Eats · Flink · Picnic
Terraces hire in April and September. Say which days you can do. A Temper account gets you one-off shifts at the same places, paid per shift.
Student assistant, tutor, ambassador at open days, research support. Best pay and looks good on a CV. Check the page weekly, they go fast.
Concerts, football, fairs, festivals. Evening and weekend, paid per shift, often through an agency that also has bar and security work.
Nothing in that category today. Try another, or let Casa look.
Restaurants and bars still hire the old way. Print ten CVs, go between 15:00 and 17:00, ask for the manager, say which days you can work. Wear what you would wear on the job.
The places in Rotterdam that hire students by the dozen.
You need no permit and no permission from anyone. Your employer needs your BSN and a Dutch bank account, and that is the whole list. Work as many hours as your studies survive.
Worth knowing: once you work 32 hours a month or more, you can apply to DUO for student finance and a free travel card, which is usually worth more than the job itself. How that works.
On a study residence permit you can work 16 hours a week during the year, or full time in June, July and August, never both in the same month. Your employer has to apply for a work permit (TWV) for you before you start.
What that means in practice: agencies, supermarkets and the big chains do this all the time and it costs you nothing. Small cafés and bars often will not bother, so start with the big names in the list above. Freelance work like Uber Eats needs a KVK registration and is usually not allowed on a study permit. The full rules.
Minimum wage is hourly and goes up with your age, every January and July. Plus 8% holiday money in May.
The current tableA tax refund most springs, zorgtoeslag on your insurance, and for EU students on 32 hours a month, DUO and free travel.
How DUO worksWorking makes Dutch health insurance mandatory, around €140 a month before zorgtoeslag gives most of it back.
Insurance explainedCash without a contract is illegal here, and it leaves you with nothing if the job goes wrong.
If you apply to ten places in one sitting and walk into five more, a week to two weeks is normal for supermarkets, fast food and delivery. Hospitality is fastest in April and September when terraces staff up. What slows people down is applying to two places and waiting.
Not for most of it. Delivery, warehouses, dishwashing, hotels and the international chains run in English, and in the student cities so do Albert Heijn and Jumbo. Shop floor jobs at Lidl, Aldi and HEMA usually want basic Dutch because you serve older customers. Learning enough for a checkout takes about a month and doubles what you can apply to.
To be paid properly, yes. Register at the gemeente as soon as you have an address and the BSN follows. Some employers let you start while it is on the way, but without it they must withhold the highest tax rate, so you get less. Registration and your BSN.
One page. Your studies, any job at all including at home, and the practical things: languages, availability, a bike, a driving licence, food handling. Dutch employers care more about which days you can work than about a personal statement. Put your availability near the top.
Twelve to sixteen hours a week is the range most students manage without it hurting. Above twenty it starts to. Fixed evening shifts are easier to plan around than on-call work, and one-off shift apps are the easiest to drop in an exam week.
Not directly, this page is where our help ends. What we can do is tell you where to look, what you are allowed to work, and which employers actually answer. If you are stuck, message our team and a real person will look at your CV with you.
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