Student interest in summer jobs is "way up" this year, and undergraduates who want jobs in competitive fields should start making preparations over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, counselors at the Office of Career Services and Off-Campus Learning said yesterday.

According to Charles R. Rumelin, a counselor at the OCS-OCL, over a thousand Harvard students will take the civil service Summer Employment Examination this year, while the federal government will hire only 200 to 300 of them.

Feel Around Now!

"Now is absolutely the time to start feeling around and making connections," Rumelin said yesterday. "If you don't your chances of getting a highly contested job are going to be very slim. Employers fill most of these jobs on a first come, first serve basis."

Research jobs and work in the Boston area will be particularly hard to nail down this year, Jerry Ashford '77, a director of the Student Employment office, in the Office of Financial Aid, said yesterday.

Students looking for employment in these areas will have little or no luck if they wait until spring, Ashford predicted.

Students hoping for summer jobs in foreign countries may also run into difficulty this year. Joseph P. Healy, a counselor in the OCS-OCL, said yesterday that more students than ever want to work overseas and only 20 out of about 120 will find the skilled jobs they seek.

OCS-OCL reports from students holding recent summer jobs show that most undergraduates worked as manual laborers or low-skilled workers--for example, carpenters, garbage men, nightclub bouncers, and janitors.

Fewer students were hired as research assistants, newspaper reporters, camp counselors, and in other fields the OCS-OCL reports showed were popular with Harvard students. Students who did find these jobs earned considerably less than those with manual labor jobs.

Last year Larry Pressl '77 earned $2500 in ten weeks working six hours a day as a rubbish collector.

But students with skills in high demand were also well paid, the reports showed. Carl Kravitz '77, a member of the Harvard Tennis Team, earned $400 a week teaching tennis last year.

Imagination, perseverance, connections, and luck are the main ingredients in getting the kind of job most Harvard students find desirable, according to Elizabeth L. Forsythe, also a counselor at the OCS-OCL.

Students should not get too worried if they are not hired right away, because last-minute openings often spring up and the economy might improve, Forsythe said yesterday.