Play Santa This Holiday Season (and get paid for it!)

If you love playing Santa for the kids, you can turn this into a job by getting a mall Santa job this holiday season. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of demand for Santa after Christmas is over, but getting a part-time job for the next few weeks can help you bring in a little extra cash just in time for the holidays.

At this point, many Santa positions are already filled, but there are a few things you can do to find a Santa job in your area:

• Offer your services as Santa.

The mall may not be advertising open positions anymore, but sometimes, if you ask, they’ll consider adding more shifts. In addition, think about other places that could benefit from a Santa this time a year. If you have your own suit, you can hire yourself out on a “freelance” basis to play Santa at festivals or show up at local businesses (like day cares or tree lots).

• Be able to answer questions on your feet.

To play Santa, you don’t just have to have good interview skills; you also have to be able to answer weird questions on the fly. Why? Because kids will ask the darnedest things! What do elves eat? What’s your favorite kind of Christmas cookie? How do you get to so many houses in a single night? The person who interviews you will likely ask you these questions to see how you’ll do answering them with the kids.

• Make sure you’ll pass a background check.

Because you’ll be working with children, you’ll likely need to pass a background check. Even if you don’t have a criminal record or any other black marks in your past, you might want to double-check your own records first to ensure that there aren’t any mistakes.