When the college job hunt goes virtual
The following article appeared in the April 23, 2021, edition of The Charlotte Ledger e-newsletter. Do you need to sign up? Do it here:
Students and university career centers adapt to limited in-person contact as job market recovers; ‘Exhausted’ students try new approaches
In the last year, most job-hunting services for college students have been online, which can make it tougher to network, though there are occasional in-person events — such as Davidson College’s Wall Street “career trek.” Students and career counselors are finding new ways to look for jobs. (Photo courtesy of Davidson College’s Center for Career Development.)
by Julia Knoerr
Hanaa Al-Dasouqi has always wanted to go into psychology research or practice neuropsychology in a clinical setting. When the pandemic cancelled her in-person research at the Columbia University Medical Center last summer, she developed a new attitude towards networking and started cold emailing researchers anytime an article interested her.
Her new comfort with outreach arose when the coordinators of her summer program at Columbia gave students a directory of people willing to connect and encouraged them to reach out to find opportunities. As a Davidson College senior, Al-Dasouqi has felt fortunate to find research opportunities that have propelled her.
“That set the tone for me doing that throughout this whole year,” Al-Dasouqi said. “I never would have thought to do that if someone hadn’t told me to.”
For college students, job-hunting — a stressful and challenging process during normal times — is especially tough this year. Students face a competitive market and lack in-person networking opportunities, all while continuing to navigate the mental health challenges of the pandemic. Universities’ career services offices have had to adjust, too: They’ve worked to make programming more accessible through virtual platforms and have increased outreach to meet the needs of underrepresented students in particular during this unprecedented time.
Challenging job market: Hiring of new college graduates has improved since last year, but it still hasn’t recovered to pre-Covid levels. According to a study using data from labor-market analytics firm Burning Glass Technologies, hiring for entry-level college graduate positions has fallen 45% since the start of the pandemic.
However, vaccine distributions, business re-openings and overall market growth are helping trends improve for the Class of 2021, with employers projecting to hire 7.2% more new college graduates from the Class of 2021 than they did from the class of 2020, according to a report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
Career offices go virtual
Mercy Eyadiel, who serves as the chief corporate engagement officer at Wake Forest, has noticed that students are “exhausted.” As all career events, individual appointments and networking have occurred virtually over the last year, Zoom burnout is prevalent, and students are fatigued without “many outlets outside of their academic experience,” she observed.
While students’ opportunities to access programs hasn’t significantly changed throughout the pandemic, Eyadiel has seen stress and anxiety increase across the board. “We have to be very thoughtful about how much we plan and expect students to attend different events because we know everything they’re doing is virtual,” she said.
Despite the challenges of Zoom fatigue, Eyadiel has seen a number of benefits stem from the shift to digital platforms.
Virtual recruitment significantly expands employers’ possibilities, she explained, because it “gives them access to a much wider number of schools and opportunities to draw talent from,” rather than investing in being physically on campus to build a presence or a brand.
She’s also noticed employers enact partnership recruiting efforts across multiple schools, such as Chapel Hill, Davidson and Duke, rather than focusing on single schools.
Depending on business cycles, “employers are becoming smarter about what they need,” Eyadiel said, “so it really is requiring both our students and for us to be very flexible.”
A focus on underrepresented students
Wake Forest has a few programs that specifically support underrepresented students on campus, who, depending on the type of home and academic support they received growing up, may not be as aware of the types of career services opportunities available to them or may worry about “taking up space” and burdening mentors, as Al-Dasouqi noted.
To offer more robust support for these students, Wake Forest rolled out a targeted recruiting initiative five years ago called “Diversity Matters,” which typically includes a virtual networking and career fair experience in the fall and another event during the spring semester.
Employers seek diversity: While underrepresented students may be facing disparate economic and health impacts from the pandemic, making job searching even more challenging, Eyadiel observed increased employer interest in Diversity Matters this year, citing a 43% increase [vs. last year] in employer participation at February’s Diversity Matters event.
“I think a lot of that is a signal from the market that they really genuinely want to hire talent across the board. And they’re putting more investment into those recruiting efforts,” she said.
At Davidson, the Center for Career Development (CCD) has also worked strategically to reach different populations of students who may not have engaged as much in the past, said Raquel Dailey, assistant director for international career development.
“We’ve had programming around different identities that we plan to continue at this point indefinitely,” she said.
A new series called “Being a (blank) in the Workplace” began in the wake of the pandemic, she explained. Like Wake Forest, Davidson’s career center has also been primarily virtual and has observed strong event attendance despite Zoom fatigue.
Haleena Phillips, a senior biology major from Florida who also works in the CCD, said she thinks virtual platforms have made programming more accessible and organized. But she has also seen burnout and senioritis emerge as major trends among her friends.
Flexibility and innovation for the future
Some students, like Al-Dasouqi, have found greater success in mentorship and networking through professors, virtual conferences and internship experiences rather than through their career center. Davidson’s psychology department sends out weekly newsletters, one of which helped Al-Dasouqi find an alumni connection.
After sending out a number of applications and emailing with individuals at labs of interest, Al-Dasouqi’s job search has been fruitful: She landed a lab coordinator position doing clinical research, doing exactly what she hoped near her family in California.
Now, as she plans for her move, Al-Dasouqi is considering how she will navigate the real world when she no longer has Davidson’s support systems, social spaces and health services at hand.
“It’s definitely nerve-wracking, but I feel like everyone’s going through the same questions,” she said.
Julia Knoerr is a senior at Davidson College, a former editor-in-chief of The Davidsonian and a 2020 Reporting Fellow for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. You can read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter at @JuliaKnoerr.
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