Soon to graduate, Elon seniors seek employment in a pandemic

ELON, N.C. –– When Roberta Marsh, a senior at Elon University, sat down for the first of three back-to-back interviews with Capital One, she did so in her bedroom. 

Instead of going to the bank holding company’s headquarters in McLean, Virginia, Marsh was competing for a spot in the project management rotational program from her apartment in Elon, North Carolina. She just opened her laptop.

There are advantages to interviewing for a position remotely, she said. You don’t have to save time to commute or get to the office early and figure out where to go. Interviewing from home has other benefits too, Marsh added.

“I probably would have had the interview and then rushed down the corridor to go to the next one [if it were in person]. Having it in my house, I was able to go in between interviews to go get water. I can get a snack if I need it,” she said. “It almost put me at an advantage. I felt very safe, comfortable and confident interviewing in my room.”

Despite this ease, Marsh had spent weeks before and all morning preparing for these interviews with advisors at the Elon Student Professional Development Center and Capital One recruiters. And despite the interview happening from the limited perspective provided by Zoom, she was dressed in her best business attire because this helped put her in the right mindset, she said.

And it worked. After a long virtual process, Capital One offered March the position. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has in many ways, disrupted the economy, and with it, the job market has shifted.

As working from home has become the norm, the process and possibility of securing work has changed as well. This has raised concerns for senior students at Elon who are looking to find employment for after they graduate in the spring.

Executive director of Elon’s Student Professional Development Center Thomas Brinkley explained the shift in the job market. 

“It’s gotten much more competitive and much more difficult simply because companies are undecided,” he said. 

Because of the uncertain timeline of the pandemic, many companies do not know what their hiring plans are for this year which will affect the class of 2021 in particular. Brinkley confirmed that jobs are “scarcer” right now. Some companies though, are still actively advertising jobs and recruiting, but are slower in making official offers, he said. And even if companies are looking to hire, they may not be able to commit to as many people as they did in past years. 

“It’s not as easy as it used to be. It’s a bit more difficult. In fact, it’s significantly a lot more difficult, but getting a job is a job,” Brinkley said. “It doesn’t come easy.”

The situation differs though depending on the industry.

For some fields, it is still too early for hiring season. Brinkley has been observing the hiring trends within the Love School of Business because it caters to fields that tend to hire early. Whereas jobs for the students in the School of Communication would for the most part, not be listed until spring, jobs in areas such as finance are often offered in the fall of one’s senior year or even earlier. 

“In the School of Business, we’re still seeing quite a few students getting jobs,” Brinkley said. “Not as many as last year… What I’m noticing though, overall, it’s not as easy this year as it was. This time last year there were lots of jobs.”

Brooke Buffington, the senior associate director of corporate and employer relations for the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business has observed a two-week hiring delay. Jobs and internships are still available and being offered, she said, but the markets for industries have shifted. While hospitality companies may not be hiring, digital platforms are thriving in the pandemic, she said, citing companies like Zoom who has been “hiring exponentially” and Amazon.

Senior Morgan Mathews identified the same trend.  She thinks that among the senior class, there are elevated levels of uncertainty and stress, but especially for students looking to go into fields that have been hit hardest by the economic effects of the pandemic. Mathews wants to work in marketing, advertising or communications in the health and fitness industry, and she is hopeful that there will be many job opportunities. 

Mathews is in the process of searching for job listings. This is another aspect of the hiring process that has shifted as well. Opportunities for jobs and networking are now almost completely virtual, and all job and internship fairs with the Student Professional Development Center have gone virtual, many of them also being delayed to later dates. Students are also unable to travel to visit potential places of employment or the places they would need to relocate to to work there.

The possibility of fewer jobs on the market is not the only new concern either.

“In the Spring of 2020, after coronavirus hit, a number of offers were delayed,” Brinkley said. “The class of 2020, 80% have a job or are going to graduate school… about 10% are still looking. So, some of those [graduates] that are still looking are starting to butt up against the class of 2021.”

As competition for employment rises, the number of students opting to go to graduate school right after they get their bachelor’s degree has increased. In the class of 2020, the percent of Elon graduates that enrolled in graduate programs right away increased by about 4% said Brinkley, and he expects that trend to continue. 

In the wake of new employment concerns, Brinkley advised that senior students start looking for jobs early and put in work to network extra. He also recommended that students make more than one plan for after they graduate. Not just a plan A, but “a plan B, a plan C and maybe even a plan D,” he said.

Brinkley also wants seniors to remember that this situation for hiring is not unique.

Elon students are not the only ones facing an uncertain future; people all over the U.S. are too. And, while COVID-19 is certainly novel, economic recessions that affect hiring are not. He compared the current situation to those of 2012, another time of economic downturn and limited job markets. 

Drawing from past experiences and because of altered timelines from the pandemic, Buffington expects that more opportunities will be available later in the Spring. Brinkley also predicts that once companies figure out how to successfully operate in a pandemic (or once the pandemic is over), there will be a hiring boom. This, however, may not be seen until 2022, too late for this year’s seniors, but potentially beneficial to the class of 2022.

Changes in the professional sphere are not limited to hiring. Once the class of 2021 graduates, having of course, successfully navigated the newfound uncertainty of the job market, who knows what actually working will look like come 2021?