Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
1219878179
This is the reality of searching for work during the COVID-19 pandemic: four-hour-long zoom interviews which span over two days, 30-minute long presentations given virtually, and meet-and-greet sessions attended by company “stakeholders,” none of whom choose to show their screens during the virtual mingle.
After passing the one-year mark in the worldwide fight against COVID-19, the job market is unsurprisingly still tenuous. Monthly employment reports tend to focus on the ebb and flow in the industries you would expect to suffer during a pandemic, including the likes of restaurants, hospitality and tourism, but luckily for soon-to-be college graduates, many professional industries are continuing to hire. Each spring, roughly two million students graduate from American colleges and universities, but not in over a century have any of those graduates had to search for a job in a market quite like this. The job interview has always been a dreaded experience, never more so for graduating college students eager to demonstrate their hard-earned expertise (and begin to pay down on their student debt). How are local universities around Milwaukee training their soon-to-be graduates to successfully navigate the virtual job search?
UW-Milwaukee students have free access to the university’s Career Planning and Resource Center (CPaRC), which works with around 5,000 undergraduate, masters and doctoral students who graduate from UWM each year. In addition to providing training to various classes and student groups on virtual job interviewing and networking over the past year, the CPaRC also provides access to rotating resources on the school’s main website including relevant videos and articles that help new graduates recognize the importance of planning for their futures. The Center’s Director, Jean Salzer, says that UWM staff work to support students in the way they need most-whether virtual, hybrid, or in person. She adds that across the city, university career offices that normally host career fairs made the switch to virtual fairs this year, which led to increased collaboration across campuses in creating programming for students throughout Milwaukee to understand how to position themselves in a virtual interview and how to navigate in a virtual networking world.
Virtual Interviews
|
|
Nearby at Marquette University, Career Services Center staff are offering a variety of ways for students to prepare for virtual job interviews. According to Courtney Hanson, the Director of the Marquette University Career Services Center, Marquette offers practice interview appointments for students via digital platforms and provides ongoing access to their virtual JCPenney Suit-up event, which allows students to obtain affordable interview-appropriate attire. Additionally, as a direct result of the pandemic, the university is in the process of developing a new resource which will highlight advice from MU employer partners on virtual interviewing best practices.
Likewise, local Cardinal Stritch University recently launched a series of required courses for undergraduates called the Professional Core. According to Sean Lybeck-Smoak, Director of Experiential Learning and Career Education at Stritch, the goal is to better prepare students for the changing work landscape. The first course in the university’s Professional Core focuses on developing career management skills and job search strategies so that students can learn about and prepare for the often-chaotic job market. Interviewing strategies are a big part of this course, Lybeck-Smoak reports. Students record themselves answering interview questions on a virtual interviewing platform as part of an assignment and besides doing a brief self-critique of their recorded video, students also get essential interview feedback from the instructors.
As we continue to adapt to a virtual world, online job interviewing continues in many sectors to be an easier way for companies to hire new employees. It is logistically less burdensome for people who are themselves oftentimes still working remotely to set up a zoom interview rather than deal with the details of arranging socially distanced, masked, in-person interviews (likely occurring in poorly ventilated and cramped meeting rooms). Undoubtedly, flexibility and adaptability skill sets are essential, especially when it comes to our jobs and career plans, says Sean-Lybeck-Smoak of Stritch. “The pandemic changed the nature of work, and the world is still figuring it out. The pandemic has created the possibility for more companies to offer remote, or hybrid work schedules, and we have had to utilize new technologies to teach our students to accomplish employer expectations.”
Professional in a Pandemic
Likewise, UWM’s Salzer says that their staff are working hard to help young people be flexible in their willingness to take a chance on something different, something she sees as an “amazing journey.” Nonetheless, Salzer also concedes that it is vital for students and existing professionals alike to recognize that we need to give one another a bit of grace when it comes to ‘acting’ professional in a pandemic.
For the non-active job searcher, interviewing on zoom may sound like a better alternative than suffering through a series of grueling interviews as you are escorted from room to room in a building you likely have never visited before, meeting people whose names you are likely to forget. In zoom interviews, you are allowed the comfort of your own personal space to interview in; however, the same applies to those on the other end of the proverbial interview table, meaning it is not uncommon to be speaking to only muted photo boxes that you can only assume have a real person listening on the other end.
In order to prepare students to enter a new professional role during an ongoing pandemic, Marquette offers a unique annual event that helps new graduates transition to post-college life called Life after Marquette. The event allows students to hear directly from experts on personal finance, health and nutrition, and emotional well-being that offer advice to students as they transition out of school. Marquette University staffer Courtney Hanson acknowledges that the transition from college to career can be difficult for graduates during “normal” times and that the ongoing pandemic layers on an additional stressor for many students, so this year’s program will address pandemic strategies in an effort to make the job search process as smooth as possible.
Adapting to Change
So how is the pandemic changing young Milwaukeeans approach to job searching and post-graduation life? Unsurprisingly, learning how to adapt to ever-changing situations is a concern that weighs on many students. Sean Lybeck-Smoak from Cardinal Stritch reports that many students are concerned with the question of “What do I do if the position I really want opens up after I’ve committed to another opportunity?” His answer: We help students strategically think through this. At Marquette, the number one concern they are hearing from students lately is the fear of not being able to find a job. According to Hanson, this has led to a lot of variety in terms of how young people are approaching life after graduation. She acknowledges that some students are entering into fields that have not experienced a downturn during the pandemic so their career path is progressing as expected, but that other students have realized they need to consider their skills and knowledge more broadly and are pivoting to work that may not be the exact path they imagined for themselves pre-pandemic. Echoes of the uncertainty in the job market can also be heard from students at UW-Milwaukee, but according to Jean Salzer, the summer is looking good for full-time positions and internships, and that the economy is slowly but surely moving forward.
Will all of the preparations that local universities are doing to help graduating students find meaningful work during a pandemic pay off with job offers for the city’s newly minted scholars? Like much of our current reality, only time will tell. Students and the schools that have supported them throughout their collegiate careers certainly hope so, and UW-Milwaukee, Marquette and Cardinal Stritch University all believe that their heightened efforts to help students pivot to a virtual job search will pay off. So, if you’re on the hiring end of a zoom interview with a soon-to-be or recent college graduate, help them out and turn on your camera and remember that the transition from college to career can be difficult during “normal” times.
