With graduating from post-secondary school comes the daunting task of job hunting, but this task has become increasingly more difficult due to COVID-19.
Many jobs have gone remote, meeting only when necessary or through applications like Zoom to prevent the spread of COVID-19.“I was definitely excited to be done with school and start my path towards my dream career,” Hayden Salzer, a finance graduate from McMaster University, said.
Due to the recent pandemic, however, entry level jobs have become scarce for post-secondary students.
“Being a recent graduate, I’d be looking for junior entry level positions but the problem with that is COVID,” Salzer said.
COVID-19 restrictions have heavily influenced the requirements needed to work a specific position.
“Being in a junior position I would need to be trained and mentored face to face,” Salzer said. “But due to COVID restrictions I find the places are hiring senior level individuals so that they can just work remotely without having to be trained.”
However, some future graduates are optimistic about the opportunities that lay ahead.
“I feel like a lot more positions are opening up within the teaching community,” concurrent education student Annie Cupido said. “There are a lot of current demands to education and the opening of virtual schools, so I think more positions are becoming available although they are less traditional.”
Despite the optimism, even the confident students agree that job hunting in some career paths can be more difficult than others.
“COVID isn’t making applications easy for some of my peers,” Cupido said. “I feel like every job has its challenges, especially right out of post-secondary since we don’t have as much experience.”
Job hunting as a recent grad is different and can be a difficult time during the pandemic, but so is everything else.
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