Grads face job market with creativity, hope
Pandemic dries up plans for those just starting out
f everything had gone according to plan, Missy Wood thought she’d have a job helping at-risk youths by now. h Wood, a recent graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, saw her internship with Court-appointed Special Advocates end abruptly in March as the COVID-19 pandemic took root in Tennessee. She started applying for jobs with the Department of Children’s Services and similar organizations in April. h By the time she graduated in May, new job postings for her chosen career had all but disappeared.
Wood is one of the thousands of graduates in Tennessee and across the nation who face a turbulent job market amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Now, she’s babysitting for a Murfreesboro-area family twice a week as she continues to search for full-time work.
“I’m just sitting and waiting, and it’s frustrating because I took the five years and got a degree, and I’m ready to start with a career . ... I’m just on hold right now,” Wood said.
In March, businesses across the state temporarily closed their doors — some by choice and some due to a statewide mandate
“I’m just sitting and waiting, and it’s frustrating because I took the five years and got a degree, and I’m ready to start with a career . ... I’m just on hold right now.”
Missy Wood Recent MTSU graduate
— in an effort to prevent the virus’s spread from overwhelming Tennessee’s hospital system.
The economic impact of these closures was swift and severe. Tennessee’s unemployment rate skyrocketed in April to a record-breaking 15.5%, according to state data. By May, when the Class of 2020 graduated from high school and college, the unemployment rate had fallen to 11.3% and the number of new weekly unemployment claims had begun to slowly decline.
But with thousands of Tennesseans still looking for work and fewer businesses with jobs to offer, recent graduates are entering a constricted labor market.
Vincent Phamvan, owner of recently launched Nashville career coaching company Vyten, is no stranger to the challenges of starting a career in a withering economy, having graduated from college during a recession in 2009.
“I think even for the Class of 2020, it’s worse than the Class of 2009,” Phamvan told USA TODAY NETWORK TENNESSEE in a phone interview in May. “... The dichotomy of going to college in one of the best economies and then months before graduation have it turn into one of the worst economic crises in decades — I don’t think anybody could have expected that type of an extreme change.”
What does the job market look like now?
While there are indications that jobs and internships are less plentiful than in previous years, jobs are still available.
Tennessee lost 265,800 jobs between May 2019 and May 2020, according to the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development. The state’s leisure and hospitality sector took the brunt of the losses. But between April and May, employers added 93,900 nonfarm jobs statewide, with leisure and hospitality, manufacturing and service sectors seeing the biggest increase.
Internships, a typical gateway for college students and entry-level workers to gain experience in their chosen field, were hit hard — between March 1 and April 9, the volume of new internships posted on Linkedin’s job listing platform dropped by about 60%, according to the company.
Devin Wilkinson, a junior at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, was slated for an internship with a bank holding company in a Knoxville office, where he would focus on portfolio and relationship management. Due to COVID-19, the internship became a remote position working for an office based in Minneapolis.
Wilkinson, a finance major, said his career plans haven’t changed, and he views the shift as a learning experience and an opportunity to build his virtual communication skills.
“I was one of the fortunate ones that (my internship) didn’t get canceled,” he said in a video interview. “I know a lot of people had their internships canceled.”
In 2019, the top 10 industries for new graduates had more than 3.3 million open entry-level positions posted on Linkedin’s job boards, according to a guide published for new graduates in May 2019. Linkedin’s 2020 guide for graduates shows more than 1.5 million open postings for entry-level jobs and more than 65,000 postings for internships in the United States.
Some industries have been bolstered by the pandemic.
This year there is “increased demand from health care and retail companies who are hiring workers to be on the front lines of coronavirus,” Blake Barnes, author of Linkedin’s 2020 guide, told USA TODAY NETWORK - TENNESSEE. “And as companies are pivoting to fully remote teams, we’re also seeing demand for jobs that can be done from home, such as systems engineers and developers.”
The data does leave questions. It’s not clear how much of the apparent year-to-year decrease in overall job listings can be attributed to the economic impact of the pandemic versus other factors, and it’s not clear how many of these listings represent jobs and internships that are actively being filled by the companies that post them.
The report lists more than 5,000 open internship positions in the retail industry, from employers including Petsmart, Walmart and Champs Sports. A Petsmart internship posting on Linkedin for a groomer trainee position in Nashville, for example, includes a caveat: “We may not be actively hiring for this role, but we’re always looking for great candidates for future openings.” The position was posted two months ago.
Barnes said the report was generated using “active” job listings as of May 21 but stated, “While specific job listings may have changed, these trends hold true today.”
Wood wonders what job listings will look like as more opportunities begin to open back up, and she’s beginning to consider applying for positions outside of her career path. Increased competition on job boards is a palpable concern.
“There’s a lot of us out here that are looking for jobs,” Wood said. “That’s kind of scary.”
Adapting to changing opportunities
Phamvan, the owner of Vyten, said the percentage of underemployed college graduates is likely to increase in the next few years — a ripple effect of the pandemic. But he doesn’t want this prospect to discourage recent graduates from continuing their job search and bettering themselves.
Phamvan went to work at Best Buy after college, making $12.50 an hour, a near 50% pay cut from his high school job. At the time, he said, the challenges he faced felt like “the end of the world.”
“Looking back on it 10 years later, I made it through it, and it got better,” he said. “It got better for everybody else that I know as well. The doctors still became doctors. The lawyers still became lawyers. The teachers are teaching. It just was on an adjusted time frame, but everybody eventually made it through it.”
This message was a focus of Vyten’s first conference, a virtual event called the Hope Summit that took place in early May.
More than 6,000 people joined the online career coaching conference, including roughly 680 people ages 18 to 24, according to data collected by Vyten. The largest group in attendance fell in the 25 to 34 age bracket, with roughly 1,400 in attendance.
Of the attendees, 16% said they felt confident or very confident that they would be able to find a “good” job within a few months, according to a survey conducted during the conference. About 37% of the attendees reported applying for more than 25 jobs this year, and 60% said they have applied for more than 10.
Some students and recent graduates have seen start dates postponed, internships canceled and job offers rescinded, according to Mark Mccloud, director of career planning and development for the University of Tennessee, Martin, and Stephanie Kit, director of the Center for Career Development at UT Knoxville.
College career centers quickly transitioned to offering virtual career coaching, job search help and opportunities to develop more skills. Mccloud and Kit are encouraging students to continue to network with their colleagues and potential employers virtually — a key to “staying in the game.”
“I would say the biggest message of all is that people need to be applying,” Kit said. “... There are industries and employers that are actually doing well right now, and growing and hiring. So it may represent sometimes a shift in goals or plans for your first job, but there are still opportunities out there to be had.”
Brooks Leftwich graduated from UT Knoxville in May with a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering.
He was supposed to leave for Taiwan in August to teach English to elementary school students as part of the Fulbright program, but travel restrictions pushed back those plans until at least January. He turned down a job opportunity in sales to accept the Fulbright position, and March was rife with uncertainty about his immediate future.
Now he’s continuing to do data analytics work for UT Knoxville, which kept on many of its student employees through the summer. If he’s unable to find a position at the university in the fall, he plans to explore volunteer opportunities related to children’s programs at the Knoxville Zoo or The Muse Knoxville to help him prepare for his eventual teaching role.
Leftwich is also studying for the GRE graduate school entry exam and keeping connections with the friends he made in college.
“I’m really just looking out for the next opportunities that are coming up, because you never know what a new season can bring,” he said.
Optimism amid uncertainty
Leftwich, Wood and Wilkinson have at least one thing in common: an overall hopeful attitude about their future.
Wilkinson offered a simple message: “Don’t give up.”
“Some people kind of have gone into hibernation mode, I guess, and not really taken a lot of action,” Wilkinson said. “But I’ve also seen people spending the time to learn a new skill over the summer if their internship was canceled or networking.”
Mccloud thinks students and recent graduates, many of whom are wellversed in technology, are uniquely qualified for work-from-home positions and social media roles.
Kit said she’s seen more students considering graduate school, and UT Knoxville has seen an increase in summer school enrollment, which she said can be a positive thing.
Those whose plans have changed can shift their mindsets and keep moving forward, she said. If an internship opportunity was lost, one might look for a micro-internship or online opportunities, for example.
Phamvan said job seekers should consider if a particular role fits their passions and skills instead of what they originally imagined themselves doing.
“In the coming year, it will be interesting to see if this global pandemic impacted anybody’s ideas for career goals in general,” Kit said.
“I’m wondering if people are getting interested in epidemiology or public health because of this, or maybe they’re seeing risks in other ways that makes them not want to go into a certain (field).”
Among the career coaches’ advice, the common threads are preparation and faith, so when employment opportunities come, the newest additions to the American workforce will be prepared.
“I’m ready to start my career,” Wood said. “I’m so excited. (I spent) these past five years working toward child development and family studies, and I’m just so ready for that.”