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When Plans Change Senior Year
Sydnei Kaplan
For college grads looking to land a great job right out of school, this is a difficult time.
Hiring across many industries has frozen almost completely, making it difficult for grads to find their dream job. Many internship programs for the summer are being cancelled, too.
Even some grads who had a job offer in their pocket have had those offers rescinded by companies looking to hunker down for a long economic downturn.
The statistics can be disheartening. Already, over 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment and the real number of unemployed could be even higher. Needless to say, the effect on the job market has been tough.
As the parent of a college student, you might be feeling the stress. You want your student to get off to a healthy financial start in their post-college life.
But the story isn’t all doom and gloom. There are still companies out there who are hiring. Your student just may have to think creatively about their skills to pivot their job search.
Encourage your student to look for the industries that are doing well in spite of (or even because of) COVID-19. They may be surprised to find opportunities where they least expect them.
They could end up finding a job they love, where they can apply their skills in a fulfilling way. Or they may just find a job that helps to pay the bills until a new opportunity arises.
Companies that provide products or services online are doing well, as are grocery stores. That doesn’t mean your student needs to be a shelf-stocker to get hired — every company hires a broad range of staff to keep the doors open and customers happy.
Here are 9 industries that are doing well and still hiring during coronavirus. Encourage your student to look into companies within these industries for job opportunities that could be right for them.
Tip: Your student can use an online hiring platform to search for jobs within specific companies or, if they want to cast a wider net, they can search by industry. LinkedIn, Indeed and Glassdoor are all good places to start.
No matter what happens to the economy, people have to eat. That’s why grocery stores (and the brands that keep the shelves stocked, like Pepsi) are doing so well during this challenging time.
Other retail stores that sell groceries, like Target and Walmart, are also bringing in a lot of business and continue to hire. Then there are food delivery companies, like Instacart.
Besides working the floor, all these companies have large corporate offices with jobs in everything from management and human resources to marketing, design and more. As business continues to grow, they’ll need to continue hiring to keep up with demand.
Health is on everyone’s mind right now. Companies working in any industry related to health are continuing to perform well.
That includes insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers. It also includes big health and wellness consumer goods producers, like Unilever, which owns brands such as Dove, Comfort and Domestos.
Those brands make things like soap, toilet paper and bleach, which are all seeing an uptick in sales.
With everyone living life from home right now, social media is more popular than ever. You can’t go to the movies, restaurants are closed, and sports events are cancelled. Social media provides a way to spend time and connect with friends and family.
Facebook, Instagram and all the others hire big teams of people to handle marketing, app development and design, and other standard office positions.
Look at the profiles of social media companies on a hiring platform like LinkedIn to see the jobs they’re currently looking to fill. You can also search for jobs in social media marketing, another part of the industry that’s hiring right now. Just search for “social media” on LinkedIn to get started.
In the same vein as social media, video games and streaming subscriptions are up. People need to fill the hours, and both of these media satisfy that need while offering an escape from reality.
Game developers and companies that provide online entertainment (like Netflix) are all going strong, so look to these for potential job opportunities.
Go to your favorite hiring platform (Indeed.com is a good place to start) and type in the industry, like “video games,” and see what pops up! They’ve got close to 6,000 jobs in the video game industry listed right now.
The videoconferencing company Zoom saw its numbers explode in March. They’ve been moving quickly to catch up, and hiring has been part of their efforts. On the hiring site Glassdoor, for example, Zoom currently lists over 50 open executive positions.
Other videoconferencing hosts are following suit, like Google with its Hangouts, Facebook with Messenger, and Apple with FaceTime.
There’s a lot of lending going on right now to help people and companies weather the economic fallout of COVID-19. Banks and other financial companies are staying busy with that part of their business, on top of their customers’ other day-to-day money needs.
The point is not to work in a bank as a teller (not an option in most places right now, anyway), but to look for entry level career positions at lending institutions such as Wells Fargo — they have over 3,000 open positions listed on their LinkedIn right now.
Other businesses in this industry that are doing quite well are online payment facilitators, like Square and Paypal. Someone has to handle the eCommerce boom and these companies are benefiting from that demand.
As companies figure out how to pivot entirely to remote work structures, a big question has risen around cybersecurity.
Internal documents, software code, financials and more now all need to be accessed by employees working from home. A company’s system must be able to provide that access while remaining secure against malicious actors.
Cybersecurity is a $100 billion industry that’s only growing in the current environment — it’s projected to reach $260 billion by 2025.
An easy way to learn which companies actually work in cybersecurity is to go to a hiring platform, like Indeed.com for example, and search for “cyber security.” You’ll find close to 18,000 listings there.
Seeing a trend yet? Companies that have anything to do with the internet are all doing really well right now.
That includes Microsoft which, in addition to its world famous operating system, offers all sorts of productivity software online, including Word and Excel.
There’s also Squarespace, the website design and hosting company, which makes building your own custom site super easy.
And then there are the services that help people work better, like Slack, Dropbox and Asana, all popular with small companies who need to communicate quickly, share files, track time and manage big projects.
Online sales are way up because people can’t go out to buy what they need or want in person. As a result, companies that work within the infrastructure of this industry are seeing their numbers climb.
That includes the online mega-retailer Amazon, of course. But it also includes those companies who deliver all those products being sold, namely UPS and FedEx.
Now that your student knows the industries where they’re most likely to find a job right now, they need to focus on the things that will help them get and nail an interview.
That means touching up their resume, networking and thoroughly researching the companies they’re interviewing with.
Read our guide on how to get a job after college during coronavirus >
