As the 2020 fall semester winds down for university students across the globe, worries about the career prospects loom in the wake of COVID-19 for recent university graduates. Dubbed the “Corona Class,” university graduates are now going to be turning to career services staff at UK higher ed institutions to help them. According to the Office for National Statistics the hardest hit group impacted by vast unemployment in the UK are those 16-24 year olds that are now 156,000 less employed, compared to even just three months ago. So what does the Corona Class think of their job market?
According to a new report by the Institute of Student Employers and Debut posed a series of seven questions to over 2,000 students and jobseekers on their career planning and what they seek in recruiting. The results of their survey are found below:
- 57% of respondents say that their ideas about their career have changed since the start of the pandemic;
- 42% reported that they were confident that they would find the job they wanted quickly after leaving education;
- 91% of young jobseekers would prefer to find face-to face-work experiences helpful, but also appreciate the access to easily available online connection with employers; and
- 90% said that job boards and careers websites were helpful.
Young jobseekers taking a proactive approach in their career planning, however, are concerned about the current climate. They worry that the situation may stand in their way of finding a job and many are rethinking their futures. So what can career services staff do to ease their student’s worries?
- Make your hours more flexible to meet student’s needs and stresses to be more accessible;
- Schedule one-on-one career counseling sessions with your students to review their resume, mock interviews, etc.;
- For those that have attended a virtual career fair, use the reporting from that to pinpoint which students had low engagement during the event and proactively reach out to them; and
- Encourage your students with news that companies are still hiring and now with remote work, there is more flexibility of where they can find work across the country.
At Symplicity, we know how critical it will be to ensure that your department and students are supported during this time. That’s why with Symplicity’s CareerHub, universities are empowered as they digitalise their service offerings with everything they need on one platform. Using Symplicity CareerHub, career service staff can collaborate through scalable utilisation across multiple teams, report on everything a career services office requires to operate, while providing tailored services to their students 24/7. It’s because of this that over 100+ universities depend on CareerHub as their central employability solution. With CareerHub, you are guaranteed unmatched training, customer service, and full customisation to best meet your university needs, even during uncertain times.
For more information about virtualizing student services, email info@symplicity.com or schedule a conversation.
