COVID-19 has shaken up the entire world. However, as a current senior about to graduate in May, one of my biggest fears is entering the workforce. I lost my current internship with Senator Ed Markey after being displaced from Boston with the closure of Boston University. Hence, I started to look at other areas for professional development.
So far, I was able to become a finalist for the Forbes Magazine summer internship. As you can imagine, this felt like a dream come true. Unfortunately, this internship was canceled due to coronavirus. As soon as my internship got cancelled, it hit me how much more challenging it would be to enter the workforce.
Summer internships are moving online and are not necessarily accepting more applicants. I was going to use my summer internship as one more work experience to become more appealing towards full-time jobs. Even though I am consistently sending in more applications, I have come to accept that I may not have something to keep me busy this summer and will try to make the best of that situation.
Furthermore, I lost my on campus job. I used to work at the mail room but BU had to let me go. This got me thinking, if I lost my simple student job, how much harder will it be to land a white-collar job? Losing both my internships and my part time job that provided financial security has been a big setback for me.
I always dreamed of moving to New York City after college. Due to the outbreak though, I am uncertain if such a dream would be possible due to the detrimental state that NYC is in. This will certainly not happen any time soon after graduation. However, the stressful part is not knowing when the full recovery will happen. Will it be in six months? Or is it going to be years? Some public health experts even predict that this could last until 2021.
Diane Swonk, chief economist of Grant Thorton, said that the fallout for employment is “going to get very large, very rapidly” before it rebounds in the second half of the year, as reported by the USA Today. This means that it will be more challenging than normal to land a job in my field — in any field in fact.
I have submitted over 200 applications and a significant chunk of them have been placed on hold. The response I typically get is that the company will start hiring again when the pandemic is over. Not knowing when this will end definitely has me on edge, as I have indefinitely moved back in with my parents with the closure of BU’s campus.
According to CBS News, many companies are freezing new hires, which includes me, a recent college graduate with no work experience. Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, predicts that the job numbers for March “will show a real arrest of hiring.” This is because the forex trading apps and companies involved with them are uncertain of the future and how the stock market is going to be shaped in the upcoming months.
The lack of hiring also comes from the lack of revenue that companies are experiencing. People are staying at home and avoiding spending money on non-necessities. Everything has just been put on hold indefinitely. Although some companies, such as Amazon and grocery stores, have recently increased the amount of hires, according to CNBC. Still, it will be hard for me to find something in the field as a journalist.
Journalism is about telling stories. I am already struggling in my journalism classes to come up with story ideas that do not involve me leaving my house. I can imagine it will be even more challenging to have this as my full time job.
All I can do for now is to keep applying and hoping, like everybody else, for this whole craze to be over sooner rather than later.
