Andrea Jameson
Contributing Writer
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With finals just around the corner, students graduating in May are beginning to sign with various companies for post-graduation opportunities. Students give their personal experiences about what steps they took to land internships and jobs in the COVID-19 environment.
Most graduating students have had to choose between in-person or online when deciding what kind of job they want. LinkedIn has the connections to help organize which jobs are going to require moving locations and which ones are not. Based on this, graduating students decide what is best for them in the future with COVID-19 at the forefront of their minds.
Senior occupational safety and health major Amelia Brian said she had a rough time trying to find a job that’s hiring in-person. With many interviews, she found one company that would hire as an in-person job.
“I just accepted a job with county materials in Whitestown and Greenfield, Indiana,” Brian said. “They were the only company that I interviewed with that was actually an in-person job. All of the other eight Zoom interviews were fine but I did not feel a connection with the companies offering positions online.”
Brian said she believes that the job market has been affected by the pandemic because of her past experiences with internships and stories she’s heard about close friends about work opportunities.
“My internship from last summer, they told us all that their hiring process was frozen due to COVID-19 and they could not really hire anybody,” Brian said. “I think that it has affected a lot of companies because they either don’t have the funds or they cannot hire at all due to COVID-19.”
Senior Kyle Kester is also an occupational safety and health major who is graduating this May.
Kester said he took an internship in Findlay, Ohio, with Marathon Petroleum last March with hopes of sticking with the company after graduation.
“I got sent home early due to COVID-19 last March,” Kester said. “The company pretty much stopped all office work and traveling so I got sent back home to Missouri mid-internship which made me realize that I needed to go another route.”
With the pandemic, Kester said he hopes his next job with Superior Construction in Indianapolis, Indiana, will be steady and prepared for COVID-19 and he has signed the contract and is rooting for his future.
“In all honesty, I have seen this in many situations with friends who have strived and survived through the pandemic,” Kester said. “As we continue to go through this vaccine routine, I think that the job market will open back up and go back to normal, but for me specifically I think that I will be fine with the connections that I have made with Superior.”
Although the pandemic is still affecting job availability graduates still have optimistic outlooks for the future.