In March 2020, the job market was hit hard by the spread of Covid-19. Businesses closed, companies reduced their staff to essential workers and thousands of people lost their jobs in America. It has undoubtedly been a difficult several months for upcoming graduates and those looking to enter the workforce soon.
However, with the vaccines providing some hope of putting this pandemic behind us, the recovery of the job market is on the horizon. While the effects of the COVID lockdowns and many roles transitioning to remote formats may linger for many more months, there are ways of navigating this new job market.
When the pandemic reached its peak, many employees transitioned to online work and some continue to work in this format. This has created a surge in remote-format jobs that can be found on many job-search engines.
These jobs vary across multiple fields and provide workers the ability to work from anywhere. Multiple roles in the health-care field are also in high demand, ranging from registered nurses to medical managerial roles. This trend is expected to continue into the early months of this year with LinkedIn stating, “demand for nurses grew nearly 30% year-over-year in 2020”.
While the medical field is surging with demand, other careers are expected to see a growth in popularity over the next few months. Following the increase in online traffic from people engaging with various activities online rather than in-person, web-based companies are expected to increase job positions.
Namely, careers in digital marketing and UX have high prospects for positions due to the increase in user engagement with online mediums. Likewise, there is a need for computer-related jobs such as software engineers, software developers and data science specialists. Business roles such as loan and mortgage experts as well as business development and sales professionals have become increasingly needed, with the former seeing a hiring increase of 59% during the pandemic last year. This, of course, is a list of only a few of the many fields expected to see an increase in employment and many more opportunities are worth investigating.
Though the job market may be returning to some sense of normalcy, the approach to getting a job might look a little different for a little while longer. Many companies are still relying on virtual interviews to investigate job candidates.
Phone-call and virtual interviews may be new to many new graduates, so it is worth taking some time to practice these types of interviews. With many people still operating off of primarily virtual-oriented schedules, now is a good time to investigate skill-building lessons offered online.
LinkedIn Learning is a great website for simply upping your communication abilities or learning skills tailored to specific careers. For Georgia Tech students, you can access this site for free with your student log-in credentials. For more tips on career management post-pandemic, the job-listing website Indeed has details for financial management in between graduation and your first job and what to expect in the first few months after hiring.
(pic of a person working online or wearing graduation cap and gown)