Nearly two decades ago, Hazel Raja was living in New York while going to graduate school when the unthinkable happened.
It was the fall of 2001.
“I'd taken out a crazy loan to go to NYU. It had always been my dream,” remembers Raja, the new associate dean and senior director of the Career Development Office (CDO) at Pomona College. After 9/11, “I remember feeling overwhelmed and lost; I was emotionally drained by all of the loss, trauma and upheaval. I struggled to focus on a job search right away. What’s happening now feels very familiar.”
The global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has brought skyrocketing unemployment just as many seniors were job-hunting. Other students had secured summer jobs and internships but are finding them on hold or canceled as offices shift to remote work. “Students have to practice patience and focus on what they can control. They need to understand that their Plan B is just as important, right now, as their Plan A,” says Raja, who earned a master’s degree in counseling and guidance at NYU.
An immigrant and a first-generation college graduate, Raja was a resident assistant at an NYU residence hall in Lower Manhattan at the time of the terrorist attacks and helped lead an evacuation. Soon after graduating, she successfully parlayed a grad assistantship into a role as a career counselor and ultimately senior assistant director of NYU’s Wasserman Center for Career Development. That wasn’t her initial plan when she entered her graduate program, but the role fit like a glove. She went on to become head of global opportunities and career destinations at the University of Southampton in England and then assistant dean of students and founding director of the career development center at NYU Abu Dhabi before arriving at Pomona in January.
“The pandemic will impact hiring. There will be delays and there will be fewer jobs posted. Students do have to be realistic,” she says. “But there are things that they can do. And that's what we want to help them identify.”
What services are available through the CDO?
Raja: The CDO is open though we are completely online. We’re offering about 30 remote career advising appointments a day, as well as online info sessions and other resources through Handshake, plus alumni networking opportunities through our virtual programming and resources like Sagehen Connect and Sagepost47.
Hiring has gone entirely online. So recruiters are conducting all of their interviews via phone and/or video conferencing. If students don't feel comfortable with using those platforms to interview, they should rely on us. We can do mock interviews with them, and because we are conducting our advising virtually, the medium is similar to what they will experience. During the mock interview, we can share tips to ensure that they are successful in presenting themselves competitively and authentically in this job market.
Thankfully—and as of now—we haven't heard of many employers retracting job offers. I hope that's not a direction that we will go in. But if it is, I hope students will feel comfortable leaning on the CDO for support and advice.
Who is hiring in this environment?
Raja: There are certain industries that are doing more hiring right now. Areas such as online learning, telecommunication, social media. A lot of companies are messaging more through their communication channels. Companies that make remote working easier like Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Team, Skype, etc., are hiring. Obviously, the health care sector is booming. Pharmaceuticals, for obvious reasons too. And then the public sector: governments, county offices, the schools. They're looking for people to help offer things that they don't have the capacity to take care of. Other areas that are actively hiring are accounting, logistics, and shipping. Pomona students are so smart, nimble and innovative, and these are the kind of qualities that employers are really looking for.
There are other areas that may seem like they’ve slowed down. If somebody said to me, “I want to get a job in the airline industry,” I would say, “Well, you need to take a step back for a second because they're not posting a lot of jobs right now.” It's really important that you know that there are some fields and there are some types of jobs that will just evaporate for the time being. They will come back but it just means that it's not an option right now.
Recruiting for entry-level finance and consulting jobs may slow down for bit too. Since a lot of consultants travel for their jobs, these companies are considering new models to support their clients. While that doesn’t mean it will stop completely, a lot of companies are going to pause, regroup, see what happens with the economy and then make decisions on hiring.
How can students job-hunt under safer-at-home orders?
Raja: Seventy-five percent of jobs are found through networking. So 75 percent of a student's job search or internship search should be done through networking.
In a situation like this where you can't physically network with one another, you need to have a really strong online brand—that's really important now because opportunities to woo potential firms in person are not an option.
Students have to practice their pitch and they just have to keep applying for jobs. To be quite frank, I never feel like students apply for enough opportunities. But in this type of environment, it's even more important that they are actively applying and that they apply for more opportunities than they would have normally.
If you need to take a pause because the industry you're going into is not making decisions, ask yourself: What can I do between now and when it reopens to show how actively engaged I have been, and how can I improve my candidacy for when things reopen?
What advice do you have for students on summer plans?
Raja: If students have lost their internships or plans for the summer or are not getting any responses, they need to reflect on what they can do to stay relevant. How can they stay on the radar of the person who hired them or would have been interested in their candidacy under other circumstances? What can they do to help support the employer or that organization remotely, if they're willing to let them do that?
Additionally, Pomona’s summer offerings through the Pomona College Internship Program (PCIP) and the Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) have been affected. While domestic PCIP remains available, students need to be prepared for the possibility of last-minute changes if situations become unsafe and/or domestic restrictions are put in place. While SURP has been suspended for 2020, the College is working on other options for students to conduct research remotely as there will be no on-campus research this summer.
Alternatives for students could include taking advantage of online learning, online teaching or tutoring opportunities, or working for summer programs for kids (if they enjoy doing that kind of thing).
Staying cautiously optimistic, some cities or counties might reopen sooner than others, or do things differently than others. If companies and organizations reopen this summer, there is going to be great need for them to ramp up quickly. They're likely going to be looking for short-term manpower to help pick things back up again. And that is something that I think college students are the perfect candidate for, because short-term work is exactly what they're looking for in the summer months. We'll have to see.
How can alumni help?
Raja: Pomona alumni and parents can be a great resource to students right now. We are currently working with the Alumni Office and Parent Relations to explore a number of avenues to connect our students to Sagehens and Sagehen-supporters out in the workforce. For now, students should utilize Sagehen Connect, Sagepost47, and LinkedIn to connect with alumni. And look out for our #helpinghens initiative, which will be launched very soon!
What should students do to cope as they search for work?
Raja: Students need to take time to process what's happening, and take care of themselves by prioritizing their well-being. You are a better job-searcher if you feel good about yourself. And you will feel good about yourself if you are sleeping well, eating well, taking care of yourself through exercise, proper nutrition, etc.
This can be a very isolating experience. So students should really be thinking about their emotional health and schedule time to connect with their roommates, friends and advisors/sponsors/mentors. Mental health is also not something that can be neglected. If students had therapy appointments lined up, they should keep doing them virtually, because job-searching can lead to increased anxiety, regardless of the environment. It's really easy to be down on yourself and take things really personally if you're not taking care of your well-being.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.