D is leaving now for a very extensive physical and found out she’ll be placed in Georgia. Gotta say that I’m super nervous. She has a week of training/orientation from home and then starts on 5/18. I hope if the situation changes in GA in terms of cases, that the company reconsiders where to place her.
Before I was worried that her co-op would be cancelled. Now I’m worried that she’s actually going!
DD is required to have a summer internship for her business major. She was in London in a program for her English major last semester when firms were recruiting on campus, and has had difficulty landing a decent one in her field. With so many internships being cancelled, the competition for those that remain has increased substantially.
DD really wanted to find one on her own, but reluctantly asked for family help.
Her aunt made a phone call to a college friend in California last week and she now has a great one lined up, assuming San Diego opens for business. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.
Fingers crossed for California opening this summer as well. Our S would prefer to be on-site for his internship as opposed to online.
The President announced he’s re-opening the National Parks. That action could mean some summer jobs for kids in environmental and cultural resource fields.
I was talking to the dean of a business school who told me that: 1) jobs that had already been accepted by graduating MBAs don’t seem to be evaporating; 2) summer jobs for first year students seem to be evaporating or turning into unpaid internships; and 3) similar split between seniors with jobs (mostly intact) and others (mostly evaporating).
Same with PhD students. Graduating students in STEM have mostly received offers already, whereas many of those in the humanities and social sciences - where things move more slowly - are seeing postdocs and job searches canceled abruptly.
Quite a few universities, including top ones like Berkeley, Harvard, and Brown, have announced hiring freezes through the next year.
What I found in 2008/2009 was that that class was fine. The law firm I was with honored the offers they had made to 2008 summer interns. After the 2008 election, we lost a lot of our project (dependent on financing, that was all pulled). The firm laid off the ‘of counsel’ attorneys who didn’t have their own clients. Next were the staff (we were really fat pre-2008, with a lot of support staff, mail interns through a local catholic school program). And finally they didn’t high summer interns for 2009, so they made no offers to those non-interns.
Other businesses seemed to have the same trimming of people. Companies learned to run lean and mean. New employees typed their own letters and documents. When people left they weren’t replaced. Even the government adopted this model. When I worked for the government in the 1990’s, I had my own secretary and paralegal. When I went back in 2010, I had a cubicle and very little support help.
I think companies will find employees can work from home a lot more. They’ll be saving on office space. Most of my friends who are working from home like it. No commuting time, no expenses for gas, lunches out, no sick days for kids who are sick. One friend works 6 pm to 6 am. He loves not going in. Saves 2 hours a day not commuting. Can eat dinner with his family at 5 and still be to work on time.
My D is a sophomore bio/math major who was a finalist for NSF-funded REU this summer and it’s been cancelled. On campus research also cancelled. She might take an online class this summer, but after 7 weeks of online classes I think she’s pretty tired of screen-based learning. She also works (very) PT for a local retailer doing their website and marketing work so that’s screen time too!
My D plans to apply to PhD programs and do the research/academic route. Any suggestions for STEM majors on how to further their exploration/experience this summer? I suggested she find professors doing things she’s interested in and asking for ‘virtual coffees’ to learn more about their work, but I don’t think she has the gumption for that.
I’m afraid her mental health will decline in two weeks when her semester is done and she’s still stuck at home. We’ve talked about some volunteer work, but nothing lined up yet.
Re: class of 2009
I remember seeing the post-graduation survey from UCB for the class of 2009 and a number of earlier classes (no longer posted; they now seem to have only the few most recent classes at https://career.berkeley.edu/survey/survey ). Let’s just say that the results for the class of 2009 were not pretty compared to previous years, particularly for such majors as civil engineering and architecture. Civil engineering graduates did have a somewhat higher than normal percentage going to graduate school, probably due to no jobs, so hiding out in graduate school was probably better on the resume than a few years of unemployment that they would otherwise have had.
I saw another round of internship cancellations in my parent group yesterday as some states announced extension of stay at home orders.
Anyone want to speculate on a job for someone graduating with a graduate degree in infectious diseases/epidemiology?
"… Results from the most recent [NACE] poll show that approximately 19 percent of employers are revoking offers to interns and 3.5 percent are revoking offers to new college graduates for full-time positions. These percentages are up from 14 percent and 2 percent, respectively, on April 10.
Results also show that 59 percent of employer respondents are maintaining their offers to interns or to graduates for full-time positions; unfortunately, that figure is down 5 percent from the April 10 poll. Furthermore, another 22 percent are still considering revoking offers, so it remains to be seen which way that group will break.
In addition, 78 percent of employers report they are making changes to their summer internship programs, compared to 65 percent on April 10. The most common changes include moving interns to a virtual program (42 percent of respondents) and reducing the length of the internship by delaying the start date (40 percent)." …
Honestly, these numbers seem low. I know almost no one that kid got offered an internship that still has one. All from known brand named schools. It would be interesting to know what sectors were less reduced then others.
The director of the NSF REU my junior daughter was in the running for invited her to re-apply next year without needing to resubmit application materials. And NSF REU modified the rules to allow students to accept a position after graduation. That’s nice, but D will either need to start a full time real job next summer, or else find a summer position that lasts more than the project’s 4-6 weeks in order to help fund grad school.
^Fast moving events and uncertainties associated with the virus make a survey like this look outdated very quickly.
@TheGFG – Thanks for responding. Yes, they also encouraged her to re-apply next summer – not sure if she’ll have to re-submit her application. I wonder if they’ll expand slots next summer b/c they will not have spent this year’s grant funds. That would make sense to me in order to address pent up demand for positions. Of course, some labs can have faculty and facility constraints so there’s only so much they can do.
What is your student doing with their time this summer?
S18’s internship with a Washington DC thinktank is still going ahead remotely. But some of the other programs he applied to have been cancelled and it appears that many of the people who had planned to participate in the University of California DC program no longer have an internship (the program and housing has been cancelled, but UCDC are offering scholarship money to participants who still have a virtual internship and don’t appear to be finding many takers).
@Knowsstuff Most of those with consulting and finance internships still have internships though what those internships will look like remains to be seen. I haven’t heard of most accounting internships being canceled either.
Wall Street Journal article from yesterday says 39% of all surveyed employers plan to move their internships entirely online; 16% revoked their internship offers; an additional 23% are thinking of rescinding theirs.
Whenever a company is in financial trouble, consultants and contractors are the first to go. When the economy thrives, the consultants make obscene amount of money. I wonder if the consulting firms are getting hit hard now and what are going on with their interns…