My graduating senior still has her job offer (for now) but knows many friends who have lost theirs. From the way she is talking I think the numbers are much higher than quoted above. I spoke to her yesterday and she is feeling very down and is thinking it’s only a matter of time before her offer is revoked, too. Her start date has been pushed back but her future employer said last week they are still paying her signing bonus based on the original start date. With all that she’s still not completely comfortable and says she’ll believe it when she sees it. The school career office has been reaching out to the seniors to understand where everyone stands and who needs help.
Her friends are talking about trying to get grocery store jobs to pay the rent. None of these kids got stimulus money because they have all been claimed on their parents tax returns. It’s really rough for graduating seniors whose parents aren’t able to step in and pay the bills for awhile.
DD is graduating from Cal (enviro science major, GIST minor) and still working on getting full-time post-graduation employment. She’s working part-time for a consulting company on projects for a client that was her last summer internship employer. Trying to leverage it into a full-time position, but the jury’s still out on that one. Another company she was doing a hiring “dance” with back at the beginning of the year (then fell off the face of the earth) is back in touch - a call will happen next week. It may not amount to anything, but we’ll see. Lots of apps out there - just not a lot of action. It’s not just “Will they hire me?” It’s now “Will there be anyone hiring, anywhere at all?”
Trying to put a positive spin on DD’s particular situation: as bad as it seems for graduates (sad end to 4 years of hard work, no ceremonies, entering a sketchy job market), at least she has a couple of good, in-person summer internships under her belt, as well as a very good GPA before the whole pass/no pass thing was put into place. Hopefully, those two things (plus her current job and school program’s reputation), will help with what little employment crumbs will be left.
In general, I really feel for everyone regardless of where they are on their college journies - there are uncertainties and challenges all along the way. The upcoming internship/temp summer job season is going to be very, very rough.
^^ I cut a check for $1,200 for D (2019 grad) because I had claimed her as a dependent for 2019 but she has been living independently since graduation.
D2 got her sign on bonus this week for her law internship. She most likely will not start the internship until mid Jun or end of Jun, but her firm is committed to pay her for 10+ weeks that she signed up for. I told her to get in touch with her mentor (the person who got her the internship and also her old boss at an US attorney’s office) to let him know she was available to work with him ahead of her start date. In this type of environment it is best for her to show her value to as many people as possible. She said, “Hmm, that’s a good idea.”
D2’s law school set up a special team within their career center to work with potential employers to place all of their students after 2008. They pay/sponsor for students’ internships in the public sector. Beginning of March they reached out to all potential employers when they heard about Corvid 19 shut down. Many firms admitted they were not even thinking about summer internships at that point. It was after D2 informed me what her school’s career center was doing when I started this thread.
Did she graduate in May or Dec? If May, it’s possible she really wasn’t a dependent for 2019 (wasn’t a student at the end of the year and made more than $4000?).
But in any even it is likely she will be a dependent for 2020 taxes and will be able to claim the $1200 for herself.
D has an interview tomorrow for a county level government internship. She is visibly apathetic about it, since no organization with whom she has interviewed recently is actually prepared to hire for this summer. Now she’s past the disappointment stage and is becoming upset about being offered false hope. For example, in her college career office’s recent webinar they touted the fact that there are still real internship possibilities on Handshake. So I insisted she log in this morning and we were pleasantly surprised to see a relevant position that had been added since she had last checked the site–which was only a short time ago and well after the pandemic had started. But of course, when she followed the link to the external site, of course she found the job didnt actually exist since the organization is closed like everyone else. At this point, maybe it’s best to officially give up.
As phased state openings begin and companies and institutions gain greater clarity on conditions for the summer, hopefully we will see suspended recruiting re-start and positions reappear or definitively turn virtual.
The internship D interviewed for yesterday will now be a virtual one, or potentially have a short hands on component late August as conditions allow. The supervisors decided to focus the position solely on the aspects that could be carried out remotely.
If I were thinking about hiring interns for the summer, I’d still be reticent. I don’t know how many firms think they are good at remote on-boarding. If the purpose of the internship is to get to know the person to see if they are a candidate for next year, how much will 10 remote weeks help them. And, if the purpose is to get some work done, how much less productive will a completely remote internship be. Not impossible to make it work, but a lot harder.
I know we still were going to have one intern for the summer but he left and went home. He says he will come back if we reopen. I don’t really think I want him at this point. He could have still teleworked but he just left, without even asking. So we aren’t replacing him this summer but we are looking for an intern in the fall.
My s thinks his internship with a veterinary hospital is still on but will find out for sure in about a week. That state is going to allow non emergency medical procedures starting next week and they stated before that veterinarians will follow medical decisions in the state.
Just had a patient from Northwestern. She is in Environmental Science. All her possibilities have dried up. She did one last year in California. All her friends are home and have been rescinded. I get my son at Michigan on Thursday. He is still trying to secure one after his was rescinded. . I hope if his company goes back they will call him. They are essential and don’t think closed just don’t want to deal with interns at the moment…
@Knowsstuff I think most companies just don’t want to deal with interns this summer. The banks/finance companies and consulting companies have made some very interesting offers to interns to, imo, avoid dealing with them or at least as many of them as originally planned.
DD is a graduating senior and still has a job waiting for her at this point. She will be starting with them, most likely remotely, in a month. Most of the big tech companies she and her friends target for employment honor their employment offers and summer internships but plan for internships to be in remote format. Some of big fin tech companies just suspended internships but extended employment offers for the next year grads.
D’s co-op called yesterday and told her to order her steel toed shoes and make her travel plans. Plant manager is calling her later in the week to review their Covid-19 precautions/policy so she’s up to speed.
I’m thinking I’m going to need to re-isolate for 14 days when I get back from driving with her down to GA.
I agree that companies don’t want to deal with interns right now. My son is a sophomore at a NESCAC. We live in NJ, outside of NYC. Even our “contacts” are saying no way. My son would jump at an unpaid internship, even if it only lasted a few weeks. Can’t even find those. He reached out to his econ professor about doing research with him this summer and the prof declined because so many students who lost their internships now want to do research and he can’t take on another student.
My daughter’s accounting summer internship held their intern meet/greet virtually (and in person one had originally been scheduled a while back) and welcome gift arrrived from them that morning (laptop sleeve). Since then they have also contacted her just to see how she is doing etc. since she is now considered part of the company.
The two week virtual program probably does not sound as good as an 8 week in person internship but they are trying their best to make it sound interesting. I think they will be mailing out a laptop or something when the time is close based on current plans.
Interestingly my 10th grader still has her summer position. She is supposed to help out 3 days a week at a summer camp for low income children and two days a week doing a special group project. She gets a stipend. We had a zoom call and since the program is still funded it supposedly will still happen even though they can’t guarantee the same work will take place. There are kids in many different places and they have no idea which places will be open or closed yet, how safe it will be to travel by public transportation as planned etc. They are determined to make it work even if it is a virtual program. Considering this is a special program for 10th and 11th graders it seems like it would be easy to cut. I think it is a 6 week program. Our city youth summer job program for 14-21 year olds is also still on though perhaps more or all will somehow be virtual as well.
Our oldest daughter graduates next week with a BA in public relations and marketing with a focus on travel and lifestyle industries. Every place she has thought about interning with has basically shut down. ESPECIALLY things like the cruise lines, big resort and hotel chains, and airlines.
My assumption is that as the economy begins to recover, most of these large companies will be more focused on bringing back their own laid-off and furloughed staff that already have years or decades invested in the company and corporate culture. So new hires and interns will probably be the very last to be brought back. And frankly, that is as it should be. If you have 10 years with a company and were laid off by a world-wide pandemic, you are really entitled to be first in line back on the job compared to some wet-behind-the-ears intern or new hire.
Our contingency plan is to send our daughter down to Chile once the pandemic recedes and international travel resumes. My wife is Chilean and our kids are all dual citizens. And we have a LOT of family and school connections to Chileans in lots of different industries who will be happy to take on a Chilean-American kid as an intern. Especially doing things like international translating and such as lots of them do business in the US. So we are thinking she can park down there for perhaps a year, work on her Spanish, gain interesting international business and public relations experience, travel, and gain more knowledge of her Chilean roots that she can’t get when we just visit for a week or two on holidays. And, of course, everything is online these days so she can just as easily apply for US-based jobs and internships from Santiago Chile as she can from here in Vancouver WA.
But of course that all depends on both countries opening back up and international travel resuming. Argentina just announced that international air travel will continue to be locked down through (or until) September. So the kid may be waiting things out all summer spinning her wheels.
So many companies have huge numbers of furloughed or laid-off employees. I don’t have any direct knowledge of any of them. But I’m guessing as the pandemic recedes and companies start to ramp up again, their focus is going to be on bringing back their own employees first, before hiring interns or new hires. At least that would be my focus in that position. You have more obligation and responsibility to your existing employees than you do to interns who have never worked for you. And your own employees are the ones who know how to step in and do the job from day one.
I expect that we will need to get back closer to full employment before a lot of companies are going to get back into the widespread internship business. I have a graduating senior too. And it’s a tough pill to swallow. Grad school, or making your own creative plans to fill the next year or two seem like the most realistic options.
I heard from a friend that some of her son’s 2020 college grad classmates had their job offers rescinded and were told they could start in 2021 instead of this year!