When I was a senior in university, my Philosophy professor gave us some advice about what to do after graduation: Take a break before getting a job. He told us that two (2) months would be a pretty good amount of time to get some rest.
I took that advice. I told myself I’d wait for around two months before doing any serious job hunting. However, life had other plans and had me waiting for… quite some time before actually finding anything. But it wasn’t because I didn’t want to work or because I felt I deserved a longer break. Frankly, it was because I didn’t know what I wanted to do and none of the job openings that I saw (that I was qualified for) appealed to me.
It also didn’t help that there were so many job openings that would say they were open to fresh graduates but also required that whoever chooses to apply have at least two (2) years of experience. How that’s supposed to make any sense to anyone new to the “real world” is still a mystery to me. (Tip for whoever’s posting these job openings online: Just say it like it is. It’s either you’re cool with fresh graduates for that position or you’re not. That shouldn’t be so hard to distinguish.)
I have a job now, though, so that’s neat, I guess. But for those Zoomers or Gen Zers, if that’s what you want to call us, who either just graduated or have decided to find somewhere else to work, these past few months have been rough.
A survey conducted by College Finance showed that 65.9% of Zoomers reported feeling that their jobs were less stable because of the pandemic. It was also shown that 33.5% of Zoomers had their job interviews canceled, 29.7% had reduced work hours, and 13.5% were laid off from their jobs during this time of COVID-19. So yeah, it sucks.
While this study was done in the U.S.A, it’s possible that things are pretty similar here.
I’ve seen some friends wonder if it’s the right time to switch careers, and then there were some who are just kind of at a loss for what to do, and I feel them. If job hunting was tough for me without a pandemic, how much worse could it be now, right?
Some have also thought about going back to school– I feel that, too. But that would mean taking out more money again, and times are hard as they are. I don’t think anyone wants to add more to their expenses.
So where does that leave us? For some, unemployed (not-so-funemployed, if you will). For others, just trying to hold on to what they currently have. For most, Zoomers or not, just downright worried about the future, which is valid.
No one knows how long this pandemic will stick around or how long it’ll take for it to really be safe for people to go back to normal ー if that’s still possible; people are saying it’s not ー again, and that’s pretty scary. But I’d like to think, as Zoomers, we’ve still got time.
Things may suck, and they may suck for a while, but that shouldn’t leave us hopeless. We’ll get through this.
