How’s Job Hunting Going for the Class of 2021? We Checked In with Some Soon-to-Be Grads


Things are looking up: employers project hiring 7.2 percent more college graduates this year than last. Base illustration courtesy of iStock/Olga Strelnikova
How’s Job Hunting Going for the Class of 2021? We Checked In with Some Soon-to-Be Grads
Seniors share their strategies for finding employment
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year, it more or less eviscerated the market for entry-level jobs. Thanks to hiring freezes, furloughs, layoffs, and rescinded offers, the national employment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds ballooned to a dismal 25.7 percent last May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly a year later, prospects for 2021 graduates are on the upswing, says a National Association of Colleges and Employers March report: employers project hiring 7.2 percent more college graduates this year than last.
“It’s a much better story now versus this time last year, not only because jobs are coming back, but because companies are more comfortable onboarding and inserting people into remote settings,” says Patrick Nelson, College of Communication director of career services. “The situation is definitely turning around.”
One indication of that? Postings for jobs and internships on Handshake, the University’s online career platform, were 30 percent higher in February of this year than they were in February 2020, notes Denise Mooney, associate vice president for enrollment and student administration.
However, just because the statistics say things are better doesn’t mean they actually are for everyone. As the Class of 2021 prepares to graduate, some will accept their diplomas knowing that a job awaits them, while others are still trawling through the LinkedIn trenches. Some have elected to head to grad school in the fall and others are taking internships after graduation, hoping they lead to full-time positions.
But no matter the postgrad strategy, assures Nelson, “there’s a job out there for everyone.”
Endless applications
Nicole Somerstein (Questrom’21) is one of the lucky seniors who has a job lined up after graduation. But it took months of work—the business administration major estimates that she applied to more than 100 positions before securing a marketing gig at HNTB Corporation in Back Bay.

“February was my absolute peak of worry and stress,” Somerstein says. Out of all the jobs she applied for, she heard back from only eight companies. Her most promising lead, which she went through a monthlong interview process for, seemed like a sure thing—until she received an automated email telling her she didn’t get the job. At that point, she says, she was convinced she wouldn’t find anything before Commencement.
“February was really, really hard, especially after getting that rejection,” she says. “I felt like I was so close to the finish line—it was in sight, and then it got ripped away from me. And I had to start over.”
Somerstein had been interviewing for summer internships last year when COVID-19 hit. All of the positions ended up getting canceled. This past fall, she began reaching out to the companies that had been interested in hiring her last summer, inquiring about job openings. One—civil engineering company HNTB—got back to her, and kept in touch throughout the academic year. So when an HNTB recruiter emailed in March to say that they’d gotten cleared to hire someone for June 2021 and they’d like it to be her, Somerstein was quick to say yes.
“I worked for six or seven months to get a job, and I cried all the time,” she says, only half-joking. Finally getting a job offer and having concrete postgrad plans was an “instant relief. Before, I was staring at a puzzle that I couldn’t even start until I found a job. Now I’m finally starting to grab at different pieces and fill in the gaps.”
Overall, the job market for this year’s college graduates is significantly brighter than it was for the Class of 2020. The vaccine rollout and reduced lockdown restrictions have greatly contributed to the resurgence of entry-level jobs, says Arran Stewart, cofounder of job listing site Job.com. “Companies that have been on hold for the last year are opening their doors back up, which presents a great deal of opportunity for graduates looking for employment,” Stewart says. And the growing acceptance of remote work is another contributing factor for the improved picture, with employees—even brand-new ones—able to clock in from anywhere.
The part-time pipeline
Like Somerstein, Geneve Lau (COM’21) has a job waiting for her. Since January, the public relations major has been interning virtually 40 hours a week for the public relations agency Weber Shandwick, which is based in New York. She spends her days compiling information for weekly reports and managing the invite lists for virtual events while taking a BU class during her lunch breaks on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (She takes her other class asynchronously, listening to it after hours.)
Lau’s schedule is possible because she switched to part-time this semester, allowing her to hold a full-time internship. A full-time internship that checked a lot of her boxes for a job, no less—Lau had always known she wanted to work for a big PR agency out of college. When Weber Shandwick brought her on as an intern, she says, there was no definitive end date to her internship. She was well aware that the agency had a robust intern-to-full-time pipeline, and she was hoping she would be able to impress her way into a permanent gig.
And that’s exactly what she did. In April, Weber Shandwick offered her a job as a junior associate after graduation.

As excited as she is to start her new job, she’s also profoundly grateful for the circumstances that led to it in the first place.
“This opportunity would not have happened for me if it wasn’t for the pandemic and the switch to a fully remote world,” Lau says. “It’s almost like a silver lining—I’m working 40 hours a week, just like a person out of college, and taking my classes without having to commute. I wouldn’t normally have been able to do something like this, even as a part-time student.
“By getting this head start in my final semester, the adjustment period from college to postgrad will be a lot smoother.”
Not everyone has been so lucky, however. COM doesn’t yet have any stats on how its seniors are faring in their job hunts, but according to Nelson, they are “definitely still pursuing jobs aggressively,” networking, leveraging connections from work experiences and the University—a task Nelson says is the most helpful thing someone could do right now.
In addition to connecting with alumni, students should be identifying the “companies they’re interested in, where they fit with the culture,” Nelson says. “Whether or not a job exists there right now doesn’t matter; reach out and build relationships at those companies. Then when and if a job opens up, it will be far easier to mobilize your network on your behalf to advance your candidacy.”
Students are also figuring out how to make themselves marketable with résumés that might lack junior- and senior-year internship experiences. Stewart recommends framing what you did during the year as an example of your adaptability: “The language might be, ‘I overcame the pandemic challenge by…’ or ‘During times of uncertainty, I maximize my time by investing energy into…’” he says.
Packing on the extracurriculars
Alexander Puri (COM’21) came at his job search from a different angle. In lieu of spending his senior year sending applications out into the void, the broadcast journalism major decided to focus on strengthening his résumé.
“I wanted to prioritize making the most out of everything that I’m doing at BU,” he explains. “I figured that in the current climate, it made more sense to focus on what I have going on now so that when I do apply for jobs, my candidacy is as strong as it can be.”
That meant digging into his extracurriculars. Currently, Puri coproduces the BUTV10 sports talk show Offsides, cohosts the Box to Box podcast on WTBU, writes for the Boston Political Review, and is a BU Today intern. He also wrote and edited portions of The Vote 2020, BUTV10’s three-day coverage blitz of the 2020 election. His senior year has been busy, but that was by design: as a result, he has a robust journalism portfolio across a range of mediums.

Puri’s goal: to go into the broadcast field. He’s been applying for postgraduate internships at organizations like NBC and U.S. News and World Report, but is still waiting to hear back. Once he graduates, he’ll head back to his parents’ place in NYC—hopefully with an internship for the summer—and apply for jobs from home. “That’s basically my plan for the summer for now—just go all-in on the job search,” he says.
He knows it’ll pay off eventually. “I haven’t been rushing because I understand that finding a job is a lot more difficult in this current economic climate,” he explains. He has a couple of friends who have positions lined up, and one or two friends have decided to defer entering the job market, electing instead to head to grad school. “But the majority of people I know are still trying to figure out what they’re doing after graduation,” he says. “So being patient is the most important thing right now. I know I’ll find something eventually.”
And Puri really does have a killer résumé: “I’ve gotten a really good idea of what the actual field is like,” he says. “I definitely feel prepared to enter it.”
This Series
Also in
Job Hunting in a Pandemic
-
April 20, 2021
Students, Thinking about Looking for a Job? Watch This Video First
-
April 16, 2021
Career Experts Offer Advice for New College Grads
-
April 16, 2021
Smart Tips for Successful Virtual Job Interviews
Comments & Discussion
Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.