Despite Covid-19, these employers are hiring students and recent grads

Coronavirus, also known as Covid-19, is shutting down the U.S. economy. Federal and state governments are essentially creating a parallel economy by providing individuals and businesses with enough income that, hopefully, economic disaster for them and for all of us may be avoided.

What is particularly stressful about this public health crisis is that no one knows when it will relent and the business world will get back to full speed. What magnifies that for college students and recent graduates is the timing: spring is when most students begin part-time, seasonal, and internship jobs and recent graduates begin their entry-level careers. At College Recruiter, we fear that this could quickly become the worst hiring season for new college graduates since the 2008–2009 Great Recession.

As we emerged from the Great Recession, employment numbers for students and recent graduates slowly improved until they became amongst the best in modern history. It was starting to become unusual when a student or recent graduate who networked and applied to advertised jobs well (two different things) had difficulty finding an opportunity in their chosen career paths. To be clear, many were unable to find those opportunities, even if they searched well, but the percentage who were unable to find opportunities in their chosen career paths had declined from being commonplace in 2008 and 2009 to unusual in 2019 and the beginning of 2020.

Today, however, we’re only three months into the Covid-19 pandemic and the employment numbers are devastating. Employers are scrambling to try to figure out how to adapt their internship and recent graduate hiring programs to remote (virtual) work when possible.

The news, quite frankly, is mostly bad for most employers and employees, but that does not mean that there is a complete lack of good news. Some employers are hiring and some of those have greatly ramped up hiring. Some noteworthy examples, in no particular order, are:

• Amazon
• Walmart
• Kroger
• CVS
• Zoom
• Microsoft
• Slack
• 7-Eleven
• Army National Guard
• KPMG
• Genentech
• Lowe’s
• HCA Healthcare
• Intuit
• Whole Foods
• ShopRite
• Acme
• Instacart
• Uber Eats
• PepsiCo
• GE Healthcare
• INKSmith
• Bednark Studios
• Outschool
• Philips
• Unilever
• GSK
• Facebook
• Wells Fargo
• VMware Carbon Black
• Healthfirst
• Squarespace
• UnitedHealth Group
• Ultimate Software
• Deutsche Bank
• Charles Schwab
• Spectrum
• Clearlink
• Broadridge
• Prudential
• IGS
• Intuit
• Baker Tilly
• Cisco Meraki
• Zynga
• Oscar Health
• Bowery Farming
• Trustwave
• Integral Ad Science
• BounceX
• and thousands of other employers who are currently advertising their part-time, seasonal, internship, and entry-level jobs on College Recruiter.