Tech and tutoring: Where to find graduate vacancies during COVID-19

01 Jun 2020

You’re probably anxious about graduating during a pandemic that is paralysing economies everywhere. Oil prices are negative, companies are announcing pay cuts and unemployment is skyrocketing — it’s a gloomy time to be looking for graduate vacancies.

There are, however, still opportunities for soon-to-be graduates, if you know where to look.

Graduate vacancies are in enterprise tech

According to reports, startups are hiring during this economic downturn.

For instance, Forbes reported that Jai Sajnani, a principal at venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates, had created a Google Forms database with available positions across various industries in the tech startup scene.

The database contained 180 startups, and over 50% of all the listings are advertised by enterprise tech companies.

These include a wide range of roles, from sales and marketing to engineering and design positions.

Make money with your language skills

“It gives me more human contact during this period of isolation.” Senior writer @yasmin_aky explores how you can learn a new language with a tutor during #COVID19 https://t.co/YNRJqq6UeA

— Study International (@Study_INTNL) April 6, 2020

Meanwhile, university students or graduates with a strong grasp of languages can also work as tutors on online tutoring platforms.

In Ukraine, startup Preply — an online language tutoring platform — is thriving under these unprecedented circumstances.

Speaking to AFP, company CEO Dmytro Voloshyn said they are “in a favourable position” as many people are stuck at home due to COVID-19, and can thus spend more time honing their foreign language skills in self-isolation.

The platform connects aspiring language learners with tutors on their platform, who can hail from any part of the world.

Since Ukraine went on lockdown in March to slow the pandemic, AFP said their 125 staff have been working at full capacity from home, while Voloshyn said the company is scrambling to hire 40 employees across its offices in Kiev and Barcelona.

Online proctoring companies are enjoying a boost in sales

University students are no longer taking their exams on campus, but online. Source: Frederikc Florin/AFP

As learning shifts online for many universities across the world, this calls for more online proctors — invigilator at a university or college examination — to facilitate online exams that cannot take place on campus.

This has led to a surge in sales for online proctoring companies.

For example, ProctorU CEO Scott McFarland said the company — which specialises in online proctoring for tests and exams — has seen an influx of calls from universities. The pandemic has also led to a surge in hiring and a tremendous uptick in business in March, reported Birmingham Business Journal.

McFarland was quoted saying that the company has been seeing 100 to 200 leads a day for the past 15 days, and that they’ve added about 50 additional employees.

He added that the first indications of a looming wave came from the University of Sydney in Australia, which had around 1,000 students in China who would generally come to Australia for final exams.

With travel restrictions in place, ProctorU began working with the school, discovering many more schools were in similar situations, said the report.

With many online proctoring companies available in the market, it can’t hurt for university students and soon to be graduates to explore what options are available with these companies.