The pandemic disrupted their education, now college grads are trying to find jobs | Local News

Cortez Deacetis

For recent Millersville University graduate Hermengildo Blanco, finding a job as a Spanish teacher in Lancaster County means more than realizing a goal he clung to through the pandemic. It means Blanco, 23, can better support financially and emotionally his niece, a seventh-grader for whom he is a guardian, and his adopted brother from Guatemala. 

He’s set a goal to decide by July where he will work close enough to home near Lititz that he can be there for his family and keep his part-time gig at Brickerville House Restaurant where he worked while going to college. He expects his teachers’ starting pay to be between $50,000 and $60,000. 

If there was ever a time when a recent trade school or college graduate like Blanco could expect to find a well-paying job close to home or in the location of their choice, 2022 would be that year. 

A pandemic-induced labor shortage makes this spring’s entry-level job market one of the best there’s been for recent college graduates, say college career advisors and employment specialists.

With that great opportunity, however, comes challenges and caveats also wrought by the pandemic. 

Graduates’ immediate success in the job market may depend on how they can frame what they did – or didn’t do – in the pandemic as a positive growth experience rather than a terrible disappointment or abridgement of their lives.

That’s what Blanco was able to do. 

“I look at my diploma as not a piece of paper but (a symbol of) all the barriers I’ve overcome and the accomplishments I achieved in these four years, but it also just sums up my life,” said Blanco, who is the first generation of his family to go to college.

Margo Sassaman, Millersville University’s associate director of career management, got a glimpse of the intensity of hiring new graduates like Blanco in February when practice sessions turned real at a mock interview event for education majors.

“During the school’s recruitment, we had employers and students cancel their interview because they were in actual interviews,” said Sassaman.  “I don’t recall a boom like we’re having now.” 

Sassaman said she’s encountered employers in science, technology and math fields who are so eager to interview students that they are willing to overlook clumsy or unrefined resumes. 

She said she’s finding employers are more interested in a student’s experience than grade point average, a welcome change that college career experts have advocated for years. 

“GPA was the mantra for decades,” Sassaman said. “We know it’s not an indicator (of how well a student will do in their first job). That trend has changed; now internships are key. You get that practical experience. It’s always been an important piece. We knew that experience was really important for students to see a different perspective of things outside of the classroom.”

Scott Fiore, president of TriStarr Staffing in Manheim Township, says the job market is strong for entry-level candidates. 

“They’re looking at the best job market in decades,” Fiore said.

Across the spectrum of degrees the hiring market is strong across Lancaster County, Fiore said. He said accounting, nursing, health sciences and even liberal arts majors are finding jobs. 

“We’re seeing higher entry-level salaries across the board, even with those who might have more of liberal arts degree that doesn’t lead to a specific profession,” Fiore said. “Starting wages are certainly higher than they were 12 to 24 months ago.”

He agreed with Sassaman that experience is important, particularly for those who don’t pursue professional degrees such as accounting.

“With experience (in employers’ view) there will be less of a learning curve and the employee will start producing for the employer more quickly,” said Fiore.

Students graduating with skills in trades and environmental technology are in high demand, said Pedro Rivera, president of Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, a school that offers two-year degrees as well as shorter certificate programs. 

“With 21 days left to the semester, everyone had a job,” Rivera said. 







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Alycia Torello, an electrical construction & maintenance student, explains the ECM lab to a reporter and speaks about how she worked on her craft in the Orange Street campus of Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology on on Friday, April 29, 2022.






Rivera said students were getting multiple job offers and incentives. 

Alycia Torello, a 20-year-old Thaddeus Stevens carpentry and electrician certification graduate, was offered a new pickup truck to stay with her employer, John Young Inc. in Kennett Township, Chester County.

Torello had done part of her carpentry studies online. Even before she finished her second course – electrician certification – at the school, she was finding better job offers. 

Her employer, worried that it would lose a hard-working carpenter, bought her a 2022 Tacoma, on top of her approximately $23 an hour pay.

Like Blanco, Torello struggled through online work and a socially-distant college life. The experience might be framed as a pivot but it was not simple or easy. 

“When the pandemic hit in March (2020) we had to switch to online,” Torello said. “Hands-on (work) like carpentry is very difficult to learn from books and worksheets. It was definitely very lonely.”

Torello, who was also student government president, said after graduation she’s continuing a project in her spare time with her boyfriend to rehab an old house they bought to resell.

Wage growth







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The academic processional enters Good Shepherd Chapel at Lancaster Bible College for the commencement ceremony Friday, May 13, 2022.






Tenia Ralfi Brown, a Lancaster Bible College early childhood education graduate, found a dream job as a third-grade teacher working for Teach for America in Baltimore. When she started college three years ago, she wanted to be a counselor because it paid well but she learned through college that she was called by God to teach. 

When she shared her pay (about $50,000) with an old high basketball school coach, he told her it took him 10 years to reach that salary. She felt her pay signified society’s increasing appreciation for teachers, particularly as so many left since the pandemic. 

She had just two interviews before landing her job. 

“I knew I was called to inner city education,” Brown said, adding that she felt she was needed most in third grade. “I have so many ideas. I can’t wait to teach.”

There’s a good reason for the higher wages recent grads are seeing and it would be a mistake to think the class of 2022 is collectively getting an advantage.  

“Graduates also face the challenge of having the same level (or greater level) of student debt but with a greater cost of living than previous generations have experienced,” said Jane Nini, director of Elizabethtown College’s Career Development Center. “Salaries have increased but may not meet the impact of inflation. More than previous years, I see students paying greater attention to their expenses and total compensation packages. For critical labor shortage areas, we are seeing more sign-on bonuses to candidates. We also see employers who have a critical need to fill positions that may not require a college education.”







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Kennedy Toomey receives Photography & Video Department Award during the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design commencement in Barshinger Center for Musical Arts at F & M College in Lancaster Friday May 6, 2022.






Pennsylvania College of Art & Design Provost Carissa Massey said wage growth is strong for those in creative fields, and she’s looking at not just starting salaries of $43,000 but how wages increase through a creative’s career. 

Preparing students for a creative career has helped graduates be able to make the most of the degree in the arts in fields like live experience, animation and esports management.

Massey said the school’s pivots prior to the pandemic – including accreditation – enabled students to continue to access opportunities despite pandemic restrictions.

PCAD grad Kennedy Toomey found work as a photographer’s assistant where she hopes to also do social media marketing. Pay is about $20 an hour. In addition to her freelance work as a video editor at $25 an hour, she is eager to begin a career. 

“The pandemic definitely changed a lot of my mindsets when it came to looking for jobs,” Toomey said. 

She thought she wanted to get any job as soon as possible to pay back loans but that attitude changed. 

“I just want to be happy wherever I end up,” she said. “Going into art field as an artist, I’m not just one thing. We’re such adaptable people.”

Pandemic effect







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One of the many decorated mortarboard caps worn during the Franklin & Marshall College Graduation at the Alumni Sports and Fitness Center in Lancaster on Saturday, May 14, 2022.






“It’s definitely an employee’s market,” said Beth Throne, senior associate dean of student affairs at Franklin & Marshall College. “But it’s a pandemic-disrupted market.”

For F&M government and business graduate Ellyn Fritz, the disruption meant lack of internships at a crucial time in her college career. She was able to assist a professor with research on communication strategy. That opportunity helped her land a job in  Washington, D.C., as an analyst for multinational professional services company, Deloitte, at a salary between $70,000 and $90,000. 

Fritz said she started in October contacting F&M alumni to help her figure out her post-college steps. She talked to around 45 alums to see what kind of work would resonate. By the end of January, she had an offer from Deloitte, the first in her group of friends to get hired.

Fritz said pandemic restrictions allowed for more self reflection.

“One of the best things for me was to be able to focus on the future,” Fritz said. “I was able to narrow what I wanted to do without the distraction of a busy environment.”

Throne said the students that are most coveted by employers are those who are able to articulate how they navigated the pandemic and demonstrate an ability to work in a difficult environment. 

“Did they work? Did they pursue other opportunities?” Throne said. “Did they take the summer classes or did they sit and wait.”

Throne said it is important for students to know that they can stop the job search if it is too much and know that they will land jobs. 

F&M’s senior boot camp, which provides a one-stop resource for post-graduate life, usually draws 70 to 90 students and was at an all time low this year, Throne said. 

“They are exhausted and managing the stress of having a portfolio during a pandemic,” Throne said. 

F&M’s career services span all four years but the boot camp is usually popular. The school will provide a summer version for parents and graduates, separately. 

Flexibility is a key







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A message on a cap is shown during the commencement ceremony in the Dell on the campus at Elizabetown College Saturday, May 14, 2022.






Students are seeking flexibility from employers. 

“There are a few trends that I see in students (and career changers). They have learned that much of the work done in-person can also be done in a remote environment,” said Elizabethtown College’s Nini. “More than previous years, I am seeing students who are seeking a fully remote or at least a hybrid work arrangement.”

She said she is seeing more employers offering hybrid work, but graduates may start out working on-site before they can begin remote work. 

“Time flexibility and work-life balance is becoming important and, for some students, this means staying close to home,” Nini said. “There is still an underlying insecurity and a concern regarding what could happen if there is another shutdown of travel and/or work sites.”

Erin Lewis, an Elizabethtown College mathematical business graduate, accepted a job with Harrisburg-based WebFX in October, after missing out on an internship. 

“It was pretty early,” she said. “It was really nice to have that stress off my back. It is such a cool company; I just thought it was the best plan.”

She said she felt some pressure to accept the job.

“A lot of people feel how uncertain the future seems and I think the pandemic illuminated that,” she said. “Before COVID it felt like everything was moving all the time. I definitely had a lot of time to reflect during it. It gave us space to work on ourselves.”

Lancaster resident Ellie Rohrbach, a Millersville University graduate who majored in sociology with concentration in criminology, will start her job as a research assistant remotely for North Carolina-based American Institute Research.

She will move to North Carolina because she thinks it’s important, especially as a new employee, to get to know her co-workers and company in person at least some of the time. It was the first job she applied for and it was a top pick. She’ll be making around $50,000.

“I’m very happy with it as a first job out of college,” she said. “The pandemic for me was a difficult transition. Right as it hit I was raising and training a service dog. I had to move back home. Honestly it (dog training) was a big part of why I was successful. It gave me structure that other people didn’t have. It kept me busy during the pandemic. I focused on getting work done instead of spiraling about the world and everything that was happening.”

Rohrbach did consider staying in Lancaster for a job with the county but realized she was craving independence and to make a bigger difference. 

“My mindset is optimistic – I try to let myself be optimistic – I did the math with my partner. We’ll be OK right now,” she said. “Who knows what the world will look like. A part of me is a little anxious for the future but optimism overlooks the nervousness”

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