Impact of Covid-19

5. Adapting your career plan to take advantage of current opportunities

When you begin the process of career planning, you first consider the basics like your values, and motivations, followed by sectors or employers of interest, the salary you’ll need in order to pay your bills, care for your family, etc. and the location of the role… and with each of these there will undoubtedly need to be compromise. This process hasn’t changed.

In the short-term at least, movement around the country and around the world was, and continues to be, affected by the global health crisis. This not only impacts plans to travel, work, or study abroad, but also movement between countries and cities in the UK. As a result of lockdowns, you may no longer physically be in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, Dundee… when this was where you intended to start your graduate career. If this is the case, try not to panic. Alterations are inevitable in every career planning process, but… you may now know of other opportunities you hadn't considered or be able to work remotely. Many organisations took steps to capitalise on the challenge and offer opportunities in different ways.

Take these examples for instance:

• A business which has previously relied on high in-person footfall into their retail outlet which improved its online presence to allow customers to continue buying products
• A technology start-up selling collaborative digital platforms which had an increase in consumer interest as more organisations transitioned to remote working and required additional staff to deal with increased workloads
• An SME with established targeting for one demographic unable to rely on sales to that one group which required a new marketing strategy

Graduates are ready with up to date and transferable skills to step in and support those organisations to innovate.