Vibe Check: Big Tech Is Losing Its ‘Luster’ For The Class Of 2023 Amid Mounting Layoffs And An Uncertain Economy – Forbes

According to a Handshake survey of 954 students, the share of 2023 graduates who say company brand is a factor in their job search dropped 10 percentage points between summer 2022 and spring 2023.

Yale University senior Yuliia Zhukovets was one interview and an assessment into the job application process to be a data scientist at a tech giant when she says the company went silent for three weeks.

After reaching out to the company, which she asked to keep anonymous as she continues her job search, Zhukovets got some bad news: The employer was putting a hiring freeze on data science positions. Now, with graduation around the corner, shes applying to smaller companies and considering nontechnical roles such as consulting.

As shes watched big companies enact mass layoffs and some even rescind offers, its definitely de-incentivized even looking into [them], says Zhukovets, a statistics and data science major.

More peoplenearly 140,000lost their jobs in major layoffs at U.S. companies in the past fiscal quarter than the prior two quarters combined, according to Forbes layoff tracker, as tech layoffs led by Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft surged. Job cuts at big corporations in other sectors such as Disney, 3M and Goldman Sachs are growing while consulting firms like Accenture, Bain and McKinsey that typically hire recent graduates in bulk are in some cases pushing back start dates, according to media reports.

Now, many in the class of 2023 are shifting their focus. According to a survey of 954 student users of Handshake, a job search platform for college students, the share of 2023 graduates who say company brand is a factor in their job search dropped 10 percentage points between summer 2022 and spring 2023. Over the same period, those who prioritized a fast-growing company in their job search sank from 39% to 19%.

Theyre thinking I dont want any more instability, says Christine Cruzvergara, chief education strategy officer at Handshake. She says this years graduating class is unique in that it has had all four years of college disrupted by Covid-19, saw ChatGPT explode onto the scene during their senior year and watched their parents lives disrupted by the financial crisis during elementary school. You see this shift in what theyre looking for. Theyre not just attracted to the big name, fast-growing companiesthe flashiness of what you saw a lot of previous classes gravitate toward.

Handshakes survey also shows that 36% of respondents said they are opening their job search to more industries, companies and roles while 71% said theyre willing to move to a different city for the right job.

The percentage of students who prioritized a fast-growing company in their job search sank from 39% last summer to 19% this spring.

While young job seekers will certainly jump at jobs in big tech firms when hiring increases again, says Cruzvergara, the large-scale layoffs of the last few months and perk-cession thats gotten underway could have a lasting impact on how young workers view the culture and security of tech jobs. I think the luster is definitely lost, she says.

Zhukovets is just one of many students resetting both their expectationsand their goals. Id rather work in a smaller company where I can get more hands-on experience and have more impact in my job, she says. While shes hoping to still get a job in tech, Im trying to find those alternatives and compromises.

Plagued by the pandemic throughout their college career, the class of 2023 is more comfortable with change, says Jenny Dearborn, a veteran human resources executive who has held C-suite positions such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise and SAP.

When companies were hiring even more people than they knew what to do with and the economy was super hot, Dearborn says, new grads had so many choices that they felt frozen. Some even hesitated to say yes to something goodbecause something great might be right down the line. Now, Dearborn says, new grads are more pragmatic.

Like Zhukovets at Yale, this years graduating class is showing an increased appetite for tech roles in other sectors. In a separate data analysis, Handshake saw an 8.1 percentage point drop in applications to tech employers and an increase in applications for all other industries for students with technology majors applying to internships this year. Meanwhile, government sector job applications are up 104%, according to Handshakes new report.

Sophia Cusack, who is about to complete a masters in marketing at the University of Tennessee, says she had always wanted to move to New York and work for a major beauty corporation like LOreal after graduating, but amid a tougher job market, is targeting jobs at agencies or smaller firms and looking to move back to Charlotte, N.C. instead. After looking since February, shes getting more creative, sending along video with applications and zeroing in on jobs that use her analytics and consumer insights skills.

As tech companies have made big cuts, she thinks it could have an impact on her peers. I feel like everyone at some point is like I want to go work for GoogleI can go slide down some slides [in Googles office]but Ive been pulled away from that thought process, Cusack says.

Others, like Pace University senior Alessandro Seni, want to work on their own startups full-time after graduation. Sixty-one percent of the 500 soon-to-be college graduates surveyed by A.Team, a freelance platform where companies can hire teams of contractors to work projects, said they want to turn their side hustle into their full-time job, while 68% are considering starting their careers as a freelancer.

After applying to about 50 jobs with few replies, Seni says hes now leaning toward focusing on an educational platform he created. If I try to do my own thing and a year passes and it doesn't really go anywhere, Im still 23, says Seni, now 22. By then, he says, maybe the market will be better.

Lindsay Sanchez, who graduated in April from Ensign College in Utah and says she has applied to more than 200 jobs, wants a strong company culture, but hasnt even been given the chance to be picky with these jobs, saying shes been ghosted on some interviews. Instead of digital marketing jobs, now shes looking into customer service jobs.

Other surveys of sentiment among graduating students also find that increasingly, stability reigns. They want to have something in hand if something happens to the economy, says Tom Gimbel, CEO of Chicago-based recruiting firm the LaSalle Network. They dont want to get caught without a chair when the music stops.

Ketaki Tilak, a computer science masters student at Rochester Institute of Technology, worries that other early-career, recently laid-off employees could be competitionas might interns from last summer who didnt get full-time offers at the time. Normally you wouldnt be competing with these people who worked at FANG companies for a year, says Tilak, who says shes applied to about 450 jobs since October but hasnt had an offer yet.

Johnson & Wales University senior Kyle Leupold is also feeling the heat. After a higher education institution gave him three months to accept an IT positionhe says he got so much time because they knew he was still a studentthe offer was rescinded. (He was told the position was no longer open, Leupold says.) The cybersecurity major says tightened budgets and the tendency for employers to increasingly outsource IT and security specialists is not helping.

I didnt plan to be graduating into the economy that we have now, Leupold says.

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Vibe Check: Big Tech Is Losing Its 'Luster' For The Class Of 2023 Amid Mounting Layoffs And An Uncertain Economy - Forbes