There's an exploding job market for new graduates: The top industries with entry-level openings

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Monday, June 28, 2021
The top industries with entry-level openings for new grads
There are currently 10 million job openings across the country, as graduates enter the job market.

There are currently 10 million job openings across the country, as graduates enter the job market.

Like so many graduates this year, Giana Poppo's senior year of college wasn't how she imagined it.

"Our entire senior year was remote, so that was certainly disappointing in many ways," she told ABC News.

And now that graduation has come and gone, the job search has begun.

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Luckily for Giana and her peers, they are entering a job market with a record high of 9.3 million job openings, more than twice the amount available than this time last year.

"There are a lot more entry level jobs available," LinkedIn Career Expert Catherine Fisher said. "So as the country is starting to open back up, we're seeing the industries that continue to help us navigate this transition are really starting to hire."

Postings for remote-work jobs jump 457%, according to LinkedIn

LinkedIn found the industries with the most entry-level job openings include transportation, health care, software and IT services, retail and consumer goods.

Giana majored in the music industries program at the University of Southern California and is currently on the search for an entry-level job at a publishing company or record label.

"It was expected that I would maybe be interning in the most recent semester and have that transition to a job of some sort," she said. "Obviously, a lot of internships were canceled and companies were in hiring freezes, so it became a little more difficult. I was fortunate enough to have done a lot of internships before the pandemic."

She has been able to keep in touch with the networks from her previous internships to help find opportunities and utilized a work study project to boost her resume when she couldn't intern.

"I was still able to be hands on in a music industry project without necessarily having an official internship," Giana said.

Standing out on your resume is something Fisher says is especially important in a remote environment.

She says to:

Utilize Your Network

"Some people say, well, you know, I don't have a network, but you actually do," Fisher said. "Think about it. The coaches, the professors, the teachers, the classmates, the friends that is starting to build your network."

Assess Your Skills

"A lot of skills are transferable," she said. "If you were a bartender or a waitress during college, you've got customer service, you have time management, you've got people skills, sales, those skills can apply to the jobs that companies are really hiring for."

Apply early and be strategic

"If you're one of the first people to apply for a job in the first 10 minutes, you're four times more likely to get hired," Fisher said. "So set up those job alerts."