One of the most daunting aspects of life after graduation is making sure that our education translates into a career. With the working population increasing and job vacancies decreasing in Canada, starting a career in a competitive job market is on top of many students’ minds.
As the academic year comes to an end, The Varsity interviewed graduating and recently graduated students to learn about how U of T prepared them for landing a job after graduation.
Navigating career resources at U of T
U of T Arts & Science alumna Taylor Yeung, found that the university provided ample resources for finding careers.
“If you take advantage of the resume building and alumni networking, it would strengthen your chances in obtaining new [career] opportunities,” she wrote in an email to The Varsity. During her time at U of T, career advisors helped her with her résumé, prepare for interviews, and learn how to gain new skills and find opportunities.
Mikayla Neumann, who graduated in 2024 with a masters in anthropology, also noted that U of T has career support for students, such as the Career & Co-curricular Learning Network (CLNx). Sabrina Chu, a fourth-year student studying linguistics and environmental studies, also cited CLNx as a helpful resource for students to find job listings, but she believes that improvements should be made.
“I feel like UofT should provide more adequate resources for job searching. For example, it would be helpful if the CLNx portal had an application process affiliated with [U of T] for off-campus jobs rather than only leading to the job application website,” she wrote.
Yeung also mentioned that there is a “gap between knowing that the resource exists at UofT and actively using them as a student.”
Moreover, a lack of awareness about how resources functioned prevented Neumann from using them to their fullest extent.
“I didn’t have much opportunity to use [the resources] because I was a bit confused about how resources like the CLNx worked. With my job (at the time) and school workload, it seemed a bit overwhelming to figure out major career decisions,” she wrote.
Despite Yeung’s concerns, U of T offers Employer Information Sessions through CLNx that allow students to “gather information about an organization, make connections with recruiters and hiring managers and show that you are genuinely interested in their organization.” Students can also attend academic advising events and workshops to prepare for entering the job market.
On the other hand, Chu stated that her biggest obstacle in the job market “would be finding the exact job I want. Since my [linguistics and environmental studies] majors provide a broad scope for jobs, it’s harder than other majors to pinpoint a specific job that I want to apply for, so that makes the search process longer.”
She added that “Certain departments lack resources for future job opportunities – the Department of Linguistics rarely provides resources for jobs.”
However, Neumann accredited most of her challenges in the job market to the job market itself.
“I can’t say a lack of resources made it difficult to find work. I believe it’s a bad job market and [it’s] economic/cultural factors that are responsible for making job seeking so difficult.”
The Graduate Survey by Ontario Universities, which surveyed the class of 2020, showed that employment rates for STEM fields, like computer science, and humanities students were roughly the same post-graduation. For example, 93.5 per cent of humanities students and 94.8 per cent of computer science students were employed within two years after graduating.
However, the graduates’ salaries vastly differed. For example, computer science graduates earned $95,957 two years after graduation, while social sciences graduates received a salary of $53,285 after the same period.
“I wish I had taken advantage of UofT’s opportunities more,” she added. “The challenge is how UofT can help students in a job market that has increasingly difficult standards.” Neumann wrote. “It’s an issue that goes beyond the school itself, but … even with UofT’s support, finding work is difficult and is not going to get easier.”
