Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Graduates Seeking Jobs

The appearance of COVID-19 virus has affected many aspects of our life. These include and not limited to social, financial and economic changes. One of the most important impacts is the economic effects. Many countries have taken actions to continue the teaching process through online teaching platforms. The students are expected to graduate during the next few semesters with certificates that include some online-completed courses and their graduation certificates are called mixed certificates. This paper considers graduation mixed certificates with some online courses and its impact on graduates seeking jobs. First, we study how well the mixed certificates are accepted by job market. In other words, how different companies, organizations and even governmental entities would accept such certificates when hiring. We study the perception of job market for such certificates for different learning fields. Secondly, we study how well the online courses are accepted by the students keeping in mind that these students are used to traditional face to face teaching. Finally, we paper our results and recommendations according to the collected data from the surveys. Some of the results show that about 60% of companies don't have policies to encourage hiring graduates with mixed certificates. Also, colleges are almost divided evenly between preferring face to face and preferring online teaching.