Just about everyone I knew did that when I graduated in '96.

I had an internship for a full semester at a national lab facility. A month before that ended, they asked me if I wanted to work there full-time.
I only stayed 7 months, because a multinational offered me an R&D spot for 45% more money & agreed to pay for the rest of graduate school.
That was mid '76.

…was the ER, but they did not take new grads. Second choice of Labor and Delivery didn’t have any openings. 3rd choice was pediatrics. That’s where I started in August of 1973, and where I ended up spending my career, 45 years of it as a peds nurse practitioner in one capacity or another. I retired 1 month shy of my 70th birthday.

in various jobs on campus... first as a "research assistant" ( as a freshman ), then as a TA, eventually my department chairman went to bat for me to become the very first undergraduate Instructor ( full faculty member ) in the history of the university.

In my last summer before graduation I took a summer intern job at a early "time sharing" ( now we would say "cloud provider" ) company in a nearby big city ( Kansas City )... which morphed into a full time gig for both me and my new wife ( a former student of mine at the university ).

As I age out of the work force, finding new jobs has been harder and harder ( partly because i became highly specialized, partly due to fear that places that might employ me would lose me to a job better suited to my talents and salary requirements ).

when Boeing was nothing but layoffs. I was competing for entry level jobs with machinists, and other skilled workers. It was a nightmare.

market for teachers was really tight. A couple of years earlier, my advisor alerted me to this situation and suggested that I expand from my secondary (7-12) certification to a double certification where I could teach K-12. I went to summer school one summer and took extra hours during the remaining years to take the extra courses needed. I was glad for that advice. I could not find a junior high or high school job teaching history but after substituting for a year, I got an elementary school position. I loved it and spent 32 years teaching 2nd or 3rd grade. During the spring of my senior year, a friend of mine applied for a job in Kake, Alaska thinking she had a good chance for that remote place. She was told they already had 90 applicants and would put her on a waiting list! I always felt fortunate working in my profession.

I finished my undergrad degree in March '73 and had a full time job before I started grad school in Sept that year. In my grad school class of 12, I was the last to get a full time job in Oct '75. Unemployment was 9% at the time, and I was a white woman in a male dominated field.

Meat wrapper at local co-op NJ
Gopher at Datsun NJ
Nanny in NYC
Braille library in NYC
Pet store NYC
Waitress at diner in Denver
Bartender
Maintenance at shopping center/trade school
HVAC tech at school district (20yrs)
Retired

Was never concerned about $$$ for rent/food.

or be drafted for Vietnam.