State officials and Hub business leaders implored more than 200 representatives from local companies and colleges today to broaden their internship opportunities for students to promote their talents and retain them in the state’s workforce.
“The way to win the future is to make use of our commitments towards the brain power here in the Commonwealth — our students. We have the best talent pool in the world,” said Gov. Deval Patrick at a forum titled “Internships: A Win-Win for Employers, Students and Academic Institutions” this morning at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. “We need to encourage our people to stay here or to come back to Massachusetts when they finish school elsewhere. … We need to work together across the public and private sectors to build and retain talent for the innovation economy of today and also of tomorrow. One of the ways that I’m asking you to do this is through internship programs in your companies.”
Patrick said state officials have partnered with the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and a local company, Experience, to launch a free web portal — www.massitsallhere.com/internships — where students can upload resumes and apply for internships in just a few clicks. Businesses can also post internship opportunities, as well as peruse resumes already posted to the search engine.
Nearly 2,000 students have signed up on the site for internships “in every industry imaginable,” Patrick said.
“We want this to be a clearinghouse of opportunities for young minds and a talent pool for companies like yours,” Patrick said. “Make use of the brain power we have here. Allow these students to work in your laboratories, in your offices, in your health-care facilities, in your think tanks. Let them experience what it’s like to be in conference rooms with people of the depth of experience and range of talent that you all represent and that you align with at your own companies. Let them experience and contribute to your design centers. Recognize the state that we all have in them and then help them recognize the state they have in us, and we all win.”
Paul Guzzi, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, which offers a free service called Chamber Intern Connect, said the way to keep student talent here is to “establish the glue between students and employers during their college careers.”
Boston Fed Chief Operating Officer Ken Montgomery, who moderated the forum, added that the Fed posted 20 intern positions in February for which they already received 2,500 applications.
“One of the real benefits is letting students know about other companies in the area,” Montgomery said. “They don’t know what opportunities are available.”
Though 28.5 percent of New England college students hail from outside the region and Yolanda Kodryzycki, vice president and director of the New England Public Policy Center at the Boston Fed, said the leading reason for students leaving after college was a lack of job opportunities.
“They don’t think there are jobs for them in the region,” she said. “It’s going to get harder as recovery takes hold … to recruit the workers that you need. Educating our own is very, very important but it’s the well-designed internship programs that can make the difference in the foreseeable future.”
Kodryzycki added that the Boston Fed has made “active use” of internships. Out of 947 current employees, 44 — or 4.6 percent — began as interns, including five officers.
A panel of representatives from the academic and business sectors also offered advice for successful internship programs, including making sure clear job descriptions were outlined for interns; putting a focus on recruiting students at key colleges and universities; and establishing relationships with them to lay the foundation of entry-level hiring.
“It needs to be a real role,” said Maribeth Nash, State Street Corp. senior vice president and chief talent officer. “This is not the person who gets coffee for everyone. This is the individual in the meeting having coffee with employees.”
Outside the forum, Patrick told the Herald that internship programs were reflective of the state’s long-term interests.
“We have right now a significant skills gap — lots of jobs going unfilled because employers aren’t able to find the talent they need. As we grow this innovation economy we need to pay attention in making sure that we can continue to refresh it with the talent we need, so internships are a great way for that to happen,” Patrick said. “The other thing is we have an awful lot of really smart people who come here for school and being able to hang onto them into the future is good for us.”
The governor, who was vacationing in the U.S. Virgin Islands last week during the Back Bay power outage, also fielded questions about the blackout.