Stick Around Awhile

ADVERTORIAL: Philadelphia's providing students with more and more reasons to call Philly home after commencement.

by Jason Tomassini

ADVERTORIAL CONTENT

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The term "entry level" can conjure up frightening images: stacks of paperwork, nocturnal hours, an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of a coffee machine. But for students graduating from city universities, there are alternatives.

City organizations are banding together in an effort to not only show students that Philadelphia isn't the typical big city workplace, but to set them up with jobs that will encourage them to stay in the city for years after graduation.

"There's always going to be some degree of opportunity for people in entry level positions and at the same time it's not quite at that New York level where you maybe don't feel like you have that upward mobility," says Josh Sevin, manager of Knowledge Industry Initiatives for the Department of Commerce. "It has the whole `big city that feels like a small town` thing.

"The ability to make a career and rise up the ranks is something people can really see in Philadelphia."

The city's main effort to keep college grads in Philadelphia is through its funding of the Knowledge Industry Partnership which includes Campus Philly, a non-profit that works with universities, students and businesses to promote employment opportunity in the city and uses its Web site CareerPhilly.com to connect students with employers.

Campus Philly founder John Herrmann says the best way to keep students in Philly after college is to connect them with internships during college.

"We try to focus kids on internships while they are in college because that's the main way to create new opportunities for students when they graduate," Herrmann says.

Through Career Philly, they proactively seek employers to post internships on the site and will conduct an online fair in February where the majority of local summer internships will be posted.

While Sevin and Herrmann do their best to promote the city and set residents up with jobs, the growing industries in the city will attract job seekers as well. Long-time staples of the Philadelphia-area job market like pharmaceutical sales, information technology and life sciences remain thriving industries and are hiring recent graduates in droves. But Sevin says the burgeoning arts scene is providing opportunities in video production, fashion design as well as the growing non-profit industry.

While the growing opportunities are certainly attractive to recent graduates, Herrmann realizes the first thing young people are looking for is a place to make a mark and have a good time doing it.

"If we get past the "place that they like" hurdle, which Philly should be able to do," he says, "it comes down to, can they get a job in their career path and is the industry an industry that will get them a second or third job down the line."