Site made to link students, grads with Boston jobs

A new partnership called the Massachusetts Internship Collaborative launched a new internship search engine for college and graduate students in the Greater Boston area, including those at Boston University, with hopes of increasing graduate retention rates in the city.

The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston  collaborated to form the partnership and launch InternHub.com, said Federal Reserve Bank of Boston spokeswoman Kris MacAulsan. She said the organizations conducted extensive research on the graduate retention rates in the greater Boston area.

“New England as a region has the lowest retention rate [of graduates] in the United States,” MacAuslan said. “That’s obviously surprising when you consider how many great institutions … are right here in our backyard.”

The studies conducted by the organizations show many students leave the Boston area to seek employment elsewhere because they are not aware of opportunities in the Hub itself, MacAuslan said.

“The reality is that those [job opportunities] are here, it’s just a matter of making sure that students know about them and that the employers are seeing the talent that we know we have here,” she said.

MacAuslan said she hopes the site will connect more students to employers so they find positions in Boston industries.

“We want to strengthen the local workforce and we want to strengthen the economy, and internships are a really great way to do that,” she said.

Boston Chamber of Commerce Public Affairs Coordinator Emily Dahlgaard said the initiative will help students who are struggling to find internships near their schools.

“A lot of students are looking for employers and employment opportunities, but they don’t necessarily know where to go,” she said. “…What we’re hoping that this resource can do is to connect those two different groups and bridge the gap.”

The Massachusetts Internship Collaborative has received support from private, public and quasi-public companies in the area that have helped them to construct the site, Dahlgaard said. InternHub.com focuses on professional internships from a wide variety of industries at the college and graduate level, including paid and unpaid internships at both non-profit and for-profit companies.

“The goal is to strengthen the ties between the talented community of college students in our region and the wide range of industries and employers that our region has to offer,” she said.

Boston University College of Communication Career Services specialist Kelly Forde said the site could be a valuable resource for students.

“If it [the site] is posting positions that are relevant to students and that are relevant to their major, then certainly I think it would be useful,” she said.

COM Career services generally recommends students use the Center for Career Development’s CareerLink as an avenue to find internships online, Forde said.

“That [CareerLink] should be your first resource, but it shouldn’t be your only resource,” she said.

College of Arts and Sciences junior Prithvi Hingorani said he has never before used a search engine to find internships aside from CareerLink, but he would be interested in experimenting with Intern Hub.

“If there are companies from the industry that I’m interested in that are posting there [on Intern Hub] and if it has good reviews from people, I’d definitely go for it,” he said.

School of Management junior  Tuaha Mubarak said because the Boston Chamber of Commerce and Federal Reserve Bank of Boston operate the site, the internships on it are most likely prestigious and worthwhile.

“The biggest problem in searching for internships are the legitimacy behind them, but I feel like the fact that it was launched with help from the Boston Chamber of Commerce and the Boston Fed … gives it that legitimacy that students are looking for,” he said.

College of Engineering  senior Lisha Kaluza said she would be interested in using the site to find internships, especially because InternHub is specific to the Boston Area.

“I’d like to see what they have to offer,” she said. “… It’s a good idea. They don’t have something like that for Boston that I’ve seen before like this.”