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By Kym Reinstadler | MiBiz
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WEST MICHIGAN — Michigan employers now have an online tool to help them attract their “dream team” of college interns who may one day become future employees.

InternInMichigan.com, which is free to users, recently went live statewide around the first of November. In its first three weeks, 165 employers posted 500 paid internship opportunities, and 1,800 college students or recent graduates were already registered and using the site.

Its premise is that getting students to intern in the state will also lead to them finding work here after graduation. Completing that circle helps to stem the state’s brain drain by keeping talent in Michigan.

“This eHarmony approach to matching students with internships is a huge win for employers and kids in the state,” said Lou Glazer of Michigan Future Inc., an Ann Arbor-based think tank which has been hammering home the idea that human capital drives economic prosperity.

Like eHarmony, Intern In Michigan requires employers and students to be specific about qualifications and requirements, experiences and expectations and preferences, interests and opportunities.

A computer program analyzes the data to recommend a handful of the most compatible registered users. Deepening the pool of internship opportunities and registered students statewide will make this site more useful than earlier — but less complex — regional efforts at cultivating interns, Glazer said.

Intern in Michigan was developed over the last three years in partnership with the West Michigan Strategic Alliance and the Detroit Regional Chamber by Detroit-based Digerati Inc. with funding from the New Economy Initiative and the Kellogg Foundation.

Colleges and universities, which traditionally have arranged student internships, also had input into website development.

“We found that most internship postings are vague and nondescript,” said Brian Balasia, CEO of Digerati. “We used the federal government site ONet to identify the skills and characteristics required for the 460 jobs most likely to be done by interns. This makes better matching possible.”

About 25,000 students graduate from Michigan colleges and universities every year. Research shows it takes recent graduates an average of nine months to land their first career job, but many who would like to remain in Michigan grow frustrated and move on.

Internships are key to connecting college-educated talent with employers in Michigan so they are less likely to leave, Balasia said. Three-fourths of students get hired by the businesses where they intern, and 83 percent remain in the areas where they intern, Balasia said.

That first move after college has huge ramifications when you consider young professionals will likely buy homes and raise families there, Balasia said.

Retaining young talent is important for three key reasons, Balasia said.

1. Communities are wise to attract as many engineers, scientists and computer programmers and others with in-demand skill sets because support jobs follow.
2. College-educated workers stand a better chance of surviving an economic downturn.
3. Unemployment among four-year college grads during the latest recession is 4.6 percent, about half the state’s unemployment rate overall.

“It’s time companies and communities get serious about internships,” Balasia said. “Colleges are the farm system for growing a major league economy.”

Balasia himself is an example of this. He says the idea for Digerati was born out of an internship he had while he was a student at the University of Michigan. In those years at UM, he got to know Detroit and decided to locate his research company there.

Many businesses are mired in the mindset that hiring college interns is merely altruistic, but there are companies like Amway Corp. that “really get it,” Balasia said.

Every summer Amway hires a total of 100 college interns for 12-week internships at its Ada headquarters and a location in Californiar They’re given real work to do, a housing allowance and a rental car if they need it and are coming from more than 50 miles away.

About 30 percent of interns who are graduating and offered a job “convert,” fortifying the company’s talent pipeline, said Kevin Douglas, who heads up Amway’s College Talent Acquisition program.

Internships are the prime way to familiarize a company to promising young talent, and the competition can be fierce, especially for technical careers, Douglas said.“The talent war has been heating up since 2009/2010,” Douglas said. “More companies are offering internships, so students no longer jump at the first offer. They wait for several offers and weigh them.”

Courting future information technology architects, engineers and supply chain procurement specialists is essential because many will have job offers before they graduate, Douglas said.

To lure talent, companies must understand what new college graduates are looking for in their first jobs and then do their best to provide it, Douglas said.

Michigan is behind the eight ball on that count, Glazer said. Place is as important as the job itself to many young professionals, who tend to prefer to make their homes in safe and diverse, mixed-use urban areas where they don’t have to own a own an automobile to get around, he said.

Currently, Michigan doesn’t have a single community that measures up, and Chicago benefits because of that, Glazer said.

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• brian balasia
• digerati
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• west michigan