Pittsburgh Passport Internship Series aims to retain the area’s young talent
How do you convince soon-tobe college graduates to start their professional lives in Pittsburgh?
Show them the city’s diverse entertainment options, from museums to sports teams to outdoor activities? Give them the opportunity to network with CEOs from a variety of companies looking to hire? Bring out Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier for a motivational speech?
The Pittsburgh Passport Summer Internship Series, a program from the Allegheny Conference on Community Development in collaboration with more than 35 regional companies and other organizations, is doing all that and more in hopes of bringing young talent into the local workforce.
“Five years ago, I was somewhat in your shoes” being new to Pittsburgh, Mr. Shazier told the crowd of about 750 interns from 35 states and 25 countries who gathered Wednesday evening at Heinz Field for the Pittsburgh Passport launch. “I was eyes wide open. I didn’t know anything about the city.”
Mr. Shazier told the interns that the city embraced him from the beginning and continued to support him after he suffered a severe spinal cord injury in a December 2017 game that halted to his playing career.
“You have a lot of opportunities other cities wouldn’t give you,” he said.
Pittsburgh Passport is a direct response to the Allegheny Conference’s 2016 report called “Inflection Point,” which showed that the region is heading for a workforce shortage.
According to the Allegheny Conference, 40,000 students graduate from colleges and universities in southwest Pennsylvania every year. Nearly half those students leave instead of staying for one of more than 20,000 open jobs in the region, the Allegheny Conference said.
Many of the interns participating in the program came to Pittsburgh from colleges and universities outside the region. Part of the idea for Pittsburgh Passport is to influence those interns from elsewhere to look at the city as a place where they could start their careers or spread word about opportunities in Pittsburgh to other students when they return to school.
The program provides a variety of experience for the interns, including a Pirates game at PNC Park, a kayaking excursion with Venture Outdoors and a kickball tournament hosted by Dick’s Sporting Goods.
“It’s really meant to be in some ways a research-based pilot,” said Stefani Pashman, CEO of the Allegheny Conference. “We listened to the problem from our employers of needing talent, we found an opportunity of a talent pool that we can access, we then went and talked to understand the problem and tried to solve it, and we created a model.”
Reese Bearden, 20, an EQT Corp. intern who had never visited Pittsburgh before, said he was looking forward to getting to know the city through activities provided by the program.
Mr. Bearden, who is going to be a senior at North Carolina A&T State University, also hopes he has a chance to see the employment opportunities in Pittsburgh.
“Out of the program I see the opportunity to network throughout the city,” he said. “[We] obviously have our connections at the company we’re working with, but this program gives us a chance to grow our network and make ourselves more marketable after college.”
Krishna Subramanian, 20, a PNC Bank intern who attends the University of Pittsburgh, said that even though he’s lived in the city for the past three years, he thinks it’s important to see what Pittsburgh has to offer outside of the college bubble.
“I think as a college student you go to places and events that are more geared toward students,” he said. “So having a program that kind of expands out to what you can do after graduation as a young adult but not really in that student life anymore, having a program that opens your eyes to all of that would just be really, really beneficial, [and] really helpful after graduation to see if this is the best place for you.”