Think Small For Big Jobs. Detroit Free Press - March 2008 - By Ron Dzwonkowski
Michigan has to stop its brain drain or kiss its future good-bye -- along with its best and brightest young people. The state's No Worker Left Behind effort is doing what it can for mid-career and older folks displaced by the loss of manufacturing jobs. That helps Michigan through its wrenching economic transition. But the future of this state is in the hands of the young.
Brian Balasia
A certain share of them always leave after college, but too many are bailing on Michigan today based on a perception that there are no jobs here for them because the major automakers and their big suppliers are all shrinking and hurting.
You may know, as I do, some young people with Michigan subsidized college degrees who are content to work below their education level in places such as Chicago or North Carolina based on the belief that "whatever is going to happen for me, it's not going to happen in Michigan."
Not to suggest that Michigan's economy is going great guns, but consider: Unemployment among college grads in Michigan is 4%, way lower than the 7.1% statewide figure for January. Outside of government work, 80% of the jobs in Michigan are at companies with fewer than 800 employees.
And engineers are in demand, maybe not so much by one of those huge companies that used to dangle the "golden handcuffs," but by a lot of small, aggressive firms with solid business plans and lots of growth potential. Some in-demand services are also niches in waiting for entrepreneurs. Neither of these is the traditional model for work in Michigan, home of inside-the-box thinking for generations.
All of that turned on the proverbial light bulb for Brian Balasia, 26, an aerospace engineer out of the University of Michigan who is the CEO of Digerati, a busy Detroit company that does software and process engineering for medical offices, ticket sellers and other businesses.
"We have certified rocket scientists from Michigan making $9 an hour as parking lot attendants in Chicago," he said. "And yet I kept hearing about amazing technologies here in companies with five to 500 employees ... offering possibilities of working in a more creative environment. But these are companies most of our college students would never hear about."
So began what amounts to a matchmaking effort scheduled for March 19 at the University of Michigan Engineering School in Ann Arbor that will bring 100-150 employers who don't usually make the college "job fair" circuit in touch with 500 to 1,000 students looking for work and, one would hope, an opportunity to build their adult lives here.
There's still room for companies to register at themoreprogram.com and students can preregister there or just show up on the 19th between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.
The MORE in the program stands for Michigan Opportunities and Resources for
Entrepreneurs, the fledgling organization that got this ball rolling with a federal grant under a U.S. Department of Labor program called WIRED -- Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development. Other grants will support similar efforts to match up young people with young or growing companies in mid and west Michigan. The Detroit-based MORE program also will offer $5,000 grants this spring plus business counseling to a select group of young entrepreneurs who are trying to get a product or idea to market.
MORE executive director Jessica Pfeiffer, formerly a banker who decided not to leave town with Comerica, is beating the bushes for more small and mid-sized employers in need of smart young workers. She foresees more targeted employment events in the months ahead, on different campuses in different parts of the state and featuring different kinds of employers and different kinds of opportunities.
"Larger corporations are known to students because they already recruit on campus or are household names and because they are involved on our campuses. ... We want to get these smaller, growing companies involved and known on campus, too," Pfeiffer said. "We want to introduce the companies to faculty who do research in areas related to their business, to opportunities to sponsor student research projects, rent subsidized lab space and just build
up a relationship. ...
"This should give the smaller companies visibility to students and to faculty and should result in them naturally knowing where to go to find the perfect students for their internships and job openings. MORE is a first step, and we'll go from there."
It's good to know such a step is in the works, because we have got to stop the brain drain.
Not that I was around then, but the energy that filled the room during a meeting between the Free Press and the MORE folks last week brought to mind the Michigan of a hundred years ago, when a bunch of eager young thinkers were tinkering with motor vehicles, corn flakes and refrigerators, coming up with products that changed the world. They didn't wait around for jobs with big employers. They took a chance -- and became them.
