When Graham Chynoweth finished law school in 2004, he faced a choice: return to his native New Hampshire, or head to Boston, where all the “smart” people were going, The Associated Press reports.
“That was totally wrong,” said Chynoweth, now a vice president and legal counsel for a Manchester technology firm. “Smart people understand that in a large city it takes so long — because there’s so many people competing on so many different levels — to get noticed in any one thing. … I think there’s an amazing opportunity for success if people view New Hampshire as the right place to launch a career.”
Chynoweth also is co-chairman of Stay Work Play NH, a nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging more young workers to settle in New Hampshire. The group is launching a website, http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/SIG=1118adfjm/**http%3A/www.stayworkplay.org/, on Monday aimed at 20- to 30-year-olds that includes information about each element — staying, working and playing in New Hampshire — as well as a job search function and links to social media tools.
“The state constantly gets sold short and, really, sells itself short,” Chynoweth said. “That myth — that you can’t succeed and you can’t have it all in New Hampshire — is what this website is going to blow up.”
Under the “stay” category, visitors to the site will find information about New Hampshire’s quality of life, buying or renting a home, educational opportunities and how to stay connected via social media networks and young professional networks. The “work” category provides an overview of the state’s economy, resources for starting a business and a job search tool that allows users to view responses by location and salary range. The “play” category highlights New Hampshire as a “natural playground” as well as its “vibrant cultural community” with an event calendar and list of 101 things to do for fun.
Matt Cookson, the organization’s president, said the goal is to offer one-stop shopping for young people, but he also hopes visitors will become active participants by submitting their own photos, stories and other content.
“This is really for other people, and we want them to come and give us ideas and give us content we can re-use,” he said. “Fun photos of their favorite places, videos on why they like New Hampshire from the perspective of staying, working and playing, ideas about events they want to share with people.”
The site will host a video contest this fall, and plans are in the works to make the job search feature more New Hampshire-specific and to include more internship opportunities, Cookson said.
Stay Work Play NH grew out of the University System of New Hampshire’s “55 percent” initiative, which seeks to keep 55 percent of the system’s graduates in New Hampshire, and has been trying to implement several of the recommendations made a year ago by the governor’s task force on retaining young workers.
The task force found that while it is mostly a myth that the state’s young workers are fleeing New Hampshire in droves, it could do more to attract and retain them.
“One of the major findings of the task force was that there’s really a disconnect between New Hampshire employers and New Hampshire’s potential employees, especially at the college level, with the perception being that there’s no good jobs in New Hampshire,” Chynoweth said. “As you can see from the recent unemployment numbers, there’s actually a lot of jobs in New Hampshire. We have way lower unemployment than a lot of other places. So there’s a lot of good jobs here. We’ve just got to connect small businesses with New Hampshire with the students that are coming out and the people who are thinking of coming here or coming back.”
