On Thursday afternoon New Haven’s Shubert Theatre hosted a different kind of performance from the usual Broadway road show or one-off concert.
The Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce and its affiliate Quinnipiac Chamber of Commerce hosted the 2019 Internship and Career Fair in the lobby space of the College Street performing-arts palace. More than 30 companies, from financial institutions to non-profits, manned booths to meet some of the more than 200 job-seeking attendees.
Employers eager for fresh workforce talent put their best foot forward to attract promising entry-level recruits and interns, while shiny new college grads-to-be donned their big-boy pants and skirts and brandished fresh (if sparse) résumés in a quest to find and nail that promising first step on the long (and perhaps lucrative) career ladder.
And although no performance took place on the Shubert stage, some beautiful music was made nonetheless.
Thomas Vorio, a financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual said his New Haven wealth-management firm was in search of interns for financial representatives.
“Everybody does the same jobs as our normal financial reps,” he explained. “They come in, they train with us, then they go out to meet clients and start building their own business.”
Vorio and others expressed satisfaction with the number and quality of candidates at the job fair.
“It’s been really good,” Vorio said. “We got a whole lot of résumés from a bunch of different schools, and it looks really promising.” Those who make the grade receive a stipend and commission on new business they close for Northwestern Mutual.
Tony Derbyshire, a talent acquisition specialist for Farmers Insurance in Danbury, said, “We’re looking for entrepreneurs.”
“We’re looking for people who want to start agencies and grow with Farmers.
“We’ve been around since 1928, but have only been opening agencies in Connecticut since 2015,” Derbyshire explained. “We already have about 70 that are operational; our job is to bring that number [of agent-franchisees] up to 130.”
Of the potential talent at the job fair, Vorio said, “Entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are still in college; some of them reinvent themselves [in mid-career]. We’re here to meet a couple of them.”
One of those entrepreneurs-to-be was Jemaa Mwinila-Yuori, a fifth-year student from Ghana finishing his MBA studies at Albertus Magnus College. Mwinila-Yuori earned his B.S. in business management and will complete his master’s in May with a concentration in project management.
“I’m looking for opportunities to take my career to the next level,” he said. “I’m looking for a position in the project management field, but later on I’d like to start a business in Ghana.”
The 23-year-old Mwinila-Yuori had just emerged from a seminar on entrepreneurship at the event. “This is something I’m really interested in,” he said. “I learned a lot, and made a few good contacts.
“I have to start somewhere,” he said.
Contact Michael C. Bingham at mbingham@newhavenbiz.com
