INDIANAPOLIS — After Kristina Bender landed a post-college job working for a large public relations agency in Chicago, she decided she’d rather live back home in Indiana.
The reasons for leaving Chicago were personal for Bender but reflect what many young professionals sense.
“The city adjustment was hard for me. The cost of living was a lot. The travel time was ridiculous,” said Bender, a Kokomo native and a 2013 Purdue University graduate.
Looking for a smaller firm closer to family, she was hired three years ago as a public relations and social media specialist by TrendyMinds in Indianapolis.
"I really enjoy the city. I enjoy what it has to offer. There's definitely a lot to do for a young professional," she told about 100 attendees at a recent human resources conference held by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.
It featured seminars that focused on what type of Hoosier graduate is likely to stay in Indiana.
For example, 61 percent of all in-state students at Purdue University remain in the state after graduation. Those who leave head mostly to Midwestern states, according to a study by the Krannert School of Management.
Nearly all social work graduates (94 percent) stay in Indiana, but few chemical engineers (27 percent) do. Female graduates are more likely to stay because, the study said, many chose majors such as early childhood education in which occupations can be sought in the state.
In addition to social work, occupations with the highest rate of graduates staying in Indiana include education and health care. The lowest occupations among those remaining involve computers, engineering and construction.
Communication — Bender's field — keeps about 54 percent of Purdue graduates in state; that figure jumps to 62 percent for female grads. On average, those in that field who stay in Indiana earn $31,148 in wages compared to $38,754 for those who take jobs elsewhere.
In addition to higher salaries out of state, those who leave tend to have higher college grade point averages, researcher Kevin Mumford said.
Purdue graduates in its 13 top programs staying in Indiana earn an average first-year salary of $38,384, compared to $49,570 for those who leave.
“As an employer that’s a good signal because it means one of main inputs of production is cheaper in Indiana than it is in other places." Mumford said. "So employers should be thinking, 'I should be doing more recruiting in Indiana. Indiana’s a great place to get a good deal on people with skills.' ”
There are some efforts underway to create a more fluid connection between earlier education and Hoosier jobs. The issue is expected to become a top legislative concern in the 2018 General Assembly.
This year, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education is trying to expand a grant program for adult workers who want to shift careers. In the recently completed session, both chambers passed a bill creating the Workforce Ready Grant to assist Hoosier adults pursuing a certificate in a field where there's high demand, high wages and high job placement rates.
Of course, not all jobs require higher education.
“We’re trying to import people with lower skills and that’s because we kind of face a shortage of the middle-skilled area. It’s the area where wages are being pushed up a little bit,” Mumford said.
Balancing all the statistics, however, didn’t go into the career-seeking mindset for Bender.
"When I was at Purdue, I was involved in a lot of organizations. I couldn't go anywhere at Purdue without seeing someone that I knew," she said. "What really attracted me to Indianapolis is that when you meet people, you still somehow seem to run into them."
According to IndyHub, a nonprofit network for workers in their 20s and 30s, other factors in a job search include being actively engaged in a community. Its research in 2015 showed:
• Ninety percent of workers surveyed had volunteered.
• Those workers said only 40 percent of their companies valued volunteerism outside of the office.
• Workers didn’t leave a company solely due to compensation. “They left because they didn’t have clear path … they were aiming to leave because they didn’t see a way for them to advance in their career,” said Molly Wilkinson Chavers, executive director of IndyHub.
No generational labels
Tired of being labeled a millennial? You’re not alone.
One networking group, IndyHub, is trying to remove barriers for a younger generation of workers.
“Some people call them millennials. Some people call them late Gen Xers which is a group that I fit into,” Molly Wilkinson Chavers, executive director of IndyHub, told a gathering of Indiana business leaders.
“But we’ve chosen to steer away from any of those generational monickers as well as the idea that someone is a young or emerging or an ascending professional. So the first lesson right now is if I can ask everyone to stop referring to people in that way. When you break down those words, a lot of times they are demeaning. We are not all professionals,” she said.
IndyHub is a nonprofit working to attract younger people to Indianapolis. The group has set its annual networking event, IndyVolved, for 6 p.m. on June 15 where 100 non-profits will gather at the Indianapolis-Marion County Central Library.