What is the best city to jumpstart your career?

The Emory University Career Center held a Career Fair on Wednesday, September 21st to help jumpstart the careers of undergraduates throughout Emory University. Representatives from employers from many cities, large and small, were present at this fair to meet with Emory students. The Career Center is making an active effort to broaden the range of geographic areas covered, in order to include the many cities that undergraduates want to work in. However, there still remains the question, which type of city is the best to jumpstart your career?

Emory students have typically focused on the bigger cities that include Emory’s home, Atlanta, and New York City, as well as Los Angeles and Chicago. Atlanta has many Emory alumni who would like to hire Emory students. New York and Los Angeles have usually been attractive to students because there are several businesses and large companies based in these cities. Also, attractive industries are focused in these hubs, such as finance in New York City and entertainment in Los Angeles. The traditional view was that it was important for a young adult to start his career in a big city since it offered many opportunities not only to rise within one’s company, but also provided career mobility to move to another company. Representatives from the company Meltwater felt that Atlanta should be where Emory alumni need to stay to pursue their career. “Wherever students want to be at the end of the day, Atlanta will allow them to get there,” a Meltwater representative stated, emphasizing that Atlanta is a cosmopolitan city that provides an array of opportunities. In addition, being in a larger urban community can provide employees the opportunities to succeed in their careers.

According to time.com, starting a job in a large city such as New York, is where “the rewards outweigh the risk,” implying that subjecting oneself to the highly competitive process of getting a job is worth the potential career advancement that a city such as New York can offer. If one enjoys the big city lifestyle, this is true. Many graduates, though, find themselves struggling to settle in and stay financially stable.

Now, the focus is changing. Students want to have more options and are looking at smaller cities and towns for job opportunities. Many students are cognizant of the fact that these heavily-populated cities are not for every college graduate and realize they need to look elsewhere. Recruiters from various companies agree that there has been more awareness spread regarding the fact that not all students are from Atlanta and New York City, and perhaps do not want to work there.

According to NBC, one of the cities with the most amount of entry-level positions is Atlanta, along with Orlando and Cincinnati, stressing that these are cities that provide beginnings to a career and not necessary to tell all. Starting off your career in a city that gives you experience in an entry-level job does not dictate where one will live in the future, but instead allows the candidate to seem more hirable to other companies.

The primary problem college graduates nowadays seem to face lies in their finances. Relocating to a city such as New York City can be expensive for this demographic; therefore, many surveys and statistics lean towards moving to smaller, more affordable cities such as Salt Lake City, UT, Denver, CO, or Austin, TX. These cities, while not as massive and unwieldy as New York City, still have the attractions of a city, but also offers many job opportunities and, most importantly, affordable housing.

There are many reasons other cities and towns are growing as attractive options for young graduates. One reason is that businesses are growing in cities other than New York City and Los Angeles, and there are more entry level opportunities available in these smaller cities. More importantly though, there are other key factors that young people are beginning to focus on when considering where to start their careers, such as the cost of housing and the quality of life. Business Insider reported a study done by WalletHub that used various metrics to determine which cities were the best for recent college graduates to start their lives and Irving, Texas was ranked first, based on the number of entry level jobs. There were 233 entry level jobs available per 10,000 residents and this metric is key since it shows that there are several opportunities available for young graduates. Not surprisingly, Austin, Texas ranked third, because even though the number of entry level jobs was low at 23 per 10,000 residents, it ranked first for quality of life, a key criterion for a young person. Lack of affordable housing is one of the key factors that make it almost prohibitive for a young person to start out life in New York City, where one finds young investment bankers and lawyers huddled in box like apartments; whereas in Fort Worth, Texas housing is affordable, giving it the eighth rank in the survey.

A company representative from American Express and Emory Alum, Jesse Kramer, believes that having internships in cities such as Denver really prepared him for the cutthroat environment that can be present in New York City, where he currently works. That being said, he explained that the company environment is much more important than the city you jumpstart you career. “Focus on what you want to do and the rest will work itself out,” he expressed to me.

 

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