Philly is crawling with young, eager talent. You just need to know where to find them and how to get their attention.

At Philly Startup Leaders, we are connecting Philly startups with summer interns through our PSL STARTUp Fellowship. We had over 300 students nationwide apply for the fellowship. Every single applicant was interested in spending their summer in Philadelphia working for a startup. Of those more than 300 students:

• 37 percent of the students were from schools outside the greater Philly area.
• 57 percent were interested in developer positions.
• 34 percent were eligible for a summer grant through their university.
• 21 percent are working towards a masters degree.

If you’re a startup or a founder with an idea, you probably could use some additional hands on your team. Contractors, part-timers and outsourcing are viable options, but don’t forget about the talent pool in your backyard. University talent is yearning for experience in the startup  scene, and Philly should tap into this wealth of intellect and hustle.

Here’s how:

Start early and get your name out there.

Students start thinking about their summer internships as early as October. Penn’s on-campus recruiting for both internships and full-time positions takes place completely in the fall semester. Now, you might not know what the future holds for your startup six months down the road, but it doesn’t hurt to get your name out there. Attend career fairs, collect resumes and start building a brand among students.

When recruiting for the PSL Fellowship, we attended four different career fairs and started collecting resumes at the beginning of February. Think of it as pitch practice for you and an investment in your talent pipeline. Often interested students will reach out to you, even if you don’t have a job description posted (aka less heavy lifting for you).

Career fair tips:

• Email your network beforehand to let students know you’ll be at the fair.
• Spread the word through any contacts you have on campus. It makes it easier for students to approach you if they have a connection that they can instantly make.
• Bring a big or distinctive sign. Make it easy for students to find you in a sea of tables.
• Collect resumes and have a system for marking those students you really want to remember like making a star or folding down one of the corners of their resumes.
• Send follow-up emails with a link to your website and job opening, if applicable.

Carve out time to scope the role and articulate it.

Once you’re ready to start considering candidates, put together a detailed job description. It may seem insignificant and potentially irrelevant, but a quality job description makes all the difference in attracting the right candidates. And it makes you think about what your actual needs are. Sure, the role may evolve, and who knows what the intern will actually be doing after your latest pivot, but students want experience. They want to know that they will end the summer with tactical skills and three bullets to add to their resume, otherwise … why apply? Not to mention that this is one of your first, and potentially only, ways to get on the students’ radars.

Make sure to articulate potential areas for them to gain these skills (are you a Salesforce shop? Let them know they might get exposure to the software.) Don’t forget to include: a brief overview of your company, the role and responsibilities, requirements to be considered and benefits of working with your company.

Here’s Kickup’s well-crafted job description that piqued the interest of students across the nation. Looking for a hustler to fit in with your company culture? Curren-C’s creative and witty listing is the reason they found a fellow who also hates Duke (the Curren-C team’s from Kentucky).

Figure out what sets you apart.

We’ve found that interns (especially freshmen and sophomores) really like the idea of getting more out of the internship than just day-to-day skills. Many students are attracted to internships at more established companies because those companies have workshops and programming that invest in the students as an individual/professional and don’t just see them as “cheap labor.” How are you supporting your intern’s professional development? Are you pairing them with a mentor in your company or do they get a chance to go to a conference or help out at a trade show?

The PSL STARTup Fellowship is part of Philly Startup Leaders’ START. STAY. GROW. Program, aimed at bridging the gap between Philadelphia’s young talent and the tech startup community. The fellowship runs for 11 weeks during which, fellows will work with one of the partner startups during the week and PSL will lead programming every Wednesday. PSL programming will include a Sunday night kickoff dinner, luncheons with Philly tech startup CEOs and CTOs, tours of Philly tech hubs, mini consulting projects for Philly startups, team building and workforce development workshops and final presentations. We are encouraging young talent to start their career in the Philly startup scene by increasing awareness of the startup community and providing them professional development opportunities while immersed the Philly startup scene.

Think about how you can make the time your intern spends with your company a memorable and valuable experience! Some good places to start include exposure to founders/company execs and skills trainings.

Work with Philly tech’s most underused resource.

Every university has a career services office, and many schools have more than one, each one focusing on a particular subset of students. At PSL, we worked over 50 different university contacts in the Greater Philadelphia area to get the word out, and 72 percent of our applicants learned about the opportunity through career services and career fairs. These offices are eager to share as many opportunities as possible with their students and are some of the most helpful people on campus! They will answer your questions, put you on weekly newsletters, help you post on university job posting sites and keep you in the loop of all upcoming career fairs and recruiting events.

Tips for working with university career services.

• Send them an email that contains the following:
  • Brief overview of your company
  • Description of the talent that you are looking for
  • 3-5 sentence blurb that can be copied and pasted into a newsletter (include your website/how to reach you)
  • One-pager with all the info you want the students to know
• Ask for links to register for career fairs or posting your job description on the university career sites

Keep all the students in your network.

Maybe a student bombed their interview or maybe they rejected your offer. Whatever the reason for a situation not working out, don’t count them out. Continue to build your list of talent that is interested in what you’re doing. You never know when that freshman will take classes in her sophomore year that equips her with that exact skillset you need down the road, or if that sophomore will hate his corporate internship and want to work with you next summer! Keep a list of those students that you can tap back into later down the road.

Young talent in Philly is abundant and hankering to get involved in the startup tech scene. Don’t be afraid to harness the power of this ambitious group of students.

The PSL STARTUp Fellowship kicks off June 5. If you want to learn more about the PSL STARTUp Fellowship, please visit www.startstaygrow.com or reach out to me at lindsay@phillystartupleaders.org.