www.roanoke.com

Brandon Turner

Turner, of Hurt, is a graduate student at Lynchburg College, and has had a lifelong dream of living and working in the Roanoke Valley.

I have attained a bachelor's degree in marketing and am just a few courses away from having my MBA. I have work experience in retail, medical and academic institutions. I have never been written up for violating any company policies, have been praised on high for my customer service skills and always go above my calling to finish a project.

Would you hire me? Oh, I forgot to mention that I am 24 and have no "professional experience."

Now, would you hire me?

The fact is, Roanoke businesses do not appear to crave the benefits that a young work force can bring. The city of Roanoke has hired Stuart Mease to help address this crisis by matching young professionals with careers in Roanoke.

More than 2,000 young professionals across the region have professed interest in finding a career in the Roanoke Valley, yet only about 40 have been successful. While this has truly changed the lives of those 40 individuals, that is only 2 percent of those interested in working in Roanoke.

Many people ask why young professionals do not wish to live in the Roanoke Valley. City council and concerned residents are stressing this issue, trying to figure out what can be built to lure my demographic back to the city.

What city council does not realize, however, is that no hotel on a mountain, amphitheater by the river or renovated Center in the Square is going to lure young professionals to the city if they do not have a good job.

I realize the valley is full of jobs, but many are retail positions that pay only about $7 per hour. How is a young professional going to pay off student loans averaging $19,237 (www.finaid.org), rent an apartment, pay utilities and afford gas making between $14,000 and $18,000 per year?

My generation has been deemed the generation of immediate gratification, where we do not want to work hard and crave the stuff of our parents. This may be true for some (as is true for every generation, as I have known many 40-plus-year-olds who feel this way), but there are many in my generation that do not mind working hard for our dreams.

We were told by parents, teachers, friends that all we would have to do in life is go to college, and a great career would await us upon graduation. It is hard to hear that all of your life then get out of college and nobody wants you.

In a June 27 letter to the editor "Social stuff is nice, but it won't pay the bills," one writer said that she completed her college work, joined networking groups, and is still told she is not good enough for work in Roanoke because she does not have experience. This same story has been told time and time again.

Here is a question for businesses: How do you realistically expect my generation to gain experience if nobody will hire us?

I thought my years of working in retail, my internship and my work as a graduate assistant would give me experience. Was I wrong?

What about the students who worked part-time positions in college, took a full credit load and still managed to squeeze in several internships? Did they waste their time also?

As a graduate assistant, I had the privilege to work for a professor who conducted major research on the topic of state governments addressing the absence of young employees. I conducted a great deal of research into the "brain drain" across the nation and the need for businesses and governments to recruit younger employees to fill the needs of the retiring baby boomers.

Do businesses in Roanoke realize that some studies indicate a worker shortage of 20-plus million people around the year 2030? How will Roanoke compete with other cities for my generation, who will be middle-age and considered the "ideal worker" by that point?

Social attractions are nice, but as the letter writer stated, they "won't pay the bills."

Roanoke will lose out to cities such as Raleigh, Richmond and Charlotte, all of which have no problems recruiting young adults. I know Roanoke businesses will say that those cities are larger, but about 50 years ago Roanoke and Raleigh were similar in size.

In addition, if you go to Raleigh, you see hundreds of successful companies run by people in their 20s. Yet Raleigh's economy does not collapse; in fact, it is thriving.

Roanoke, it is time that the businesses in town wake up before you lose an entire generation of your citizens. After all, when the young professionals today move to larger cities and establish lives, who will run Roanoke's businesses in 20 years?