TechGen in 2016
Despite Boston’s history of innovation and the current volume of tech sector employers, many of today’s college and graduate students are missing out on a lot of the opportunities that are currently available. At TechGen, we’re helping local companies tap into local talent while providing streamlined access to students interested in the innovation ecosystem. As a public-private partnership with stakeholders including the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and MassTech Collaborative, we’re taking a marketplace approach to connecting students with employers.
To really make an impact, though, we hold ourselves to ambitious goals that ensure we’re on track towards achieving our mission. At the end of the year we took a step back to see how we did in 2016, and we feel pretty great about it!
Last year, we grew our membership to 4,200 students in and around Boston. This, combined with the 325 companies that were using TechGen to source talent by the end of last year, means we are not only strengthening the tech ecosystem but keeping more of Boston’s students here in Massachusetts after graduation. The number of students and companies actively using the platform increased by nearly 200 percent each, and the program processed more than 11,000 internship applications among more than 300 different companies.
2016 was also jam-packed with activities and development. We launched a new website to make the process of finding an internship more straightforward and intuitive than ever. We also introduced 500 students to more than 100 local innovation leaders at TechJam — Boston’s biggest summer tech event. Plus, we held events at LogMeIn, General Assembly, and TripAdvisor, giving students much-needed face-to-face time with some of Boston’s tech veterans.
Amidst all that event activity, we’re probably the most proud of our WE GATHER series with DataXu & JLL. It was the first time we had set up an event like this, and it provided a unique offseason recruiting and opportunity for recent and soon-to-be graduates and companies.
If you’re curious as to how big an impact we had on the Boston tech community, you can check out our full 2016 year in review here,
We can’t wait to share what we have in store for 2017 (like some key platform updates!). If you’re interested in joining before the internship season officially kicks off, you can join the platform here. Curious as to where you can find us in the wild? We’re hosting a slew of events — hope to see you at one!
