Internship Leads to Job Created for NECC Student
A love of numbers runs in the family for Northern Essex Community College accounting student Nicholas Gilmore. His mother works as an accountant, but he didn’t necessarily intend to follow in her footsteps. Following graduation from Austin Preparatory School in Reading, MA, in 2019, he enrolled at Westfield State.
“I was doing what I thought I needed to do,” says Gilmore. After four semesters, he still hadn’t found his footing. He left school in 2021 and later moved out of state to work in construction. But eventually, a desire to finish what he started, and an offer too good to be true, lured him back to his hometown of Haverhill.
“I really wanted to go back to school. And I saw online that NECCO was free for people of a certain age, so I made my way back to Massachusetts.”
Under the MassEducate and MassReconnect Programs, eligible Massachusetts residents can attend community college at no cost. Gilmore qualified and enrolled at NECC in the fall of 2024. Shortly thereafter, he learned about Handshake, the free career platform to connect students with resources, events, jobs, and internships. He uploaded his resume and almost immediately heard back from NECC Career Services Coordinator Katie Yeaton-Hromada.
“She said my resume needed some work and I thought, ‘oh, it’s that bad, huh?’,” laughs Gillmore. They worked together to update his resume and his profile on Handshake. And then looked to identify some opportunities. In February, Career Services Director Sandy Rochon recommended he apply for the Local Finance Commonwealth Fellowship. Thirty community college students from the Commonwealth are selected for the program each year. All the resume and preparatory work paid off when Nicolas learned he was accepted later that spring.
The Fellowship is designed to address workforce skill and recruitment challenges faced by municipal finance offices. Students completed 160 hours of Immersive Municipal Finance online training seminars in June and were then placed at municipalities for July and August.
“The course was grueling, but I learned so much. I was so happy to be placed with the city of Amesbury,” remembers Gilmore. In Amesbury City Hall, he discovered a passion for finance work. It wasn’t long before the city’s Chief Financial Officer noticed.
“I was just three weeks in, and she reached out to see if I was interested in staying on beyond the fellowship. They actually were creating a new financial analyst position, and they had me in mind.”
Gilmore was hired for the role and now works while he continues to work toward his accounting degree. After NECC, he plans to get his bachelor’s degree and eventually become a CPA.
“Two years ago, I was working construction, and now having an entire position created for me feels incredible. It’s one of those instances of how that one-on-one attention at a community college is so meaningful. This validates the whole experience.”
NECC has worked with the Department of Revenue-funded fellowship program since the program was reinstated in 2023. For more information about internship and career opportunities for students and alumni, visit the Career Services webpage.