By Jennifer Kuhn, Human Resources Sr. Administrative Assistant

“What’s the first thing you do in the morning when you wake up?” 

Jenn McMahon, the City’s Director of Human Resources, recently asked this same question of four different classes at Wredling Middle School’s career day. Besides the obvious, “Roll over and go back to sleep,” students answered that they used the restroom or turned on a light. Even with those two simple tasks, they could identify City services they needed such as clean water, sanitary sewer, and electricity.

And, as they thought of riding to school, they discussed well-maintained roads, sidewalks, and even the beautiful trees that line many of our neighborhoods, directly serviced by our public works department.

And speaking of neighborhoods, community development and planning and engineering are intimately involved in establishing our neighborhoods. Feeling safe in our neighborhoods is a direct outcome of our award-winning fire and police departments.

All City services require communication, technology, financial management and governance. It’s pretty amazing how intertwined our daily lives are with the daily tasks performed by dedicated employees at the City of St. Charles. Employees serve in over 100 different positions, offering a wide variety of career choices. We invited the Wredling students, and extend this invitation to all in our community, to consider career options in local government.

Working for City government encompasses many work preferences (like working outdoors, working in an office, or working alone or with teams of people). City government careers also cater to many forms of education, such as a high school diploma coupled with trade certifications, associates degrees, bachelor’s degrees, and master’s degrees. All positions within the City offer a noble purpose of serving our community.

Our Human Resources department would like to invite students planning a career choice to consider local government options. Both St. Charles East and North High Schools have internship programs with which the City is associated. We also have college internship opportunities in several departments.

If you or a student you know would like more information about city government careers, please contact us at hr@stcharlesil.gov or 630-377-4446. We also have some career information listed on our webpage. We commend the St. Charles middle schools for providing important career education for our students, and we hope that some of those students will choose local government careers, offering them a positive work environment, good compensation, and the chance to make a lasting impact in our hometown.