Want To Recruit Top Latino Talent? Start Young
Melvin Diaz, a student at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, doesn't really know what he wants to do when he gets out of school. He doesn't know if he wants to follow in his father's footsteps and work for Verizon. But he is sure about one thing: "Verizon truly values its Latino employees." And that's exactly the type of brand loyalty the company wants to create with young Latinos.
By the year 2050, more than one in five working-age people will be foreign-born, with nearly a third of these individuals from Latino backgrounds. And while companies know a successful succession and recruitment plan is critical, even the most progressive companies on The 2009 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® list have trouble recruiting top Latino talent.
Click here to read "How to Stop Black, Latino Kids From Dropping Out."
Click here to read "The DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for Latinos List."
Click here to read "Things to Say to Latino Coworkers."
Last March, Verizon, No. 12 on the DiversityInc Top 50, hosted its 10th Annual Hispanic Support Organization (HSO) conference. This time, the company invited Latino students, mostly children of employees, for its first-ever HSO Youth Conference.
"A major component of the HSO is scholarship, and we see this as a great way to build a relationship with our youth and share some important information with them about leadership and personal development, community volunteerism and how to build their financial future," says Marc Soto, national president of the HSO.
Corporations are building a sense of loyalty by equipping students with the necessary professional-development skills to make it in the corporate world. Verizon dedicated an entire workshop session to career advice on issues such as proper attire for the workplace, how to handle being the only Latino in a corporate setting and what young Latinos can do to become active in the community.
But Verizon isn't the only company reaching out to students while they're young.
Deloitte, No. 33 on the DiversityInc Top 50, offers information on careers in accounting to public schools in inner cities and has a variety of programs specifically targeting Black and Latino youth.
Yum! Brands, Inc. have long used scholastic promotions to target students. Pizza Hut, which is operated under Yum! Brands, Inc., launched the BOOK IT! program, which encourages reading. BOOK IT! started in 1985 and recently celebrated its 50-millionth book donated to children in need.
Schools are also playing a key role in helping corporations find talented Latinos.
Rutgers University, in partnership with DiversityInc, has launched a pipeline program for inner-city Black and Latino kids. The groundbreaking program, dubbed the Business Connections Pipeline Program, creates financial and developmental avenues for corporations to help urban schools maximize the potential of their students.
"We are a single-sex school and we have a residence program for 75 students. But there are three times that many students who need to live on campus, but we don't have the means," says Principal Father Edwin Leahy of St. Benedict's Preparatory School in Newark, N.J. "Many of these students would not have made it if they weren't able to step outside their neighborhood and study."
Ernst & Young, No. 3 on the DiversityInc Top 50, created a mentorship program with a high school in Brooklyn, N.Y., which has since increased its retention and graduation rates by nearly 60 percent.
"There is so much talent in these schools, but the approach to reaching the talent has to be systemic," says Allen Boston, partner and Americas director of campus and diversity recruitment at Ernst & Young. "That systemic change has to go beyond helping individual schools, but must impact all schools."
Author: Daryl C. Hannah, Posted on Tue, Jul 21, 2009
