Recruiting Latino Employees

In an August 21st, 2006 article in The Arizona Republic, Yvonne Wingett writes: “Recruiters are hired by all kinds of big companies to find bilingual, bicultural executives to teach them how to grab a bigger portion of money spent by Hispanics, the country's largest minority. The prize: $700 billion a year and growing.”

However despite the demand, Yvonne states that recruiters are hard pressed to find, woo and land the talent. They are faced with a shortage of Latino graduate students, a corporate culture that has been slow to adapt to the country's diverse demographics and develop leaders, and a Hispanic culture that encourages staying close to family.

Recruiting was a big topic on our Insight on Coaching show dedicated to Hispanic/Latino audiences.  Many of our Insight on Coaching guests discussed that while the Hispanic/Latino community is far from being a “new” group to many companies and recruiters, many outreach and recruiting efforts need to take certain factors into consideration when recruiting Latino employees.  For example it’s important to:

• Understand the importance of building relationships and trust with Latino candidates.
• Be willing to target a variety of colleges and universities – not just top ranked schools – and be willing to target lesser known schools and community colleges.
• Be willing to reach out to different marketplaces.
• Demonstrate and show your organization cares about - and is invested in - the Latino community.
• Recognize that generational differences will factor into your recruiting strategy as well – the means 3rd or 4th generation Latinos use to search for jobs will be different than those used by 1st and 2nd generation Latinos.
• Discuss and emphasize opportunities for additional education as well as mentoring through your company.
• Understand that Hispanic is not a “race” – the Hispanic community is composed of people coming from at least 20 different countries – and group specific values and beliefs may need to be taken into consideration as well.

• While creating networking and mentoring programs such as La Red Familiar (the Family Net) for IBMs Latina professionals, the IBM Task Force is also recruiting actively at leading Hispanic universities.
• To increase Hispanic technology education and computer literacy, IBM also sponsors La Familia Technology Week each October.
• Around the country, IBM Corporate Community Relations partners with IBMers and nonprofits to sponsor activities ranging from e-mentoring programs to parent workshops on computer use.