Hispanic Jobs

With over 900 attendees and 57 participating employers and professional organizations, our 2008 DC bilingual & Hispanic job fair was a great success. Job seekers were lined up to meet with diversity minded recruiters anxious to find bilingual talent for their open positions from customer service to managerial positions, and covering all industries from health care to banking.

DC is a great city for us, given the large variety of employers and governmental agencies we brought into the room — these agencies offered the opportunity to land a job that can help you make a difference overseas with USAID, or the US Department of State. DEA and FBI always attract many job seekers as well. For finance professionals there was Pepco Holdings, Chevy Chase Bank, Bank of America, Liberty Mutual and Federal Reserve Board. Teachers were looking at the City of Arlington and Prince William County Public Schools, and engineers were excited about the positions offered by Bridgestone-Firestone, Sunbelt Rentals, Navair, and more.

The variety of job seekers that attend our shows is impressive; it is a good mix of young, new graduates and older, more experienced applicants. It’s also exciting to see the cultural melting pot that we create, and DC was a great place to see it. The majority of our candidates are bilingual, but bilingual in how many languages? Fluent in English and Spanish or Portuguese sure, but we also see, German, French, Arabic, a variety of African languages, and many more.

In talking with candidates and recruiters, we heard positive feedback from both sides. So, I’m proud to report another successful show under our belt. That makes it six career events so far this year that our team has put together with three more to go.

Thanks to everyone who helped make it a success!

Between my regular role in public relations for LatPro, and my special assignments such as helping with the public relations for the NSHP diversity job fairs, my days are usually pretty busy! We have a planned two-month hiatus between the Atlanta and Washington, D.C. fairs, which gives me a little time to actually write about some of the work that I do for the events!

I begin my public relations work for a diversity job fair about six weeks before the event. I generally do some research on the local job market, as well as the demographics in the area. After I’ve completed that research, my first major step is to write the press release that will be sent out to all the local media with details of the event.

My next undertaking is to create a list of media outlets in the surrounding areas of the upcoming job fair so that about two weeks before the event I can start efficiently contacting all the relevant media with the news of the diversity job fair. My list of targeted media includes newspapers, as well as local TV and Radio stations and local networking websites.

Another large portion of my time in preparation for the diversity job fairs involves developing media partnerships with local chapters of Hispanic organizations. The organizations that we partner with in each city are a combination of organizations that I approach because we have worked with them in the past, organizations that I found through internet searches or word-of-mouth, and organizations which approach us about an opportunity to be a part of the event.

Arranging the media partnerships is one of my favorite parts of this job. I find it so rewarding to work with Hispanic professionals who are dedicated to their local organizations and are really working on a grass-roots level to increase awareness of and provide opportunities for bilingual employment for Hispanic professionals in their cities. By partnering with the NSHP job fair, the local organizations have their name included in e-mail invitations that go out to prospective jobseekers, and they have a presence at the diversity job fairs. Their membership benefits with a personal invitation to attend the event, and they often find their membership increases through the visibility they have at the event.

The goal of these public relations tasks is always the same, to make sure as many Hispanic and bilingual professionals as possible learn about and are able to attend the upcoming events. Our next event is the Washington, D.C. job fair on August, 21st. I’d better get to work!

Every job board offers the ability to post jobs, and most offer a searchable resume database. For the most part, they all claim to be “leaders” and tout traffic numbers in one way or another. LatPro, too, offers all of the above, has significant traffic, and considers itself the top job board for Hispanic and bilingual professionals. However, our product line goes beyond the surface of just “how many job postings” or “resume database for how long”.

So let me tell you some of the reasons why recruiters should purchase our products and what they get behind the scenes by using LatPro. (There are many reasons why job seekers also use LatPro, which when you think about it, is another reason our traffic is high and recruiters should use us as well).

Interested companies and recruiters can expect to speak with a professional sales person from LatPro, one who will answer their questions as well as ask questions to make the right recommendations based on the client’s needs and budget. Of course we have a general pricing summary, but we make sure that any potential client knows that we will work with them on a customized product solution for them specifically, no matter how far it diverges from the standard packages.

Part of the initial back-and-forth conversation will let the potential client know that LatPro has other products besides job postings and a resume database to help complement their diversity recruiting efforts. Companies can also advertise their career center with banners or fixed-position logos on the LatPro homepage or job search page. They can also send targeted email messages based on education, geography and many other criteria. LatPro is the producer of 9 diversity job fairs in 2008 which will give companies the ability to meet many potential candidates face-to-face as well as brand themselves as a diversity employer.

When you do post jobs with LatPro, your job is not only posted on our site but with the entire LatPro Network. Your jobs will go to sites such as DiversityJobs.com and many professional association sites like NSHP, NAHN and SHPE to name a few. This gives your job advertisements increased exposure to targeted candidates as well as recognition on the partner sites.

Every job you post on LatPro is reviewed manually for quality assurance. We will make sure that it is posted in the most effective way to bring quality results, and we will make recommendations on how to make it more attractive to job seekers—which may be adding more functions or better keywords or more information about your company. That is only one function of our customer support team. In a proactive way, they will help you with resume searching tips as well, showing you the best way to search, create folders and approach a search of the LatPro database.

When you do a search in the LatPro database, you have the ability to be completely OFCCP compliant if that rule applies to your company. When the rule was issued, LatPro decided it was very important to have an in-house customized solution to meet those guidelines.

Both recruiters and candidates also come to LatPro for our original content. LatPro’s staff writes its own articles as well as having exclusive contributors publish pieces on our site. We have started a Diversity Profiles series with some of the top companies in the country and have a long list of companies that are interested in participating (please let me know if you’d like to be considered for an interview after reviewing some of the prior ones).

LatPro publishes 3 double opt-in newsletters for Human Resource Professionals and job seekers. These provide news and information for their specific groups.

So sure. We want you to buy our products, post your jobs, send us your logos and banners. We’d love to host you at one of the job fairs this year as well. But I thought you should know all the other reasons you should use us. We are about our products but we are also all about service, and I hope it doesn’t sound overused or forced, but we are about happy customers.

Some months ago I decided that it was time for a change. I have been at LatPro for more than 5 years now and while I love the team and the product, I am seriously in need of some change. It’s just who I am. I have never been for so long with one product and I have reached the point where I need a different product and a different challenge –if possible multiple challenges.

So I talked with Carolina first and with Eric afterwards and as I am not sure what path I want to take in the future -if I want to work independently or for another company-, I offered a transitional period of three months so they could find someone else to replace me and/or we could re-assign with calm part of my tasks to some other members of the team.

That period is coming to an end so even when my plans are to take at least a couple of sabbatical months, I decided to polish my resume and get it out there into some other job boards, just in case…

Of course I already have accounts in a good number of job boards because I am always doing benchmarking for LatPro, but in some of them I had a profile without a resume (CareerBuilder) in other cases I had the resume but not public (Monster).

Following my own advice -I always recommend jobseekers to use one or two of the general job boards and one or two niche board like us- I decided to get my resume in CareerBuilder. Mamma mia…, WHAT a mistake!

First, I had to enter it twice, by some reason the first time wasn’t saved. Then right after I hit “save” I got an ad, an interstitial, so I have to click on the “no thanks”. Ten seconds later I got an email through CB that was one of those general blasts from companies no matter what your resume looks like.

As they have an option where you can choose to stop a specific company/recruiter from seeing your resume or sending you emails, I clicked on “block recruiter” promptly. Next day, same email. I blocked it again. Next day, same email, I blocked it again and I contact their support team asking how I was getting those emails if I had blocked the recruiter not once but 3 times…. And guess what? I never got an answer!

This is just half of my bad experience with Careerbuilder, but after some more blasts offering jobs that had NOTHING to do with my profile I decided that enough is enough and I made my resume private with them. Not good enough. When I receive their job agents, if I click on any job listed there, I got a pop under…. So I think I may kill my account there. I am not desperate looking for a job, and I find the whole experience so awful, that is not worth my time.

Monster on the other hand, is not SO bad. Still, I have an interstitial each time I login, what once again means losing my time clicking for the 10th time in “no thanks” (no thanks, guys, I have said it like 20 times already, I am not interested in a University of Phoenix degree, give me a break!) and the quality of jobs there goes from pretty decent jobs to things that seem more spam and/or scams than real jobs. HotJobs also has a lot “work from home” and fishy offers, but at least does not bother you with interstitials or popunders.

Comparing this experience with LatPro, where you will never find an interstitial, where we do not have a “block a recruiter” because we know that if the recruiter grabbed the email there is little we can do but where we have an opt out option so people get out of blasts, where each company posting has to fulfill some quality assurance levels, where there are no fishy “work from home opportunities” and where customer support answers in 24 hours… I love our product more than ever!

Of course LatPro targets professionals, and that makes us different from Monster and Careerbuilder, so it makes sense that they may not care in being more picky with the job offer they published as we are, but there is no excuse for their disrespect for the jobseeker when it comes to the search experience.

I guess that if you are extremely desperate for a job, you may not care how many times you have to click in a “no thanks” page to get to see jobs, nor do you mind getting offers that have nothing to do with your profile or 20 pop unders open after seeing the same amount of jobs. And I do understand that job boards are not charities and they need profits, but if Careerbuilder wants to live just from advertising, I will be looking for a job somewhere else.

Why don’t I talk about any direct competition of LatPro? Because there is none. I tried another job board that supposedly targets Hispanic professionals and I got once and again the same jobs through their agent and they also seem to be more about advertising than anything else.

So, so far I will stick with searching at LatPro, Monster, HotJobs and networking of course. Did I tell you? I loved LatPro as a product before I started working here, I have seen it improving by developing more tools and services during my 5 years here, and I may be leaving but I still love the product. Is simply one of the best if you want to search for good jobs and you want an answer each time you have a question!

It’s easy to keep an eye on your own company, but doing some analysis of the competition is more challenging. However, it is an essential task that can lead to some good ideas and innovations, and keep you on your toes. I am not talking about copying but you can certainly learn some things that fit into your business model nicely.

LatPro has a few direct competitors in the Hispanic jobs and diversity job board niche. And a handful more in the general diversity job board niche. Some of the big boards have also tried to expand into the diversity realm, usually with little success, but we do make note nonetheless.

So where do we watch our competition? Their newsletters are a great start to finding out what is new with the company, what new products or upgrades they are offering, and any changes to expect. We also are very involved with sites like ERE, LinkedIn and many recruiting blogs, where members openly share remarks that often mention our competition or industry in general. Google Alerts provides a daily update of any new articles that mention those competitors that make the news, issue press releases or are mentioned online. We are on many third-party emailing lists that are used by our competition, so that is helpful as well. The competition websites often give insights as to new designs, new partners and other information.

Also, very importantly, my sales team is on the front line with recruiters and HR professionals that are also being approached by the competition. These clients often tell us things that warrant further research. Like when 3 or 4 clients in a one-month stretch a few years ago told us that CareerBuilder sales representatives were making the absolutely false claim that they cross-post all their jobs to LatPro, so there was no need to use us directly. That followed up by a stunning introduction at a SHRM annual event—a CareerBuilder staff member coming to our booth, shaking my hand and saying it was great to finally meet their partner (us-LatPro) face-to-face.

But there are strategies that are certainly off limits, from our perspective. I don’t think pretending you are a legitimate potential client and calling to get price lists and product information is a fair way to gather data. Also, signing up as a recruiter, doing a trial, that type of thing is out. I have been with this company for over 5 years, and both of those spying techniques have been used on us too many times to count, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. But, whatever, it’s flattering to be copied and we have nothing really to hide. When your direct competitors stalk you and peer around other exhibits at the trade shows to see what you’re doing and how busy you are, it’s kind’ve cool.

Since there are so many directions this information comes from, we’ve approached research a few different ways. We’ve tried to assign specific competitors to certain LatPro staff members to gather all data about them. We’ve also tried to have one area of research assigned to a particular person, e.g. competitor newsletters, across our top ten competitors. Neither has been exactly what we wanted, as some data always slipped through the cracks. Most recently, every person in the company that finds out any data about a particular competitor, whether it be a media mention or whatever, reports that data to a central repository segmented by company. That way, everyone in the company has access and responsibility for knowing what’s going on out there.

Basically, you can learn from the competition and it’s good to know what’s going on with them. But really the idea is to take the good and use it, in addition to learning from their mistakes. Then make yourself stand out with your competitive advantages, being unique and offering the best quality products and services available. And back it up with excellent customer service.

So we do watch the competition and know they are there. But we don’t go crazy with what they are doing, rather focusing on improving our own business.

Do you watch your competitors? Where? How much?

We recently hosted our 5th diversity job fair of the year in Atlanta last Tuesday, June 10 and if I were to describe it in one phrase it would without a doubt be “a warm welcome.”

Being based in south Florida, we usually travel to the cities 2 days prior to each of our events, so we arrived in Atlanta on Sunday afternoon and immediately realized the temperature was close to 100 degrees during our entire stay. Despite the warm, sticky weather, this was not enough to melt our anxiousness to get this show underway. All preparations seemed to be just right, everything was in place and a possible afternoon thunderstorm advisory was the only element of concern for our job fair.

I had visited Atlanta at least 3 times per year since 2001 as my brother lived there, and have had the opportunity to meet some great people throughout my visits. Most of which, were in the engineering field, proud Georgia Tech and University of Georgia alumni. Also, it seems that many of the people that live in Atlanta have moved there seeking better employment opportunities, and they seem to call it home shortly after. Atlanta is home to very large companies such as Home Depot, Georgia Pacific, Coca Cola, and many more – all of which also lean towards engineering, supply chain management, logistics, and more…so I was definitely expecting a large engineering crowd.

We had great companies recruiting on site, including Newell-Rubbermaid, Praxair, GE Infrastructure, and Michelin, just to name a few. After observing and talking to a large amount of the 685+ candidates that came to our show seeking multicultural jobs, I realized that yes, we did seem to attract a large engineering crowd…but we also saw a large finance, marketing, sales, customer service, IT, healthcare and education group that proceeded to interview with employers in their fields, such as CDC, Wachovia, Aflac and more.

A warm day dissipated the rain threat, and overall it was a great event. We saw a diverse candidate pool interact with a good mix of companies, which is what our job fairs are all about: Connecting high quality, diverse and bilingual candidate talent with top diversity employers offering bilingual jobs. After a short summer break (maybe avoiding heat exhaustion and preparing for hurricane season), we look forward to our next event and number six on our 2008 calendar: Washington DC.

Yesterday, I had my first experience attending a NSHP/LatPro diversity job fair as part of the LatPro team. I arrived in Atlanta on Monday where I met Saini, Ricardo, Ivete, and Mike, all members of the LatPro and NSHP Diversity Job Fair task force. This was my first time meeting each of them, and we quickly said our introductions and got to work.

Prior to my arrival in Atlanta, I had imagined what the experience would be like, and pictured sitting here today writing about how hectic the day in Atlanta had been, how we spent most of our time putting out fires and bending over backward to make demanding exhibitors happy.

I am delighted to say that due to the hard work and organization of the NSHP and LatPro teams, my preconceptions of what the day would be like couldn’t have been farther from the truth! Saini and Ricardo from NSHP had been on-site since Sunday working out all the little details so the event would run like a well oiled machine. The rest of the LatPro sales team had been hard at work for months selling booth space to companies looking to fill bilingual jobs, and we were nearly at capacity.

Bright and early on the morning of the diversity job fair I made one more round of calls to our TV and Radio contacts in Atlanta. By 7:30 we had traveled across town and arrived at the venue, the Cobb Galleria Centre. The event staff had already set up the tables at the event so we just had to put finishing touches on the LatPro and NSHP booths before greeting the recruiters as they entered the venue.

Setup went seamlessly, and soon we were surround with colorful exhibits each offering a wealth of diversity employment opportunities. Once setup was complete, there were still a few minutes before the doors opened to jobseekers, which afforded me the opportunity to speak with some of the recruiters about how their companies value diversity in the workplace, and I was able to secure several companies for upcoming articles on LatPro.com.

Soon the chit-chat had to come to an end as the doors officially opened, and the large group of individuals seeking bilingual employment came through registration and began visiting the exhibits and speaking with the recruiters and organizations that were present.

The rest of the day seemed like a blur, but a very pleasant blur! None of my preconceived notions were actualized. The event ran so smoothly and recruiters and jobseekers alike commented on how organized, efficient, and valuable the event was. I had a great opportunity to get to speak with nearly all of the exhibitors throughout the day, and they were all very pleased with the quality and quantity of candidates in attendance. The only slightly negative thing I heard from an exhibitor was “I wished I had realized what a strong turnout there would be. We ran out of promotional items half way through the day!” To her, that may have been a negative thing that she felt ill-prepared, but to us that means the event was a resounding success!

Before I knew it, 2:30 had rolled around and for the first time all day, the steady stream of jobseekers gradually started to slow down. It certainly did not become a ghost-town however, and at precisely 3:00, there were still candidates standing in lines to speak with some of the companies present.

At the end of the day we had 685 resumes from job seekers who attended the event. We had also participated in several interviews with local radio and television stations about the event, and in addition to Ricardo, several of the jobseekers got an opportunity to appear on television describing their experience as well.

It was a long day, but not a stressful one. The event was a testament to the preparedness and extensive preparation that the NSHP and Latpro diversity job fair teams. I had a fantastic experience, and learned a lot about what participating candidates, organizations, and recruiters are looking for at hispanic job fairs. Taking part in this experience first-hand will certainly give me a leg up in promoting our upcoming Washington, DC diversity job fair on August 21st.