Hispanic Jobs

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!

Later this week, LatPro is going to have its quarterly meeting. Yep, it’s that time of the quarter when all the big wigs fly in and descend on Weston to set the company goals for the next quarter.

We always prepare our individual goals a few days ahead of time, so I’m putting together my list of recommendations. Then, at the actual meeting, we can spend our time in face-to-face conversation and brainstorming (which is really good considering we are spread out over many offices) to see what is really the best final path for the quarter. So far for me, I want to hire some sales people, I want to implement some new products and I want a CRM that is robust and well-supported by the provider. In addition, I’m going to make a movie (no, it’s not what you’re thinking; stay tuned for a later post for details on that). We will be working with NSHP on the 2009 schedule of diversity job fairs. We will surely continue the series of Corporate Diversity Profiles highlighting companies that value diversity in the workplace and their strategies. Now, I stay out of the techie stuff, but I’m betting there will be some upgrades in that arena too. Any input from our recruiting clients and jobseekers is appreciated. Seriously, if you have something to request, now’s the time to tell me for it to be considered.

LatPro started having quarterly meetings about two years ago, and they have been very valuable in tracking our progress and growth. We have been very aggressive in setting challenging goals, almost to the point of making things too difficult to accomplish. We have learned to function more as a team, however, realizing what needs to get done earlier on in the quarter because several others are relying on you to get some of their tasks done.

Does your company have quarterly (or regular) meetings to set an agenda and discuss strategy? What have you done or what are some tips that have made things more productive?

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.

When companies register at our site, you would think all of them are coming to post Hispanic jobs or searching for bilingual professionals. Many of them are. However, there are a few coming to look for contacts to either promote their services, spam, or build their own database and we send them away.

We invest a lot of resources screening every company trying to use our services and we do it in many stages, when they register, they purchase a product, and while they are using our product.

For example, when they register, we check their company information in many ways to make sure they are a real company legitimately trying to hire Hispanic or bilingual professionals. We check their address, name, website, registrations, comments on the web about them, etc. Even big legitimate companies that want to purchase our database are sometimes declined because we care about the reason why they will contact our candidates (a real full time position versus an opportunity to do Primerica multilevel kind of thing).

If a company passed the approval to use our services and purchases a product, e.g. a job posting, we not only check the credit card payment source ( e.g. a credit card form the same country versus something coming from Rumania), we also make sure the posting is of value to our job seekers. We would not publish “multilevel marketing offers”, “work from home and make million dollars” kind of opportunities. In those cases, we block their access and refund the money. If the job is legitimate, we check that it has enough information for the candidate; it should show information about a specific position not a general request for resumes, etc.

Wait, it doesn’t end there. We also monitor how are they using the product. If they are using our resume database, we monitor how many people are they contacting, time spent reviewing each resume, etc..

We also protect recruiters and employers. We ask useful information to job seekers to make sure recruiters can get a hold of those candidates who match their search, the resumes are real resumes, not spam, resumes are classified in different matching criteria versus the job posting, etc.

All these quality filters add to our cost of doing business, starting with declining clients up to ending relations after we think they have not come for a legitimate purpose of hiring a candidates for a real position. We are proud of taking good care of both our candidates and recruiters. We can certify that “Our website is junk free”. In my next comment, I will list some funny cases… just to see the fun part of maintaining high quality at all costs J

This week at LatPro, we were thrilled to be approached by Sue Kirchhoff, a writer from USA Today. Sue was working on an article related to Hispanics and the economy, and came to us as an authority on Hispanic Americans in professional career fields. We were glad to serve as her go-to source for the professional Hispanic perspective.

While performing research for her article Slow economy hits Hispanics hard, Sue found that the current U.S. economic downturn has had a greater impact on Hispanics than the overall U.S. population. She came to LatPro to see if that trend held true for professional, college-educated Hispanics.

As I told Sue, LatPro hasn’t seen a drop in the number of companies that want to recruit Hispanic professionals or a spike in new candidates that could indicate an increase in unemployment for this demographic.

Why this discrepancy? Why does the LatPro demographic (college educated, bilingual Latinos) seem to be experiencing lower unemployment that the general Hispanic population?

I think a likely explanation is that general unemployment figures for Hispanics include all Hispanics. Just like any other group, Hispanics are employed in a wide range of positions, from service industries and manufacturing all the way up to executive positions. But there are also a large number of Hispanics in fields that are affected by the mortgage meltdown and housing crisis, such as construction and other trades related to homebuilding. These types of positions are especially vulnerable to job cuts.

It’s a different story when you look specifically at Latinos who have obtained a college degree. These professional-level Hispanics have a variety of skills that are valued by employers, even in this slow employment market. They are a triple threat – bringing not only education and training within their field, but also cultural insight and language skills to the table. Bilingual employees give employers more bang for their buck.

I also see this reflected in our diversity job fairs geared toward Hispanic and bilingual professionals. Despite the economy, companies are still investing in recruiting events like the NSHP-LatPro diversity job fairs, and we still have to advertise the job fair to professional Hispanic candidates (they aren’t just showing up because of an unemployment spike).

To read Sue’s full article, please click here.