Categories
Background Checks Business Credit Reports Business Research Human Resources Miscellany Personal Background Checks preemployment screening Retaining Employees Staffing Uncategorized

In a Global Economy You Need Diversity in Your Job Recruiting

Employers Go All-Out For Minority Undergrads

posted at 1 November 2007 by diversitygirl

By Pepi Sappal

  • Twenty-one-year-old Madeline Sola hasn’t graduated from college yet. But the mechanical-engineering major already has her first employer lined up.
  • If she wants it, Sola has a job waiting for her at Pratt & Whitney, an aircraft-engine, space-propulsion-system and gas-turbine maker in East Hartford, Conn., when she graduates from Massachusetts’s Worcester Polytechnic Institute next year. Not a bad position to be in, given the job market for new grads.
  • Many undergraduates have had a particularly hard time landing jobs lately because of competition from experienced candidates, says Bill Krutzen, director of operations at HireDiversity.com, an Internet job board. “What makes matters worse is that the experienced jobless are prepared to take a newly graduated person’s salary as they are so desperate for work,” he says.
  • But information-technology and engineering graduates of color have an easier time in the job market “because there’s so few of them,” says Stephanie Blaisdell, director of diversity and women’s programs at Worcester Polytechnic, an engineering university. “Nationally, only 6.6% of African-Americans and 7% of Hispanics pursue engineering,” she says. “And less than 1% [of engineers] are Native American.”
  • For the entire article go to DiversityWorking.com

I read this article with great interest. It is well written and very detailed. It is the type of article all human resource managers should read.

In a global economy it would only stand to reason that you would want more diversity in your work force. The fact, as the article points out, that there are so many lucrative government contracts in technology and engineering, lends itself to increased recruiting efforts from all aspects of the international work pool . Let’s face it, they need skilled workers.

As a background checking service, Corra provides services to clients seeking background checks for international candidates. There has been an increase in these requests within the last six months. We expect to see more requests for background reports, especially for international education verification and for federal criminal records reports, since many larger corporations request these from their contractors to meet compliance standards.

As the U.S. government relieves the bottleneck in allowing skilled foreign workers to be certified for work in the United States, I believe we will see even more job applicants from all over the world. And of course to meet government compliance standards, employers will be hiring more minority candidates as well.

The fact that many companies are hiring from international and from diverse ethnic segments is always a good sign of not just a healthy economic atmosphere but of a healthy culture as well. And the fact they are hiring at all, is always a positive foreboding.

Check them out before you hire. Call Corra.

By Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive and has worked in the entertainment industry, the financial, health care and technology sectors. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic sexuality in the late twentieth century. He is the author of the Constant Travellers and has recently completed a new book, The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.