Jobs & careers: hot market: hiring Latino professionals: Latino leaders talked to recruitment experts and found a growth spot in an otherwise soft labor market - Employment Opportunities

Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful American Latino, June-July, 2003 by Claudia Prieto

When Anglo children skip round their homes singing Spanish songs that they have learned from Nickelodeon's bilingual TV programs, when Spanish-language adverts appear in commercial breaks on the English-language channels, and when Alaska has a Latino community, you know something is changing in America.

Within a generation the United States will be a nation of minorities, with one in four Americans being Hispanic.

It is said that the first Latino President of the United States is already in a high school or junior high school somewhere in America.

This sea of change represents money. Big money. The value of the purchasing power of this vast and ever-growing market, combined with the financial weight of Hispanic-owned businesses, is greater than the economies of most Latin American countries. Some estimates say its value will be worth $1 trillion within this decade.

This market means jobs for Latino professionals, as big businesses fight for a share of the Latino pie and want Hispanics on board.

As Latino Leaders discovered when we talked to recruitment firms, things have never looked so good for white-collar Latinos.

Despite unemployment hitting a 12-month high, as the unseen hand of market forces grabs more and more middle class employees by their while collars and throws them out of work, things are looking up for professional Latinos.

Surging interest in hiring Latinos for the upper end of the employment market is more than making up for the economic downturn.

"The general market is soft, and people are realizing that the Hispanic market is one of the few growth opportunities," said Rodrigo Ocampo, managing director of Leadership Capital, LLC, a Latino recruiting division of Boyden Global Executive Search.

Jeff Penichet, owner of Bilingual Education Services. said, "Companies have embraced diversity. Wall Street firms say they'll hire on the spot Latinos who graduate with an MBA." The demand is so great that Latinos with the right qualifications and experience can choose which company they want to work for, as companies compete in the scramble to hire Hispanics.

Jeannette Frett, Banco Popular's Senior Vice President of our People for Leadership Office, said. "In recent years there has been fierce competition for (Latino) talent."

Banco Popular is the largest Hispanic-owned bank in the United States with assets totaling $5.7 billion and more than 350,000 customers, ranking among the top ten Small Business Administration (SBA) lenders in the country.

Experts in the recruiting field say it is the need for languages and cultural understanding that is forcing the recruitment drive. Mariana Marquez, marketing manager of LatPro, the largest job board for Hispanics, which has a database of 240,000 professionals, said. "In spite of the labor situation, Latinos who have a high level of education have a competitive advantage in the employment market, because bilingual and bicultural Latinos can offer valuable assets to any organization wishing to compete in the global market."

The US Census Bureau fueled the corporate race to get more Latinos into board rooms when it announced in late January that Hispanics had become the nation's largest minority group, accounting for 13 percent of" the country's population (compared with 12.7 percent for African Americans).

The numbers made head lines. But even more startling is the subtext, said Manuel Boado, president and CEO of Spanusa, an executive search company that specializes in placing bilingual executives.

"While Hispanics are the faster-growing population segment, they are also the most under-represented group in America's corporate office and boardrooms," he said. The argument that Hispanics are excluded because there aren't enough of them to fill leadership roles infuriates Latino recruiters and public-policy institutions.

Spanusa said, "In each of the past Ion years, 17,000 Hispanics earned master's degrees. Any company that makes a proactive effort to hire Hispanic professionals should be able to do so."

LatPro founder Eric Shannon of Plantation, Florida, agreed. "We have 50,000 actives se eking entry-level management positions--the very $50,000 to $100,000 a year jobs that companies claim to have trouble filling with diverse professionals." he said.

This vacuum is a niche opportunity in an otherwise shrinking and ever toughening labor market where layoffs dominate the news. Furthermore, the mere act of some top companies moving into the Latino recruitment market drags others behind them. "Companies can't stay static in the lace of opposition," Leadership Capital's Ocampo said, "They don't want their competitors to get the upper hand. Consumer-focused companies such as retail and services especially want to get people in their firm at a more strategic level and get their fair share of them on the board."

As Ocampo's recent placement of Charles Herington, the Mexican CEO of AOL Latin America, on the Board of Adolph Coors, shows, there is a mowing demand for topflight Hispanic executives within the most senior ranks of US Corporations. And top firms are moving to address the opportunities in the US Hispanic market, which is projected to exceed $1 trillion in disposable income by the year 2008.