<p>As background, D has attended several campus information sessions for a large, well-known financial company. Last summer, she applied to and was accepted into a 3-day summer diversity program at this firm. Meals and accomodations were paid by the company. The participants were told it was a very competitive application process and that they had been chosen from among hundreds of applicants. This fall, she obtained a first round, on-campus interview with this company. It went well, so she was flown to company headquarters for a second round, full day of interviews. Obviously, hotel, meals and airfare were covered then too. From what she could tell, none of the applicants there that day were minorities, though there were other girls present. All were from HYPSC, as is she. Although D thought the day went very well, she was not ultimately offered an internship.</p>
<p>Fast forward to this week. The same company is now inviting D to another all-expenses paid diversity event. This one is geared specifically for women. Attending will require D to fly across country again, and she will miss two days of class and a team competition. While that is certainly feasible and she's willing, we question whether these company events are serious recruitment opportunities or just for show. After all, if she was qualified enough to have been selected for a super day from among a pool of non-minority applicants, and there were a true interest in hiring minorities and women (and she's both), then why didn't they hire her after already investing in her?</p>
<p>Could it be she wasn't qualified enough, but they included her for diversity's sake only? Do the people that make hiring decisions know or care if an applicant has been selected for and has attended these diversity events? Should she sacrifice the 3 days (two are mostly travel) and go?</p>
<p>IMO she should take every opportunity to land the internship if it’s a company that she may want to work with after graduation. A lot of students get to second level interviews and aren’t offered positions (internships or full time).</p>
<p>Diversity programs aren’t offered for PR purposes. Companies will have those programs to attempt to expand the pool of potential recruits to include talented minorities. You get face time where otherwise you might not even be considered. Keep in mind that the companies that have diversity programs don’t want to waste all their money on these programs if they don’t actually acquire minority talent. So, in general the prospects are good but it’s still a tough economy. They may not be hiring as many.</p>
<p>Presumably it was known by all up front that not every candidate attending the event would be offered the internship, that there were more interviews to be done and only a subset offered the internship, so people should be surprised or think there’s a hidden agenda if they happened to not end up with the position. That doesn’t mean the people not selected were only ‘for show’ and even if that were true, who would they be ‘for show’ for? I don’t see much of a benefit to the company for some staged show for their own benefit.</p>
<p>Like applicants to top colleges, it’s possible that your D was well qualified for an internship position but they just didn’t have enough slots for all of the qualified candidates and your D happened to not end up on the list but now there are other potential slots and she’s being considered for those.</p>
<p>Whether it’s worth skipping the days for the interview is something only she can decide but I don’t see anything you presented to say it’s not a legitimate opportunity.</p>
<p>Well, companies do plenty of things for public relations purposes that have no direct benefit to their bottom line. Since I don’t know how HR works, I merely wondered if they may need to show that they interview a cross section of people and not just white males or something. When there are lay-offs, firm do have to show there was no ethnic or age pattern in who was let go.</p>
<p>Your D may have been in a “see you later” pile due to maturity (i.e they liked everything about her but felt another year of experience would make her a stronger candidate); she may have connected with a few of the interviewers but not everyone; she may have done something inadvertent but stupid as many college kids often due so they’re ready to give her another chance, etc.</p>
<p>These events are not window dressing, if that’s your question. Your D may still not get an offer- the process is usually quite competitive-- and only she can decide if it’s worth taking time away from her life to go, but if it were my kid I’d encourage her to take advantage of every single opportunity.</p>
<p>One of my kids learned a ton from calling an interviewer (didn’t get an offer) to ask for feedback. It helped next time at bat, that’s for sure! College kids don’t always realize that stupid things like keeping a cellphone on mute (but the vibrating can be heard and it’s highly annoying for an interviewer to think that your kid is more interested in getting texts than focusing on the interview); not standing up when an obviously older and more senior person walks over to shake hands; even just being rude or dismissive to a waiter at a formal dinner can be problematic.</p>
<p>All of these things are resolved with experience. IMHO these events are very good ways to learn appropriate corporate behavior on someone else’s nickel.</p>
<p>^^ It seems that it’d be a worse statistic for the company if they invite lots of ‘diverse’ people but hire mostly the non-diverse among them. That wouldn’t show well for them at all. I’m wondering though who would even really see any of this which is why I said what I did on the ‘show’ part.</p>
<p>GladGrad- most “diverse” candidates get hired through the normal hiring channels- i.e. the recruiting team picks the resumes they’re interested in and candidates walk in- some of whom happen to be URM’s. Many big companies augment those hires with specific diversity campaigns, so it isn’t likely that you can tell from attendance at a single diversity event just how well a company is doing towards its diversity goals.</p>
<p>After reading the e-mail invitation, this event is not being presented as an opportunity for the company to find people to hire for any open positions. If it were, then of course she’d go without question. Since we’re already in April, we are assuming that all summer positions have already been filled for a while now. Rather it sounds like the same sort of informational program she attended last summer, only for women this time. So that is why I was wondering if it might be a public service kind of thing, similar to when a local tech company held a STEM day for high school girls to encourage young women to think about careers in engineering.</p>
<p>My last Fortune 50 company had specific positions designated for “diversity fills.” And the recruiters worked very hard (and spent money) to fill those positions. Personally I found it rather gross (repugnant, fill in your own description), but it is what it is. It is entirely possible there is a position or two or three that won’t appear on the jobs board in any way, shape or form.</p>
<p>Given what you just wrote, it might be that they’re purposely targeting certain segments for the reasons of diversity - like being sure to make positions known to certain target groups. Still, it seems like a lot of effort and expense to go through if they’re not really planning to bring on any of the people. They could be doing both - targeting the diversity groups to enrich their chances of getting some plus actually choosing some of these candidates as interns. I don’t know if there’s a way for her to check to see if they really have more intern slots to fill.</p>
<p>D1’s roommate was looking for a finance job senior year, and was turned down every where. She then applied through one of those diversity programs, and was offered a job. She is now working at one of those top tier firms. No, it is not for just for PR.</p>
<p>If the event is just for enrichment purposes, she could very politely decline…note the competition (she’s a D1 athlete, right?) and say she’d be interested in future events. This shouldn’t shut the door, in case there are future opportunities – and also shows her dedication to her team and sport - usually a highly regarded attribute by financial firms. They love D1 athletes.</p>
<p>Thanks to all! I discussed the consensus here with my D. When I mentioned the possibility that there may indeed be some available positions as per momofthreeboys’ post, D said that coincidentally this afternoon she overheard a boy in one of her classes mention that this particular company e-mailed him saying there were still some internship openings. Naturally, she doesn’t know in which areas and for what qualifications, but…</p>
<p>Thus, she plans to attend, barring an overly negative response from her coach.</p>