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A young, black, professional, Spelman College and UNC Law grad, and new mommy who practices law in the Chicago suburbs.

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YBP Savings Tip

September 4th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

YBP Savings Tip

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    Hi, this is sort of off topic for the post so i apologize, I saw Frederic swing by Geeknews today via Mybloglog, i searched back through 2 pages of posts looking for one to strike up a conversation with Frederic but looks like he hasn't posted in a while. I followed his trail back here and became a little intrigued after reading through some of the posts on YBPGuide.

    While browsing the site I started thinking about my position at work, as a hiring manager and one of my commitments to our organization is to continue to make my team more diverse which I've been successful at through hiring of women and men of different racial backgrounds. But i've struggled with attracting black engineers (with Computer Science experience).

    I found one of your links here to the NSBE and unfortunately it wasn't too helpful to me.

    Again, this is so off topic I wouldn't be surprised if you delete the comment :) but it does relate to YBPs; do you have advise for a hiring manager that is specifically targeting diverse candidates in order to find more black software engineers?

    BTW, no matter the outcome here, I'll be sending some link love your way from GN this week.

    Thank you!
    Andy
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    Andy! What's up!

    Thanks for contacting us. I wanted to respond to you publicly so other readers could chime in or get some of their questions answered as well.

    First, and foremost, thanks for your comment. Unfortunately, I think statistically, Blacks in the Computer Science field make up about .25%. That is a quarter of 1%. It's always been a goal of mine to increase awareness about the greatness of tech to kiddies.

    Really, the piece of advice I can give you is to reach out to the local universities, especially technically-oriented ones. Although you didn't find anything on the NSBE site, I can honestly say it is probably one of the best resources to start.

    NSBE breaks the country up into regions. Depending on where your company is, I would concentrate on contacting the regional leadership. The regional maps and their corresponding area can be found on the homepage in the bottom right under the 'Regional Sites' portion. Regions usually hold job fairs and have sponsorships available.

    From an online perspective, NSBE also has a job posting board that gets regular attention. You can read more about it at http://national.nsbe.org/Sponsors/NSBEJobPosting/tabid/106/Default.aspx.

    As for other job boards geared towards minority candidates, you could try to contact some of the organizations on our 'organizations' page or try using diversityworking.com.

    I'm also planning on contacting one of my closest friends on her advice for recruiting minority talent. I met her at the NSBE National Career Fair (one of the largest minority career fairs in the world held annually) and she is the VP for Diversity at Time Warner. When I get ahold of her, I'll let you know!
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    Good advice, much appreciated. BTW, i'm mentally kicking myself for spelling your name incorrectly, sorry about that.

    Take care,
    Andy
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