Who's Opening Doors to Black Talent? These Sectors Click for HBCU Grads
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Posted By: S. Moore on July 11, 2023 For Seana Coulter, this is her moment. Since 2015, Coulter has led career services at Morgan State, a historically Black university in Baltimore. She’s dealt with a long run of challenges, both pandemic and otherwise. Now, at last, everything is clicking, especially for Morgan State’s recent graduates. “Hiring prospects for the class of 2022 have been very promising, with an abundance of opportunities,” Coulter reports. Among those newest alumni who have provided updates, she adds, 93% are either in graduate school or enjoying a successful career placement. A new analysis of LinkedIn data shows generally good news — with some important qualifiers — for graduates of more than 100 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) across the United States.  One key insight, as revealed in the table above, is the degree to which hiring trends vary for HBCU graduates, on an industry-by-industry basis. In fields such as consumer services (+30.9%) and education (+28.0%), hiring of HBCU graduates made big jumps in 2022, relative to 2021’s tempo. Other industries with strong median monthly growth rates in 2022 included arts and recreation, hospitals and health care, and government administration. Hiring growth rates for HBCU graduates were still net positive, though at much smaller levels, for financial services (+8.2%), technology, information and media (+0.6%) and professional services (+ 0.1%). HBCUs are attracting more attention from global employers trying to expand their recruiting diversity. “Some of these employers are completely new to campus,” says Morgan State’s Coulter. “Others are existing employers who would like to enhance their relationships” via job shadowing, guest lectures, internships and more. Among top-tier consulting firms, Accenture now has partnerships with 17 HBCUs, including Clark Atlanta, Hampton and Prairie View A&M. Accenture also hosts diversity technology summits and works closely with groups such as the National Society of Black Engineers, as a way of connecting with HBCU students. “We know the recruiting experience can be overwhelming,” says Yolanda Friend, Accenture’s North America diversion and inclusion lead, To help candidates seeking entry-level jobs such as analysts, Friend says, Accenture offers an “HBCU buddy program” in which current Accenture employees share advice on final-round interview preparation. Meanwhile, many of today’s fastest-growing areas of HBCU hiring speak to core strengths — such as teacher training — that have been part of these institutions’ missions since their founding as much as 150 years ago. The broad consumer-services category includes fields — such as civic and social organizations, nonprofits and religious institutions — where HBCU graduates have been global leaders since the days of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. If one looks at 2022’s industry-by-industry hiring growth rates for HBCU graduates vs. graduates of non-HBCU schools, several major differences stand out.
What’s affecting tech’s hiring trend? HBCUs are concentrated in southeastern U.S. states, while the biggest tech firms tend to be on the West Coast. So geographic distance may create barriers. Beyond that, Morgan State’s Coulter worries that “extremely talented students at HBCUs are often overlooked due to the melanin in their skin and/or the lack of exposure and accessibility to programs.” Still, a flurry of tech giants have been getting more closely involved with HBCUs, helping them “integrate classroom learning with applicable work experience” Coulter says. Over time, those initiatives should create more opportunities for HBCU graduates to thrive in tech. Methodology Industry employment figures are calculated by looking at members who listed a bachelor's degree or higher from one of the 110 HBCUs in the United States. Industries are ranked by differences in the median monthly LinkedIn Hiring Rate, given by the percentage of LinkedIn members who added a new employer to their profile in the same month the new job began, annually from 2021 to 2022. Ranked industries include those with at least 100 hires in 2022. Data scientist Danielle Kavanagh-Smith contributed to this report.SOURCE Workforce Insights by LinkedIn Available at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whos-openin... If you enjoyed this article, Join HBCU CONNECT today for similar content and opportunities via email! |
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