Twenty-eight percent of Americans might be defined as “multicultural,” but when it comes to recruiting Hispanics, African-Americans and Asian-Americans in the media world, talent, it seems, is nowhere to be found.
In an effort to change this, and in a first initiative to lure minorities to its talent pool even before they graduate, multicultural media agency Forty-Two Degrees at MediaVest (also known as MV42°) on Friday hosted a Multicultural Media Talent Pipeline, a six-hour event at the New York Times building.
The full-day event welcomed 100 college students from around the country to network, mingle and sit in presentations with top marketers and media outlets, including AOL, Univision, mun2, Nielsen, Facebook and Walmart, who encouraged students to pursue their dream of starting a career in the media world. The idea: To recruit, encourage, train, develop talent in the multicultural arena and create a talent pipeline for the future.
“We have all these openings right now [at MV42°) and we need to attract the best multicultural talent possible,” Steven Wolfe Pereira, EVP and managing director at MV42° told Portada. “We plan to repeat the event next year, and we want it to be bigger.”
The students in the room, some in their junior years, but many in their senior years, looked eager to learn and mingle, but more importantly were hoping to nail a job in the media world as they get ready to graduate. One of them, Regina Montemayor, a Mexico City-born Psychology and Advertising student at the University of Miami, came looking for opportunities to get hired. “I will graduate in December, so I’d better start looking for a job right now,” says Montemayor, who has interned for Young & Rubicam and The Vidal Partnership and wants a full-time job for when she graduates in December.
“It is not a great job market . right now. So you are probably freaking out here,” Katie Puris, director, global agency holding companies for Facebook told students during a morning presentation.
But at least among this multicultural college crowd, chances might look a bit better. “We are hiring, and we are hiring now,” added Lauren Johnson, connections manager at MV42°.
