MAKING A DIFFERENCE: Inroads : Corporate Escalator

Inroads, one of the nation’s largest minority career- development organizations, cultivates and places top- ranking youths in business and industry. At one time, businesses sought Inroads participants for altruistic reasons or to reach mandated affirmative- action goals. Now, says Alejandro Tovares, managing director, Inroads/Los Angeles, the reasons are more hard-headed: “Today most companies in the program engage us for strategic business reasons. They realize the importance of the global marketplace and the competitive advantage in diversity.”

Inroads was founded in Chicago in 1970 by entrepreneur Frank Carr, who, responding to the civil rights campaign of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., sought ways to improve the economic prospects of disadvantaged minority youths.

Today the nonprofit group has branches in 45 cities. Locally, Inroads/Los Angeles works with about 70 corporations, including AT&T;, Bank of America, Kaiser Permanente and Mattel, and serves Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

HOW IT WORKS

Recruit and Train

Inroads staff recruits high-achieving minority students at high schools and through church, community and minority-scholarship groups. Those accepted are trained in how to make business presentations, manage time, prioritize work tasks and write and speak in a business setting.

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Hire

Students attend a job fair where participating corporations interview them for paid summer internships. They work 40 hours a week for up to four summers in career-path jobs, starting after high school or freshman year in college.

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Followup and Support

The interns receive job performance reviews from their employers in mid-summer and at the end of the summer. They also participate in biweekly Inroads training workshops.

Monthly during the school year, interns talk with an Inroads counselor about academic, job and personal issues. Inroads monitors their grades and provides tutoring when necessary.

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Sponsors agree to

* provide career-related summer work experience.

* pay interns an hourly wage of $7.50 to $19 and pay Inroads $4,000 a year to cover recruiting, counseling, tutoring, training and community-activity costs.

* consider intern for full-time employment upon graduation.

* assign employee advisers or mentors to supervise intern and work with the Inroads staff.

* give the intern time off for Inroads training events.

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Students must

* maintain a 3.0 or better grade-point average and graduate in the top 10% of their senior high school class.

* achieve a minimum score of 850 on the SAT (average is 974).

* enroll in a four-year accredited university or college.

* have an interest in a career in business, engineering or computer science.

* participate in volunteer and extracurricular activities and demonstrate leadership skills.

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THE NUMBERS

Southern California intern applicants in 1994: 1,200

Accepted for talent pool: 350

Selected by companies to be interns: 80

Interns currently in the program: 160

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One Company’s Reason For Participating

Price Waterhouse works with Inroads in 25 cities, accepting interns majoring in accounting, economics and business administration. In Los Angeles, the company has four Inroads interns.

“As a firm, Price Waterhouse is committed to having a work force that closely mirrors the clients we serve. African Americans and Hispanics have traditionally been underrepresented in the field of public accounting. We’ve had a hard time finding as many African American and Hispanic accounting students as we’d like to hire.... We’re looking for the best and the brightest, and the students Inroads provides for us fit that criteria.” Mike Doll, Human relations director

TO GET INVOLVED

Call (213) 251-2710.