Career Challenges Facing Hispanic Engineers
As candidate for SHPE President during the 2009 elections, I have been intrigued by issues facing Latino engineers already in the workforce. What are the challenges facing Latino engineers? Are we advancing to executive levels or staying stagnant? Are we becoming founders of successful start-up companies? Are there future Latino Bill Gates or Steve Jobs out there, or rather Guillermo Gaticas or Esteban Juarez?
One thing I know for a fact is that according to recent demographic data, children of the latest Hispanic immigrants will be the largest contributor to population growth in the U.S., and Latino household income is growing as well.
Increasing population growth and income levels. This is a recognized trend.
There’s an old Chinese proverb (well maybe not a Chinese proverb, but a saying nonetheless), a rising tide raises all boats. There is a wave that Hispanic engineers are riding and can ride, but our representation in the U.S. corporate world is still disproportionately small compared to our percentage of the U.S. population. That is especially so at the upper echelons of corporate America.
SHPE has done an awesome job, as you know, of encouraging our youth to take up engineering in college and enter the workforce, often making more money straight out of school than both our parents combined. What I believe SHPE has NOT done a great job of is helping those professionals who have entered the workforce advance to even higher levels.
According to this recent Careerbuilder article, nearly one third of Hispanics have experienced some sort of discrimination in the workforce.
The good news is that means the majority of Hispanics have not experienced discrimination in the workplace. The bad news is that almost 33% is way too high in this day and age. Obviously corporations need to continue with sensitivity training and implement diversity strategies, but Latinos can’t rely exclusively on programs to influence the behaviors of others.
We need to take action ourselves to minimize the impact of discrimination, and advance in corporate America no matter what the barriers.
That’s where I believe SHPE can play an important role.
As Hispanic Engineers, we possess the technical skills, certifications and qualifications to do our engineering jobs. We also need to perfect the human skills that are so important to career advancement.
We need to learn more about EQ, or Emotional Intelligence, which is now being recognized as more important for success in life than IQ, or mere intellectual intelligence. We need sales, marketing and self-promotional skills, attributes which are often contrary to our traditional Latino humility and reluctance to draw attention to ourselves.
As candidate for SHPE President, and as your current Vice President, and not to mention as an engineer working at a real company, I have been thinking long and hard about these issues, and I feel these are areas we must focus on as we continue to grow.
We are becoming a “Majority Minority” nation, and natural demographic trends are definitely in our favor, but organizations like SHPE must change in order to help working professionals rise to ever higher levels. With your help, I intend to lead that charge to jointly explore how Latino Engineers can continue to advance.
