Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

If your organization is looking to enhance its diversity-recruiting efforts, it is important to understand how much race and gender affect student perceptions of diversity, especially among students in target groups.

These attributes can be critical for attracting diverse groups and can be marketed to the groups to which they are most important. For example, NACE’s 2018 Student Survey Report found that working for a diversity-conscious employer matters the most to African-American and Hispanic-American women, but is more important to women in all racial/ethnic groups than their male counterparts. (See Figure 1.) African-American female and male respondents both rated an employer that embraces diversity as the most important attribute.

Another factor that is important to diverse respondents was for the employer to be located in a diverse and tolerant community. This attribute also was most significant to African-American women and men, Hispanic-American women, and Asian-American women. (See Figure 2.)

The 2018 Student Survey Report details the attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes for bachelor’s degree students at all class levels. (Note: Previous reports provided data only on graduating seniors.) The focus of this report is the 22,109 bachelor’s degree students from the 2017-18 academic school year (July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2018). Breakdowns by class level are as follows: 4,336 freshmen, 4,174 sophomores, 5,709 juniors, and 7,890 graduating seniors. Data collection took place from February 14, 2018, to April 30, 2018. Participating schools will find a complimentary copy of the 2018 Student Survey Report in MyNACE > Research Reports; an executive summary is available on NACEWeb.