SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 19, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A new Big Data report by CulturIntel and Hispanicize Media Group reveals that U.S. Latinos generally have a negative perception about applying for or working at most of the iconic brands of Silicon Valley.
The latest report demonstrates why there’s a large cultural gap for Latinos to become a part of the innovation that is disrupting scores of jobs in diverse communities. It builds on the results of the first annual Hispanicize Silicon Valley Rankings (access them here) that earlier this month ranked AT&T, HP, Verizon, Dell and Facebook as the top 5 companies for Latino diversity and inclusion in tech.
“What we’re finding is that top Silicon Valley companies overwhelmingly lack actionable, Latino-centered insights to decode the drivers and barriers faced by Hispanic employees and candidates in the tech sector,” said Claudia Romo Edelman, a rising national Latina leader who received the Rainbow PUSH Coalition Multicultural Leadership Award, spearheaded the CuturIntel/Hispanicize research. "When a company's workforce is diverse, it is more innovative, creative and impactful," said Romo Edelman. "Fully empowering and integrating the segment driving most of workforce growth and with more market potential, Latinos, is critical for America to remain competitive in a global marketplace."
To underscore the problem, Romo Edelman points to Pew Research Center, which estimates that while Latinos will represent 74 percent of the workforce growth from 2010 to 2020, they barely represent 4 percent of engineers and scientists and only 8 percent of all certificates and degrees awarded in the STEM fields, according to the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. “For America to remain competitive we must empower young Latinos to embrace and love STEM,” said Romo Edelman.
The collaboration between HMG and CulturIntel, a company cofounded by cultural intelligence™ expert and former corporate executive, Liliana Gil Valletta, makes this initiative a pioneering effort to bring a new type of insight to better understand diversity challenges.
"We wanted to disrupt the way traditional insights are mined to empower the sector with actionable information coming straight from the voice of the people,” says Gil Valletta. “The open and unbiased digital discussions of candidates and employees across career sites, topical sites and forums present one of the richest sources of unbiased talent-centered intelligence. Beyond employee surveys or self-reported data, these external signals can provide us untapped insights that can help reshape inclusive recruitment and retention strategies that are candidate-centric.”
OTHER KEY FINDINGS
The analysis of top 25 Silicon Valley companies* reveals that on average Hispanics report a work experience that is 1.5 times more negative versus the overall. Also, positive sentiment for Latinos is almost half of that reported by the overall at 15.3 percent positive versus 28.8 for the overall. The ranking based on sentiment measurement only places some of the more established technology companies like Intuit, Samsung and Dell in the lead each with above average positive sentiment at 25, 23 and 22 percent positive respectively. However, these numbers are 1.5 times below the positive sentiment reported by the overall. The same companies at the top report 40, 40 and 27 percent respectively; therefore, confirming a gap in the work experience and the need for candidate-centered strategies for recruitment and retention.
But what is behind positive or negative sentiment? An overall analysis of drivers and barriers demonstrate how the factors impacting the career experience and sentiment of Latinos is mostly influenced by environmental and relational factors such as diversity and culture inside the organization.
For example, an analysis of barriers or factors influencing negative sentiment, reveals a significant difference between segments. Diversity at the organization is six times more prominent as an expressed issue by Latinos versus the overall, as well as internal company culture. Factors such as work-life balance or career opportunity are less prominent for Hispanics. This indicates the importance to personalized engagement strategies that align to the prioritization of issues or barriers faced by this cohort.
Unlike most traditional industry rankings, which rely heavily on self-reported data, the analysis and ranking of top 25 Silicon Valley companies was informed by scraping and mining the unbiased career discussions of Latinos across blogs, career/ topical sites, message boards, review sites and social media destinations over the last 12 months. Social media only represented 11 percent out of a total universe of 198,597 relevant Hispanic data points analyzed. This novel research capability was provided by CulturIntel, a novel and Harvard validated research platform using a cocktail of big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to mine, scrape, segment and make sense out of the digital discussions taking place anytime, anywhere online.
This ranking marks a pioneering effort that should be benchmarked as a novel method to bring diversity insights and cultural intelligence to the way companies seek to target and develop candidate-centered strategies for inclusion.
An infographic summarizing the findings can be downloaded here. Also, an in-depth report for each participating company is available by special request by emailing CulturIntelReport@hispanicize.com and info@cien.plus.
About The Top 25 Companies*
The ranking consisted of 25 companies that are almost all PHYSICALLY located in Silicon Valley and that are disrupting the world as we know it - and by extension, the lives of Latinos and diverse communities, in general. These are the companies who are likely, as of today, to change the way we live, work, connect and communicate. The inclusion of companies that are physically based outside of Silicon Valley reflects the fact that tech disruptors like Microsoft and Dell, among others, are not solely based in California.
About CulturIntel
Culturintel is an award-winning and validated research method using a cocktail of big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to mine the digital discussions happening everywhere (not just social media) to report insights across ethnic and geographic segments; globally. CulturIntel has been recognized as a top innovation for global impact by the World Economic Forum placing 1st runner up during the YGL Impact Lab in 2017. It has also been published by Harvard University and featured by Forbes, Fox News and recognized as a disruption and top innovation by MM&M and PM360 magazine, among others. The company, based in New York City and Minneapolis, was cofounded by former Johnson & Johnson executive Liliana Gil Valletta, Enrique Arbelaez and research expert Patrick Furey. For more information about CulturIntel visit www.culturintel.com.
About Hispanicize Media Group
About Hispanicize Media Group (HMG) Hispanicize Media Group (HMG) is a multi-platform media company for multicultural millennials and Generation Z. HMG works with leading brands and advertisers to navigate the rapidly evolving, $1.7 Trillion U.S. Hispanic market by offering branded media opportunities, brand integrations, celebrity endorsements, digital marketing campaigns and social influencer management. HMG’s Hispanicize Week is the largest annual event for Latino trendsetters and newsmakers in digital content creation, journalism, marketing, entertainment and tech entrepreneurship. http://hmgmedia.co.
CONTACT
Rey Delgado
Edelman
T: 305.358.1243
E: Reynaldo.Delgado@edelman.com
or
Manny Ruiz
Hispanicize Media Group
T: (305) 321-5002
E: manny@hispanicize.com