Diverse Recruit: Applying for a Job as a Harvard Latina Student
I don’t know if Alejandra Nava Garcia was scared the first time she went to a doctor’s office. Even if she was, she had to be a pretty confident kid.
“The pediatrician only spoke English, so she could only explain things to me, not my mom.”
This is relatively common in the Hispanic community. Parents may only speak Spanish while their children speak both English and Spanish. But this commonality doesn’t make the experience any easier on the child or the parent.
“My mom said she wanted to switch pediatricians so she could understand.”
After an experience like that, many people might have tried to steer clear of doctors’ offices. But not Alejandra. Today, she’s pre-med at Harvard University and can’t wait to become a doctor.
“Being able to talk to patients and parents directly is something I want to do [because] it was missing in my childhood. I look forward to being able to communicate with more patients.”
The fact that Alejandra has the drive to turn her challenges into a larger goal is inspiring.I spoke to another aspiring Latina doctor who, like Alejandra, has a few worries about her field of choice. Daniella is a Harvard student who was born in California and grew up in Mexico. Because becoming a doctor is one of only a few sources of economic empowerment, Daniella sometimes feels like the career is too much of a pre-made mold, and lacks the flexibility for her range of passions.
“Immigrants are always thinking, ‘I need to study something that is useful.’ [This mentality] is determined from parents and society…maybe because of lower socioeconomic backgrounds.”
Daniella has always been interested in how the brain works and why people behave the way they do, but there’s more to her interest than utility. Feeling that she has the luxury to pursue her interests outside the field of medicine — regardless of their connection to monetary outcome — can be a challenging mindset to have. This is especially so when practicality and career utility are major concerns ingrained in the community you come from. However, Daniella has seen what it can be like when Latina students are encouraged to pursue all their goals, beyond the constraints of monetary reward or utility.
“In the College, there’s the Stride program, where students doing community work like Y2Y [a student-run, youth homeless shelter] get a stipend and workshops on leadership and one-on-one meetings with a mentor with a socioeconomic background similar to theirs.”
This is what Daniella wants to see more of from employers and recruiters: people with whom Latinx students can relate. This type of mentorship and role modeling helps Latinx students get exposed to and recognize that a job might be a good fit for them — even if it’s not considered a traditional route of economic mobility.
“[If I were a recruiter] I would have a representative from the Latinx community working in this organization [to let Latinx applicants know]… it’s okay, this is how they dealt with it, these are some resources, to talk about their own experience, and tell applicants why they chose to do [this] work. My mentor told me about a doctor interested in sociology, so I started to get rid of the idea that you have to just be something or something else, you can’t be both. My mentor told me I can do both: medical humanities. So we can start to say to Latinx people that it’s okay to not be something that the majority of your parents and family are telling you to do.”
Paula Barberi knows what it’s like to not have those mentors and resources available to you. A Harvard student born in Michigan to Guatemalan and Cuban parents, Paula “didn’t have fancy jobs” in high school.
“I did part time things and I had a lot of family responsibilities, so I needed a job with lots of flexibility. I ended up working part time in a café and babysitting on the side. The idea of networking was very new to me in college because I had never experienced that before. I didn’t know about creating a resume, didn’t know what a cover letter was until my senior year of high school. [Applying to jobs in college] was scary and I put off writing a new resume and cover letter because I didn’t know what I was doing: it was a confusing process.”
Paula is looking for a job right now. One thing she really values is seeing clear statements of being an equal opportunity employer seeking to have a diverse staff on employers’ websites and job postings.
“This makes me lean towards working with these people because they see all of me. There is a fear, I’m not going to lie, when I walk in and they see who I am and what I look like that there are assumptions being made about me not being qualified or not being as smart, so when they say [they are an equal opportunity employer] upfront, it makes me more comfortable and confident.”
And Paula knows what it’s like to be in a work environment in which she is neither comfortable nor confident. She used to work in a café within a local bookstore which was, as Paula says, “an interesting experience,” to say the least. While a few of her coworkers were women and people of color, the majority of customers were wealthy white people.
“I had a lot of…situations. There was one other Latina. She was older than me, she came from maybe Ecuador, but we didn’t look alike at all. Lots of people, including coworkers, confused me for her. It became a joke: one guy thought it was funny — I think he was embarrassed, so he made it seem like a joke. But those things bother you. Customers would ask me if I spoke English. And my favorite: speaking to me like they were speaking to a child: slowly, carefully. [But when] I would say, ‘I actually study at Harvard,’ their faces would drop in disbelief.”
Increasing workforce diversity can help break stereotypes. But it’s difficult to create — and more importantly retain — a diverse workforce if the organization’s environment isn’t inclusive. Intentionally creating an inclusive culture that appeals to a diverse pool of applicants is not only good for applicants. It can also be the best way to end up with an inclusive and diverse team.
This is something that Maria, a Harvard sophomore, knows well. As an intern for her state Democratic Party, Maria saw firsthand that simply being diverse and actually being intentionally inclusive are two different things, but when you put in the work, it makes a big difference.
“[When] applying to work for a state Democratic party, I feel like I’m going into an equitable space. I don’t think that across the board Democrats are proactive in being equitable, but they try. I think they create more inclusive spaces. Democrats are a more diverse political party. So young Democrats are more likely to be diverse applicants and that carries over into the workplace.”
As more data shows organizations, hiring departments, and recruiters that they should be seeking more diverse teams, it can be easy to view increasing diversity as a numbers game. More often than not, the pipeline is blamed for the lack of diversity in organizations. But the pipeline is only a fraction of the whole picture. As Maria, Daniella, Paula, and Alejandra’s experiences show, organizational culture and policies that support ongoing development and retention of a diverse staff are just as crucial as recognizing diverse strategies to gain that talent, whether that’s through developing the community relationships that Alejandra and Daniella want to see or developing internal policies, trainings, and procedures that support a more diverse staff. Each initiative requires careful forethought, effort, and planning — but by being intentional, organizations can start to move the needle in the right direction.
