THERE'S A LOT AT STAKE when you choose a first employer. You're laying the foundation for your future career …spending the greater part of your waking hours on the job …perhaps tying up your own financial future, via stock options or your 401(k), with the fate of your company. In short, where you work will have a strong impact on nearly every facet of your life.

Complicating matters, the economic downturn has made the search for the right employer even harder. As competition for top jobs increases, students who are about to enter the workforce find themselves confronted with tough choices; realizing that they can't have everything, the question becomes what to prioritize. Students today want a balanced lifestyle, yet often feel pressure to work long hours in order to stay competitive. They may want to enter a new industry, yet have experience elsewhere. They've seen in recent years how quickly it's possible to get ahead by job hopping, yet they crave security in the face of today's shaky business climate.

For their part, companies are struggling to adapt to the new economic landscape as well. Many have had to drastically overhaul their recruitment strategies in response to a reduced need for personnel. In this period of transition, a company's employer image is redefined by the strategies it adopts to cope with the economic downturn. For companies too, it's a delicate balancing act; they need to cut costs while still building their employer images —if they want to be well positioned when the economy rebounds.

Given all the economic uncertainty these days, where can companies turn to find out what today's students expect from their future employers? They need only look to the source —the students themselves.

Discovering the needs of minority students

For the second year in a row, Universum Communications has conducted a special survey that monitors the employment expectations of students with minority backgrounds. The Universum Diversity Survey 2002 polled 3, 507 undergraduate and MBA students across the United States who classify themselves as ethnic minorities, with the bulk of the respondent population consisting of African-, Asian-, and Hispanic-American students. The survey delved into students' life priorities and career goals, and asked respondents what they are really looking for when it comes to compensation, length of workweek, and many other employment conditions.

The knowledge gained from the survey benefits new graduates entering the workforce as well as the companies that are about to hire them. With studies showing that employee diversity encourages creativity and superior performance, smart companies are prioritizing diversity in their recruitment campaigns as a means of strengthening their most important resource —their personnel. Yet to attract top talent, employers must first understand what it is that minority students today are hoping to achieve in their professional and personal lives.

Top career goals

So what does a company need to offer in order to build a reputation as an ideal employer? According to the students of color responding to The Universum Diversity Survey, it must provide challenging positions and a high level of compensation while supporting employee efforts to achieve a balanced lifestyle.

Minority students are eager to acquire a portfolio of marketable skills, and want to make a real difference at the companies they join. To "work with increasingly challenging tasks "ranks among their most common career goals. As managers of their own careers, students of color will select employers that support their desire to learn and provide them with the resources that they need make an impact.

Helping young employees reach their personal goals for development is critical for companies wishing to retain top graduates. "I am willing stay with a company over the long term, as long as I can measure growth and progress according to my own measuring stick," explains Martin Omari, a recent graduate of Howard University who majored in Accounting. "While I am there, committed to supporting the company with that I bring to the table, I certainly don't want be left behind. "

For Martin, a company's commitment employee development is of top importance. "When considering a position, I ask myself how this employment experience will really add to the knowledge and skills that I currently have. I'm looking at the substance of the career opportunity …and then the money and benefits. I also consider how the position will afford me a chance to apply what I've learned. With all the time and money that I've spent, I really want to see how things work."

Earning power

Given that minority students also tend to prioritize financial security as a career goal, it's no wonder that competitive compensation also tops the list of factors that they believe their ideal employers offer. A good salary is important to students, who, like Martin, often make a considerable investment when they choose to pursue a university degree. Yet looming debt is not the only reason students are drawn to companies offering high salaries; for many, a competitive compensation package is a sign that an employer recognizes and appreciates the value that they bring to the company.

Students of color have high expectations when it comes to their starting salaries, with undergraduates anticipating earning a comfortable average of $54, 322 at their first job after graduation. (This finding is very similar to that for white students, as breakdowns of the data from Universum's 2002 surveys reveal. )Respondents expect the good life to get better with time, too; undergraduate minority students believe that their salaries will nearly double after five years in the workforce, to $97, 593. But thanks to the economic slowdown, students fresh out of college are no longer likely to expect to earn starting salaries that are extremely high, as Universum's surveys have shown they did in recent years; furthermore, their expectations for salary development have been curbed as well. For example, only nine percent of minority undergrads expect to earn $150, 000 or more five years after graduation, while approximately 27%did so last year.

The balancing act

Yet while building a sound financial base is important, money is not quite everything to today's graduates. With "balancing personal life and career" at the top of their list of career goals, the impact of their jobs on the overall quality of their lives is a primary concern for minority students. And this is true not just for students of color —regardless of students' race or ethnicity, attaining a balance between personal life and career is the most common career goal among American students overall, according to Universum's findings. The message that students are sending is clear: to hire —and perhaps even more importantly, to retain —today's top talent, companies must consider a quality lifestyle to be as important as work environment or compensation, and act accordingly.

Students' concern for employer work/life policies results in part from their generation's experience of life. Many grew up with two working parents or in single-parent homes, observing first hand the difficulties of juggling career and family. Tasha DuBose, a senior at Ohio State University majoring in Accounting, is taking her family's experiences into account when weighing career choices. As she explains, "My mom struggled quite a bit. She raised us pretty much on her own. I've always been into my school a lot and really involved in organizations, and it was hard because my mom worked afternoons. So everything I was involved with, when most people's parents would be there, my mom would be unable to attend. That was hard for me, and for her as well, because naturally you would like to be there for your child. It definitely makes you think. I would not want to work those hours, but my mom didn't have a choice; she didn't have a college degree. "As the first person in her family to attend college, Tasha intends to work for a company that gives employees the flexibility to have a balanced lifestyle when they have families. "[This] is something that I looked into when inter viewing with employers —you want to look into the types of programs that they have, how the women who work for the firm are treated, that kind of thing."

Always on call

Another concern that many young employees have today is that the new technology necessary to keep up with today's fast-paced economy might also limit personal time. Knowing that they are likely to be equipped with portable computers and mobile phones by their future employers, they may wonder if they will ever truly be "off" work. Christopher Tyler, a senior in Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, does not want "to be the type of person who does nothing but work for five years and then, when things start slowing down, doesn't remember how to do anything else." According to Christopher, companies need to be respectful of the boundaries between working hours and personal time when communicating with their employees. "If they want to be able to contact me 24 hours a day [via mobile phone ]," he explains, "then I simply would not want to have one."

All work and no play?

Yet today's students may find it difficult to reconcile their desire for a balanced lifestyle with the expectations they have of working life —paradoxically, few expect to work "only" nine to five on their way up the corporate ladder. This year's respondents to The Universum Diversity Survey expect to work an average of 51 hours per week, even though they would prefer to work only 44 hours. Furthermore, a full 13%of respondents believe that their workweek will normally exceed 60 hours. Needless to say, that leaves little time left for the private life students so yearn for.

For students such as Martin Omari, the loss of a balanced lifestyle is simply the price to be paid in order to obtain a top job in today's sluggish economy. "Right now I'm willing to commit more of my time to establishing my career. I am going into each inter view or employment situation with the attitude of conveying, in a subtle way, that I am 100% willing to work a little longer than the standard eight or nine hours, and I am also willing to work on the weekends. I think that, with the recession what it is, employers may ask or require that of a new hire."

Tasha DuBose agrees. "If it's for my career, I'll do almost anything. I'd be willing to sacrifice a balanced lifestyle a little bit to get my career started, and to show the firm that I'm truly committed and that I want to be the best employee that I can be to help the firm —and then hopefully in the future, in return, they'll help me out when I have a family." Although some students may be willing or required to give up their balanced lifestyles, can companies afford to put this issue on the shelf during leaner economic times? Not if they hope to count themselves among the most attractive employers —or to retain new employees on a long-term basis. Balance is part of today's work culture, and the smart money is on companies that implement lifestyle policies regardless of economic cycles.

Finding a job

Students of color who are about to begin their job search are facing a much grimmer employment climate than existed at the time they applied to college. The abrupt reversal of power in the employment scene, from an employee's market to an employer's, has meant that students need to take more aggressive approaches to their job search.

Martin Omari, who describes himself as "very ready to be financially self-sufficient and not living the life of a college student," is pursuing several job-search strategies simultaneously. He is identifying sources of contact information, signing up with temporary employment agencies, and posting his resume on line. While Martin expects to see results soon, he says that taking action is also important for his morale. "Simply having more irons in the fire relieves my anxiety," he explains.

To their dismay, students are finding that many companies, with eyes on the bottom line, are reluctant to hire inexperienced candidates. Some students are responding by seeking out opportunities that are less obvious than those offered by the traditionally large recruiters. Like Martin, Christopher Tyler expects to put a great deal of effort into his job search. His strategy, however, involves expanding the base of companies he will consider as possible employers. "I will be looking at some of the smaller companies instead of just the large ones," he explains.

The importance of diversity

Employers are becoming increasingly aware of the changes occurring in the global marketplace. As the world continues to shrink, the diverse work environment will become the norm. And companies today are realizing that its employees' differences can be the organization's strength —that the combined perspectives, ideas, backgrounds, and skill sets of its people add both depth and edge to the company's business presence.

Meanwhile, the definition of diversity is expanding, encompassing not only race, culture, age, religion, gender, physical ability, and sexual orientation, but also differences in personal style. As Tasha DuBose says, diversity is "not just ethnicity —even among other people who are African-American as well, everyone is still from a different area of the country, a different background, and they have so much to offer. That in itself is interesting to me, to be able to learn so much from everybody."

Many companies —the smart ones —seem to agree. More and more employers are actively adopting policies of inclusion, deliberately seeking to expand the capabilities of their workforce by hiring personnel whose diversity will help the company succeed. Despite uncertainty about when the economy will rebound, some companies are striving to offer outstanding opportunities to minority students and others in their pursuit of diversity. Recognizing the enormous value to the organization that a diverse workforce provides, these companies are creating special diversity departments that promote recruitment of minority employees, offer mentorship and trainee programs, and oversee other programs designed just for employees of color.

Want specifics? Read on for inter views with policymakers and other movers and shakers at some of today's top diversity employers.