Listen closely and you will hear students across the country express a sigh of relief. Recruiters are returning to campus, and employers have increased their number of college hires com-pared to previous years, according to a recent survey by Philadelphia-based Universum Communications.

"Companies are recruiting again and, one of our discoveries is that firms are especially interested in minority students," says Claudia Tattanelli, CEO of Universum Communications, a global research and consulting firm, which recently concluded its 2004 survey of thousands of MBA and undergraduate candidates from the leading business schools and universities in the U.S. More than 6,900 students with minority backgrounds from 61 universities, including University of Pennsylvania, the HBCU Howard University, and University of Puerto Rico, answered questions about their career aspirations.

Today, minorities are approximately one quarter of all students enrolled in four-year undergraduate institutions, a number that drops below 20 percent when only the nation's most selective institutions are taken into account. An overall increase in the number of minority students enrolled in graduate schools has taken place in the past few years, but minorities still remain underrepresented in the graduate student population than among their undergraduate peers.

"Minority MBAs and undergraduates from top ranked schools are in short supply, and companies want to hire more of them than are available," Tattanelli says.

Adapting to a multicultural market

With studies showing significant increase in minority buying power, many companies are prioritizing diversity in their recruitment efforts as a means of increasing their insights into how to expand their customer base and, of course, their revenues.

What could a company do to attract top minority candidates?

According to the students who responded to Universum's survey, firms must possess solid reputations, offer competitive compensation and opportunities for an international career to qualify as ideal employers. Minority students are also interested in future employers' long-term commitment to developing a diverse workforce. They said they evaluated firms from the method used to recruit them.

"Many companies have specialized recruiting camps for minority students," said one Duke student. "This is where they can meet with minority senior executives and receive information about the company, possible career paths and so on. There is a fine line between offering general information and information only pertinent to minorities."

Preferences also vary among different ethnic groups. For example, companies with good internship programs are favored by more than two thirds of participating Asian American and Asian Indian students (students with Indian heritage). Latino students are partial to co-op programs while African Americans see value in minority-targeted events.

Women with a minority background emphasize the value of scholarship and mentorship programs more often than their male counterparts.