Diversity is a vital business imperative for employers today. To provide clients and customers with the best advice or products available, employers need to have a workforce as multi-faceted as the global economy they operate in.

"Diversity encompasses so much more than ethnicity and gender, particularly when students evaluate potential employers" said Claudia Tattanelli, CEO for Universum Communications, the leading employer branding research firm based in Philadelphia, PA. In Universum's American Diversity Survey more than 12,300 students at 107 schools answer questions about career expectations, what they look for when they choose employers and who their Ideal Employers are.

BMW tops the overall Ideal Employer list, followed by Johnson&Johnson, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Microsoft and Citigroup. Goldman Sachs jumped from 6th to 3rd place in the overall ranking.  The investment banking firm attributes the rise to successfully making inroads among historically underrepresented groups such as women, African-Americans and Hispanics.

"It's gratifying to see that the students are receiving the message we are trying to get out there," said Lance LaVergne, Vice President, Human Capital Management Division and Manager of Diversity Recruitment in the U.S. while most companies recruit to their specific firm, Goldman Sachs aims to educate students about the opportunities that exist on Wall Street overall. This way, the students stay closer to Goldman Sachs than if they go into law or medicine instead. "It's about broadening the pool," LaVergne said. "We don't have the capacity to recruit all talented people at once, but if they are in the industry we can catch them two or three years down the line." Oil companies had an excellent  year, rising in the rankings among both undergraduates and MBAs. ExxonMobil did the best, moving up 10 places to No. 51.

Mildred Carrethers, Corporate Diversity  Manager at ExxonMobil, attributes the success to partnerships with student organizations such as NSBE, The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and others. Like Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil believes that if the industry is attractive, companies in it will automatically benefit. "We want to expand the talent pool across the country," Carrethers said. "Then we have the value of recruiting the best and the brightest from that pool." 

Financial services grabs top spot

For the first time, financial services unseats management consulting as the most popular industry among diverse students overall. Financial services is also the top industry among MBAs closely followed by management consulting and consumer goods.

Consulting- and investment banking- companies dominate the top 10 among MBAs. McKinsey is No. 1 followed by Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bain&Co and Booz Allen Hamilton. Engineering/manufacturing is the top industry among undergraduates followed by a tie for second place between government/public service and entertainment/media. Consumer companies do particularly well among undergraduates. African-American undergraduates have eight companies with strong consumer brands in their top 10. Johnson&Johnson tops that list followed by Coca-Cola, BMW, Microsoft and Nike. Asian-American/Pacific Islanders list three accounting firms at the top: Ernst&Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte.

One Asian-Indian* student advises companies to keep it simple when they profile themselves to students: "I think for a company to stand out, it's not even really a question of being unique…they should just make sure they can explain what day-to-day life would be at the job as well as future educational and advancement opportunities," the student said. IBM did exceptionally well among undergraduates this year – moving up from third to first place among Asian-Indian students. The computer company rose one spot to 4th in the overall ranking. The strategy of combining their strong consumer brand with their employer brand is working, said Steve Jarrett Vice President, Human Resources Technology and Enterprise on Demand. "Students know our brand and they see people  who look like them in our ads," Jarrett said. IBM goes beyond partnering with professional organizations and sponsoring events to partnering directly with the students.

On some campuses, members of NSBE won a contest to beta-test new IBM products – products they then were able to keep. When IBM heard that a few NSBE students didn't like the t-shirts IBM recruiters wore at their national convention, the company arranged for a contest where NSBE members designed new ones.

The next challenge for IBM: staying at the top. "We need to have the best people in the world," Jarrett said. "To get them we have to be the employer of choice." 

Defining diversity

Broken down by ethnicity, it's notable that financial services does not make the top five among Black/African-American or American Indian/Alaska Native students but is No. 1 among Asian- American/Pacific Islanders, Asian-Indian, and Caucasian students. Black/African-American students put Entertainment/Media at the top followed by Government/Public Service. Engineering/Manufacturing and Government/ Public service are at the top among American Indian/ Alaska Native students.

As companies position themselves among diverse students, it's particularly important to understand  how they define diversity. Understanding this, Tattanelli said, makes an employer better equipped to present an employer brand that resonates with their target student groups.

When the students define diversity in the survey, ethnicity is the top definition across the board, chosen by an average of 70% of the respondents. Gender, personality, socio-economic background, education and age are other popular definitions among the respondents.

Today's students want colleagues with other assets than their own – people with different ways of solving problems, said Preston Edwards, publisher of the Black Collegian. "Students often say that they don't want to work in a place where everybody is just like them," Edwards said. "Invisible" traits, such as education, age and personality have increased in importance in the past few years, said Tattanelli, noting that personality has become particularly important.

But students don't just look for ethnic diversity or personality variation, Tattanelli said. They want to work for an employer where they can find it all: ethnic diversity, gender equality, personality variation and a plethora of challenges. "Diversity brings value to the work place and is indeed broader than the color of someone's skin or someone's ethnicity, accent or where someone is born." Tattanelli said.

* The Asian-Indian category refers to American students descending from India. These students have requested to be identified as a separate ethnic category.