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Over the last decade there has been a gradual increase in the number of Hispanics entering the technical fields. But the actual numbers could be better. In fact, there was an actual decrease in degrees awarded in 2004. "The greatest obstacle has been getting the word out to Hispanic students that technical opportunities are available," says Diana Gomez, national president of SHPE (www.shpe.org).
Gomez, who is an electrical engineer with the California department of transportation in Fresno, stresses the need for mentors at every career level, from students to executives. She herself has a mentor even though she is now president of a national organization.
In looking for a job, she notes that networking and feedback play vital roles. SHPE has national and regional events each year where students and professionals can make plenty of connections. "You should put your resume together and network at job fairs and career conferences, particularly with company recruiters. If you do get an interview, ask for feedback. You may not always like it, but it's crucial in improving your performance. After you're hired, you should continue to seek out feedback. You'll get a performance review at the end of the year, but why wait?
"It's also really essential to put together a career plan, to determine where you want to be and if you need a masters, PhD or MBA to advance. When you get a job, you have to stay on top of your game, be competitive and keep your options open. You need to put yourself in a place where you can get the appropriate experience," Gomez emphasizes.
D/C spoke with six Hispanics relatively new to IT. Although each took a different route to enter the field, all were well prepared to tackle the challenges once they arrived. Here they share their roads to success.
Margarita Costa: IT analyst with Citigroup
Margarita Costa is an IT business analyst with the CitiTech division of Citigroup (New York, NY), the financial services giant. She works on a team of twenty-one IT professionals that processes trades and commissions for futures and commodities. Her group is part of the capital markets division of the global corporate and investment banking group. Costa spends most of her mornings doing Unix development. Her afternoons are busy with meetings and interfacing with end users.
"My expertise was mostly in Web development. I think I was hired as a business analyst because I have a lot of soft skills, like communication and negotiation," she says.
Costa started at the company as part of the CitiTech Advanced Placement Program (CAPP). CAPP hires college juniors and seniors with high potential and provides them with in-house training that supplements their undergraduate classes to prepare them for entry-level jobs in technical fields. Students work twenty hours a week during the school year and forty hours a week during the summer. Costa heard about CAPP through Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, NJ), one of the schools the program targets.
Her experience in CAPP paid off, and she was hired full time by Citigroup after graduating from the program in 2003. That same year, she received a dual degree in CS and math from New York University (NYU, New York, NY), and a degree in computer engineering from Stevens Institute.
Costa, who was born in Puerto Rico and spent her early years there and in the Dominican Republic, came to the U.S. when she was ten years old. She found herself drawn to a technical career after she got into NYU's advanced math program. "I was given the opportunity to enroll in a five-year program that offered a dual degree from NYU and Stevens Institute," Costa says.
She took as many as twenty-two credits a semester and held a job at the same time, so she learned to prioritize. "I couldn't spend all night working on a single problem. I had to manage my time, a skill that is also critical in the working world," she says.
Costa also did an internship at publisher John Wiley & Sons (Hoboken, NJ) in early 2002, working in telecommunications IT.
Costa finds the full-time working world quite different from academia, but her early experience adapting to the American culture taught her valuable coping skills. "Some things you learned in school don't work in the practical world. You have to learn to ask others for help and to research problems," says Costa. "I'm not afraid to ask questions, even if they sound stupid."
Today she sees her biggest challenge as catching up with the rest of her group, who have been there much longer. "There's so much to learn."
Costa stresses the importance of taking advantage of all available opportunities. "You need to talk to other people to find out what you might be interested in, and you have to keep doors open and be willing to network."
For now, Costa is content to stay where she is, learning as much as possible about the technology and the business. Ultimately, she hopes to move into project management.
Joel Gomez: telecommunications at Sprint
Joel Gomez is an associate engineer in the network access service provisioning department at Sprint's Apopka, FL facility. Sprint (Kansas City, KS) provides telecommunications services, including landline and wireless phone service, data and DSL high-speed network services. Gomez designs T1 and T3 circuit paths from the central office to the customer site as part of the big data networks provided to business customers.
"These businesses, from car dealerships to large retailers, use our networks for data transmission. Each network is so varied. You need to locate the major data pipe and find out what type of termination point is available at the customer's site, whether it's fiber optic or copper. Sometimes we need to build one from scratch. I determine the best path available and assign the right equipment to make the circuit come to life. After I've engineered an order, the central office technicians build the pathway that I've designed. If there are any issues, they get back to me, because it's my responsibility to make sure the circuit path will work," he says.
Gomez is part of Sprint's Excel program, a training program for new college hires. Before his current stint in the access service provisioning department, Gomez spent a year in the network operations center working on maintenance. There he worked on the same kind of circuits that he now creates from scratch. He says he feels "truly blessed" to get into a large company like Sprint.
Gomez was attending the University of Central Florida (Orlando, FL) and had a part-time job doing data entry for a construction company when he heard about Inroads, the well-known internship program for minorities. "Inroads helped me get a position as a database administrator and Web developer for a call center at Sprint. I worked part time during the school year and full time in the summers for three years. My last internship was in the network division, where I worked in the advanced network services group for nine months before a permanent full-time position with benefits opened up."
In 2002, Gomez graduated with a BSCE. He will complete his MBA from Florida Metropolitan University (Orlando, FL) in the summer of 2005. In addition to his university courses, he takes classes at the University of Excellence, a virtual intranet school at Sprint, as part of the Excel program. "The company offers courses online, so you can work at your own pace. I've taken classes in packet technology, T1 and T3 data lines, 'Crucial Conversations,' which covers high stakes workplace communication, and several leadership courses," Gomez says.
Gomez feels that his internships were highly valuable and suggests that technical students do at least one, even if it's unpaid. "Internships help you to determine what areas you're interested in. When I started college, I thought I wanted to be a database administrator, but after a year with Sprint I realized I preferred the more hands-on approach of engineering network design."
He also stresses that it's important to learn the newest technology and languages. "You want to sharpen your skills to make yourself more marketable. Expertise and knowledge usually determine pay level," he notes.
Gomez was born in Peru and came to the U.S. with his parents and two brothers in 1989, when he was nine years old. The family wanted to avoid the violence, government corruption and poor economic environment that afflicted Peru at the time. "The language was tough at first, but I picked up English pretty quickly because I was young. It was more difficult for my parents. They had accounting degrees but had to start out doing building maintenance for businesses and restaurants until they learned the language."
Telecommunications became a family affair for the Gomezes. Gomez has begun his career at Sprint, and his older brother Yuri started GCS Wireless, a growing Florida cellphone business that employs both his parents and his younger brother.
Gomez finds that both his background and his fluency in Spanish have helped him deal with customers. "There are many Hispanic businesses down here and I can respond to them and other Latinos in their own language and identify with them culturally," he observes.
Carla Nunes: a Verizon Communications software engineer
Carla Nunes had to adapt to American culture more recently. She grew up in Joao Pessoa, Brazil, and came to the U.S. in 2002 with a 1997 BSCS from Universidade Federal da Paraiba and a 2001 MSCS from Universidade Federal de Pernambuco.
She is currently a software engineer at Verizon Communications (New York, NY), where she develops business solutions and IT systems for the telecommunications provider's large business customers and government and educational institutions.
"I'm directly involved in developing a Web portal, which provides access to a broad range of services for customers. One of our big initiatives is called 'Enterprise Advance.' The idea is to make Verizon a single-point provider, integrating long distance and local services for data, voice and IP into one platform," Nunes says.
At the moment, Nunes' daily work includes a lot of meetings. "Our group is spread out across the country as well as in India and the Dominican Republic, so we often communicate through conference calls and messaging systems.
"Right now I'm involved in coding an ordering system for a long distance voice product, a calling card that customers will be able to order through the portal. I'm also coding the user interface for the portal and coordinating portal integration with provisioning and billing systems."
In Brazil, students choose an academic path in high school, and Nunes chose technology. "Technology excites me, and I enjoy learning how it can improve people's lives. I look forward to coming to my job every day and working with leading-edge technology," Nunes says.
Like Gomez and Costa, Nunes found internships a valuable entree into the working world. As an undergrad, she interned at the university's IT center, where she worked on the student grade-tracking system. While working on her masters, she applied to a co-op program at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco that included a year and a half at the San Jose, CA location of IBM (Armonk, NY). "I was accepted into a nine-month program that was extended for another nine months. I worked on the development of a content management product for business enterprise customers."
Nunes returned to Brazil after her co-op finished. In 2003, she returned to the U.S. for the annual SHPE conference. There she had the opportunity to interview with Verizon. "I was hired into a development program at Verizon. At the end of my rotations, I selected the area I was interested in most."
Nunes is very enthusiastic about her experience with SHPE. "Its conferences provide education and job opportunities that help you to discover what you might like to do and the areas you could be working on."
She also feels that it is extremely important to set objectives and identify problems and obstacles. "Plan out where you want to be and establish checkpoints to periodically assess your progress," she suggests.
Although one of her own early obstacles was the language barrier, Nunes says that her easy-going nature and determination helped her to pick up English and adjust fairly quickly. She continues to take courses in English to improve her mastery. As for her next goal, Nunes has set her sights on acquiring an MBA in the near future.
Paul Tilton works on Internet-enabling products at Unisys
For Paul Tilton, who graduated from the University of California (Irvine, CA) in 2002, going into his senior year of college not knowing what he would be doing afterward was stressful. But by the time he graduated with a BS in information and computer science, he knew he had secured a position at Unisys (Blue Bell, PA) as a software engineer. Tilton, whose mother is Mexican American, does programming and software development in the systems and technology division of the information technology services and solutions company.
"My group works on Internet enabling products. I mainly deal with the .Net technologies and work in ASP, .Net and C#. I'm part of a team of about twelve, so my job often involves collaborating with different team members. Depending on what phase we're in, we may be having design review meetings or we might be implementing different features of the product."
Design obstacles, debugging and problem solving present challenges on a daily basis, but one of the greatest hurdles Tilton had to overcome when he started working was getting himself up to speed technically. "There were a lot of new technologies already in place here. We have our own line of servers, for example, and we're always looking at how to evolve our product. It's a constant learning experience."
During college Tilton had internships doing Web development. In his junior year, he landed a summer internship at pharmaceutical company Merck (Whitehouse Station, NJ). "I belonged to SHPE and went to a conference in Fresno where Merck interviewed me and offered an internship. It seemed like a great opportunity and I was interested in seeing another part of the country. The Northeast is definitely different from the West Coast," he observes. "The people are different, it's laid out differently, and it's so green!"
In his senior year Tilton became president of the UC-Irvine SHPE chapter, which helped set him apart from other job candidates and gave him a reason to approach recruiters. "I was writing funding proposals for the club and developed a good relationship with recruiters from Unisys. The club toured a Unisys facility in Mission Viejo and I got very interested in the company. One of the recruiters took my resume and made sure the right people saw it."
The work he did as a SHPE officer also gave him an opportunity to exercise his communication and presentation skills. "In the real world you work on a team, and these skills are vital. They really helped me when I started working."
Both his contacts through SHPE and his internship in Web development proved valuable. Tilton also credits the interviewing process with providing him with excellent experience.
María Dolores (Loly) Brandes: managing NOAA's NWS website
María Dolores (Loly) Brandes is a Web manager for the National Weather Service (Silver Spring, MD) of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC). NWS provides weather-related information and hydrologic and climate forecasts for the U.S. and its territories.
Brandes is also a section 508 coordinator for NWS. She helps ensure that all sites are compliant with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.
The motto of the NOAA NWS is "Working together to save lives," a saying that informs the job of everyone at the service. "My job is to post news and reports on the Web as quickly as possible, especially when lives might be at risk. I do coding, graphics, video and audio editing for twelve websites."
Brandes is also part of several government Web managers groups. A DOC Web advisory group and a network of government Web managers work on policies and procedures; another group of webmasters meets for discussions on a variety of topics.
Brandes checks all webmaster e-mail accounts daily and handles user requests. She works on both internal and external websites, and if there are problems with any of the sites, she is the first to hear about it. Her job involves a lot of coding in HTML, PHP, Java Script and MySQL. "I use Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDraw and Fireworks for graphic manipulation, and Adobe Premier for video editing. For Web development, I use Macromedia's DreamWeaver."
Brandes is currently working on her bachelors degree at University of Maryland, University College (UM, Adelphi, MD), and has five courses left to get her BSCS, which she expects to complete in 2005. She got her associates of applied sciences for technical studies in computer technology from Regents University (Albany, NY) in 1999, as well as two certificates, one in 2002 from Anne Arundel Community College (Arnold, MD) in Internet programming and graphics, and one in 2004 in Internet technologies from UM's University College.
It has been a long road for Brandes. Born and raised in C‡diz, Spain, she met her husband there while he was stationed at the U.S. Navy's Rota Naval Base. When the Navy transferred her husband to Italy in 1983, she and their two children went with him and she started her course work there. Upon returning to Rota in 1993, she began taking programming languages.
At the same time, she worked as a technician with the Navy campus education center to provide counseling and process tuition assistance for military personnel. She also started a website for the base. After her husband retired in 1996, the family moved to Washington, DC. In 1999, Brandes landed an internship with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) as a computer specialist in its investigative division. "I had the best computer background in the group and different divisions were interested in me. For two years I worked in various areas, but my commute was three hours a day, so when I saw a position with the NOAA NWS on an OPM website, I applied.
"Often I had to skip courses because my husband was deployed," she recalls. "But when he retired and the children were fifteen and sixteen, I thought, now it's my turn. I've been working full time and going to school ever since."
Brandes says she enjoys doing the external websites even more than the internal ones and is most interested in multimedia editing. "What I love is that I can communicate to others what I see and feel without using words. I'll never have the same proficiency in English as I do in Spanish, and I'm not very good at expressing myself in either language, so visual communication is more enjoyable to me.
"No matter what language you speak, you can work with computers. I've taken most of my courses online. Using the computer, you can learn at your own pace," Brandes says.
She's also found it helpful to have a mentor or partner who can help you with language skills in a professional setting. "I have a friend I can consult with when I have questions about English."
Brandes' proficiency in Spanish, however, can be a plus at her job, as NOAA NWS often receives e-mails from South American countries asking for help during the hurricane season. "They turn to me because the answers have to be done quickly. To improve my contribution in this area, I'm taking a meteorology course, so I can translate the scientific words more accurately and have some understanding of what is going on."
Ultimately, Brandes would like to get a masters degree in visual communications. "There are a few schools around here that have that. I would concentrate in audio, video and graphic editing."
Daniel Hernandez-Trujillo: rotations at GE lead to employment
A project manager for the department of intercompany finance systems at General Electric (Fairfield, CT), Daniel Hernandez-Trujillo was born and raised in Shelton, CT, though his family was originally from Cuba. He graduated from Fairfield University (Fairfield, CT) in 2001 with a BSCS and a minor in math and entered the Information Management Leadership Program (IMLP) at GE.
The IMLP is a two-year program that combines class work with rotational experience and training in different business functions. The classes provide a background in IT, project management, leadership, finance and presentation skills.
Hernandez-Trujillo did his first rotation with GE Licensing in Shelton in application design. Following that he went to global computer operations in Schenectady, NY, where he focused on applications that support GE end users. Then it was back to Shelton to help corporate communications with the rollout of the campaign, "Imagination at Work," GE's new slogan. His next rotation took him to Stamford, CT to capital market services, a financial group, where he got more experience in application design. His final rotation was back in Shelton with corporate communications, where he worked as the project manager and technical lead for the GE careers website.
In February 2004 he graduated from IMLP and interviewed with a number of GE managers, ultimately securing his current position as a project manager. "I have two main projects. On one, I'm the IT lead on a financial dashboard that is used by GE managers and controllers at different GE businesses. I work alongside an intercompany functional team. The other project is a centralized communication medium that I'm creating for intercompany project information. It's part of our intranet," Hernandez-Trujillo explains.
Hernandez-Trujillo was introduced to computers at temp-agency assignments when he was sixteen. During college, he worked for a large relocation company using a Lotus database that stored international relocation policies. In 2000 he took on a second job at a small accounting firm doing end user and helpdesk support. "I kept myself busy, and it contributed to my growth and learning. Working really is an education," he notes.
He advises others to get relevant part-time work as early as possible to gain exposure to things that can't be taught in the classroom. He also recommends a diverse course load.
Hernandez-Trujillo characterizes GE as a champion of diversity and says that the company respects every employee and encourages new ideas. Employees may have different skill sets and backgrounds, but they all work together as a team to accomplish the company's goals.
In the future he hopes to expand his horizons and perhaps work in a cross-functional role. "I think I'd enjoy that. Taking on challenging roles is the way to career growth. Someday, I would love to lead an information technology group as a CIO."
D/C
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