Breaking Into the Brokerage Business : Training: Inroads Inc. offers minority students internships at major securities companies.

The past two years at Prudential Securities Inc. have been busy for Victor Smith.

He’s done research and analysis of mortgage-backed securities and their prices, endured rotations on both the bond and equities trading desks, and tackled assignments in the firm’s capital markets group.

Through it all, few colleagues outside his immediate work areas knew that Smith--currently a senior at Columbia University--was an intern, and not a regular, permanent member of Prudential’s staff.

“They accepted me as an associate and as a professional,” Smith, 20, said.

Smith, an economics major who will graduate in May, is one of dozens of minority students throughout the country who are breaking into the securities business through a national program called Inroads, headquartered in Chicago.

Inroads Inc. is a nonprofit group that helps African American, Hispanic and Native American college students gain access to corporate America.

Its efforts are gaining ground at a time when Wall Street is under pressure to hire more minorities.

Organizers say that by providing the students with valuable real-life work experience, they will be more employable--and more likely to land jobs with their sponsoring companies.

“Our mission is to develop and place talented minority youth in business and industry and prepare them for corporate and community leadership,” said Charles Story, president and chief executive of Inroads Inc.

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Inroads has been around for more than two decades, but it’s only been in recent years that the internship program has begun making serious headway in the brokerage business.

In 1985, the company set up a branch at 120 Wall Street, said Thomas Powell, managing director of Inroads, New York City.

Now, more than a dozen securities firms are training Inroads interns, including Merrill Lynch & Co.; Goldman, Sachs & Co.; Dean Witter Reynolds; Alex. Brown & Sons Inc.; and Morgan Stanley Group Inc.

Inroads’ efforts to increase minority hiring in the securities business and elsewhere comes as a federal commission continues its investigation of discrimination on Wall Street.

In September, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held hearings that focused on training programs and entrepreneurial and employment opportunities for women and minorities on Wall Street.

After a preliminary study, the commission said last month that women and minorities are severely under-represented in the securities industry in the New York area, especially compared to other sectors of financial services, such as insurance and banking.

That finding didn’t surprise Inroads executives.

Powell, the group’s New York managing director, said his organization has noted similar patterns at the training level.

The commission’s study also concluded that even when women and minorities were hired, they were likely to work in lower-paying clerical areas and not in management posts or high-paying areas such as investment banking.

That’s a situation that Inroads, and some securities concerns, would like to change.

Formed in 1970, Inroads started with just 25 students and 17 participating businesses. This year, the organization placed more than 5,400 interns at 800 U.S. companies.

Of the 686 Inroads interns who graduated from college in 1993, 399 of them, or 58%, were offered jobs by their sponsors; 307 accepted.