Program Helps Launch Young Minorities : Education: Inroads pairs African Americans, Native Americans and Latinos with internships.

While others his age were cruising the strip this summer, 18-year-old Brian Wilson was working on a way to make that drive more efficient.

As a participant in Inroads’ Los Angeles office, a nonprofit organization that places high-achieving minority students in internships with business and industry, the UCLA freshman worked as a lab technician at an Arco refinery in Carson.

“I got a good feeling from doing the job and knowing that the only way they could sell that product was through me,” said Wilson, a chemical engineering major who tested gasoline for impurities.

Several other Southern California minority youths will have similar opportunities next summer. The Los Angeles office of Inroads is taking applications until Dec. 2 for 1995 summer internships.

Inroads was founded in Chicago in 1970 by Frank Carr, an entrepreneur who said he was moved by the civil rights campaign of Martin Luther King Jr. and wanted to help improve the economic prospects of young minorities. It has grown into one of the largest career development organizations in the nation, with branches in 43 cities. The Los Angeles office, opened nine years ago, currently places interns in 65 corporations in the region.

The program is increasingly popular with corporations trying to adapt to a 21st Century work force that will be strikingly more diverse than past ones. These companies, said Inroads managers, want to identify and groom promising job candidates.

“The employee mix is shifting and becoming mostly minority,” said Sheri Betts, managing director of the Los Angeles branch and a former Inroads intern.

Adapting to the changing worker pool is especially important to California industry, she said, where demographic trends point to a work force in which minorities will be the majority by the year 2000.

“There’s going to be a lot of competition for the talent,” Betts said.

In addition to helping industry prepare for the future, Inroads interns said the program has helped them chart their own career plans. The internships were invaluable in providing the technical and social skills necessary in the corporate world, they said.

“I can’t tell you how much this program matured me,” said Jose A. Campos, a former intern who is now a senior accountant with Deloitte & Touche in Los Angeles. “By the time you graduate from college, you are already well versed in business skills and know all the buzz words.”

Recruits must be gifted young African Americans, Latinos or Native Americans, and must pass rigorous screening. The program is not open to Asian Americans, who are considered well represented in the corporate world. Students may apply as early as the senior year in high school, but no later than the college sophomore year. They typically work full-time each summer until college graduation.

Representatives of corporations that have hired Inroads interns gave them high marks.

“They are definitely professional, definitely polished,” said Derek Taylor, a personnel representative with the Federal Reserve Bank in Los Angeles.

Betts said that Inroads’ training is integral to the program’s success. Interns are coached on issues ranging from proper dress to how they communicate.

Betts, a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis who spent summers from 1976 to 1980 working for Blue Cross of Missouri in St. Louis, said she learned first hand the value of pre-placement services.

“Back then we didn’t have all the classes,” she said. “The business world was totally foreign to me, even little things like what to wear.”

Students may move to different tasks within a company, depending on their skill level and experience.

“We try to give them client experience after their sophomore year,” said Janet Leong, recruiting manager with Arthur Andersen and Co.

Competition to get into Inroads is intense. The Los Angeles office will choose about 75 students for 1995 positions with businesses in Los Angeles and Orange counties, and expects to get 1,000 applications. About a third of those qualified will be placed, managers said.

Applications are available from high school guidance counselors and college placement and intern offices.

An intern must maintain a 3.0 grade point average and complete 24 hours of community service during each academic school year--standards some students said they find easier than working a full-time job during the summer.

“It is sometimes so demanding that it makes the school year feel like more of a vacation,” said Angelica Villichana, a senior at UCLA who worked in sales and marketing at the Los Angeles office of Colgate-Palmolive Corp.

Villichana, who will graduate in December, has interviewed for a full-time position with Colgate-Palmolive. Employment after graduation is not guaranteed but many companies who have already invested substantially in Inroads interns have strong incentives to make them permanent hires. The organization requires a company to pay $4,000 for each student, in addition to the student’s salary.