Minority Trailblazers Give Executive Candidates Something to Pin Hopes On

Jacquelyn B. Gates couldn’t figure out what went wrong after she got word that she had been rejected for a management-level recruiting job with a Fortune 500 company. Gates was qualified for the position, her job interview seemed to go well and, as an African American woman, she felt that she could help an organization trying to bring more minorities into its work force.

But Gates soon learned from an executive headhunter that her bubble was burst largely by the lapel pin she wore to the interview, which was back in the late 1970s. Her pin was red, black and green--colors then widely associated with the black power movement--and the hiring manager assumed that Gates was militant.

Gates quickly passed along word that she had been misjudged, and that the pin was something she received for her community service as a board member of a National Urban League chapter. The result: The company’s decision was reversed and Gates got the job, and wound up forging a lasting friendship with the hiring manager.

Landing an attractive management job and moving up into the executive ranks often is a tough feat, and plenty of evidence suggests that it is even harder for minorities. Yet the success of minority trailblazers such as Gates, now 47 and a vice president at the Bell Atlantic telephone company in New York, shows how it can be done.

A new study of 280 minority executives earning at least $100,000 a year at major U.S. companies provides insights into the upward career paths of some of the most successful African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans in business today. The study was conducted by Los Angeles-based Korn/Ferry International, the world’s biggest executive search firm, with help from the business school at Columbia University in New York.

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For starters, the research suggests that the most successful minority executives grew up in financially modest but stable homes. The study found that 86% of the executives surveyed came from families where both parents lived in the home, and where more than half of the time either the father or mother held a blue-collar job.

The executives in the survey--26% of whom now earn more than $400,000 a year--”really transformed themselves,” said Ann Bartel, a Columbia professor who specializes in labor economics and human resources management.

Along the way, many of the executives say they had to deal with workplace discrimination. Among those polled, 59% reported that, at some point in their careers, they observed “double standards in the delegation of assignments,” and 55% said they have seen “harsh or unfair treatment of minorities by whites.”

How did these minority executives respond to racial or ethnic affronts? Not by keeping quiet. According to the survey, these executives provided “direct feedback to correct the situation,” much as Gates did two decades ago when she realized she was about to lose out on her chance at her first Fortune 500 management job.

One of the keys, Gates said, is “the ability to confront in a positive way.” She warned that “if you move into a defensive mode and shut down, the situation festers and it leads to a victim mentality.”

In addition, minority executives said they treated these incidents as learning experiences and developed plans to deal with the issue, while staying focused on their jobs.

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The Korn/Ferry study also underscored the common wisdom that managers--minorities as well as whites--benefit from finding mentors in their organizations who can teach them the unwritten, informal rules on how to get ahead.

Yet for minorities, there’s a complication. People tend to form mentoring relationships with people of the same race, ethnic group or gender. The trouble is, not only are minority executive mentors in short supply, some also may be further from the real decision making in the organization and, thus, less able to boost a junior executive’s career.

George F. Dreher, an Indiana University business school professor who has studied that issue, said one possible way around the problem is to seek out employers with management practices that reduce the need for mentors.

Dreher pointed to companies that identify high-potential employees, provide career development programs and consider candidates throughout the organization before making a promotion decision. Another option for minority managers and executives is to seek the support of more than one mentor, being sure to include at least one who has access to the genuine decision makers.

All of the hurdles notwithstanding, executive headhunters insist that opportunities are bright for minority executive candidates. Ten or so years ago, many organizations were doing only token hiring of minorities for upper-level jobs, said Joanna B. Miller, a managing director of Korn/Ferry in Stamford, Conn.

But today, she said, “Our clients are really viewing minority executives as a key resource, previously untapped and underutilized. With the heightened competition among companies for executive talent, I think our clients are being opportunistic in wanting to make sure they have access to a very attractive talent pool.”

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Times staff writer Stuart Silverstein can be reached by telephone at (213) 237-7887 or by e-mail at stuart.silverstein@latimes.com.