Students talking to Casey Winters after moderating the growth panel. Jerry Lu photo
The Glass Ceiling For Asian Americans
Asian American white-collar professionals are the least likely group to be promoted into roles of management, a new report finds.
Buck Gee and Denise Peck of the Harvard Business Review recently analyzed data from the national EEOC workforce and found that while Asian Americans are the most successful US demographic in terms of education and median income, they rarely are promoted into positions of management.
HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL, YET WIDELY IGNORED
The underrepresentation of Asian Americans managers spans from industries like tech to law to finance.
A report by the Yale Law School and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association found that while Asian Americans make up more than 10% of the graduates of the top 30 law schools, they “have the highest attrition rates and lowest ratio of partners to associates among all [racial] groups.”
At finance banks, such as Goldman Sachs, Asian Americans make up 27% of the US workforce. Yet, only 11% of US executives and senior managers are Asian-Americans. Among those who are executive officers? Zero.
Asian Americans are 12% of the professional workforce in America while making up only 5.6% of the US population, according to the EEOC.
“This fact underlies the potential blind spot for many companies: Because Asian Americans are not considered an underrepresented minority, they are given little priority or attention in diversity programs,” Gee and Peck argue.
HOW TO CLOSE THE GAP
Gee and Peck argue that while the numbers are striking, there are ways that many companies are working to close the gap.
They cite a global energy company that introduced an internal task force responsible for reviewing the status of women and minorities who transition into leadership positions.
“Reporting to the executive staff, the task force found insufficient gender and racial diversity in the pipeline, including Asian diversity, and recommended specific actions,” Gee and Peck write. “With strong CEO and executive support, the company quickly moved to identify potential leaders and significantly increase its spending for leadership training for women and minorities.”
The company then partnered with Stanford Graduate School of Business in hopes of integrating culturally specific training into its leadership development program for Asian American managers.
In 2014, Microsoft announced Satya Nadella as its new CEO. For many, it was a step towards breaking the glass ceiling for Asian-Americans. But, for many, it’s just the start.
“I think with Satya Nadella becoming the CEO of Microsoft and immigrant companies becoming super successful, I think that balance will change,” Karan Chaudhry, an Indian-born Stanford grad, tells NPR. “But it will not happen overnight.”
Sources: Harvard Business Review, EEOC, Yale Law School/National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, Goldman Sachs, Stanford Graduate School of Business, NPR
Students at the University of Virginia-Darden. Courtesy photo
What MBA Experts Have To Say About Work Experience
You have the stellar grades. The top-notch exam scores. And the right recs.
But having the right work experience is becoming ever more important in MBA admissions. Business school officials say having the right kind of work experience is crucial to making an application stand out.
Ilana Kowarski, a reporter at US News, recently discussed what kind of work experience admissions officers look for and how much work experience is enough.
THREE TO FIVE YEARS IS IDEAL
MBA admissions officers understand that MBA applicants are still at the early leg of their careers. The point of an MBA, for many, is to level up in their industry. Thus, it isn’t so important to have high-level executive positions on your resume.
“You are starting as a junior and you might have limited supervisory roles, but you are probably working in a specialized area, and you are trying to either advance in that area or gather other skills,” Nikhil Varaiya, director of graduate programs at the San Diego State University’s Fowler College of Business, tells US News.
Varaiya suggests applicants have anywhere from three to five years of work experience under their belt when applying.
“In general, I say that because I think that if they have worked for three to five years, they have a better sense of what a graduate degree is going to do for them, so they would be better prepared,” he says.
WHAT KINDS OF JOBS?
Having stellar work experience can help to compensate for low GRE or GMAT scores. Especially if that work experience is in a field related to your studies.
Amada Karr is executive director of student enrollment services at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management.
Karr tells US News that business-related work experience in industries like finance or tech tend to impress admissions officers. Having experience in quantitative analysis is also a plus, she says.
While working for a big-name company is likely to help your application, it isn’t the deciding factor, experts say.
“For top business schools such as Wharton and Harvard, students working for big names such as McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group or Google stand out in an already competitive pool,” according to Top MBA. “Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that working for less-well-known companies isn’t valuable; all work experience will strengthen an MBA application.”
April Klimkiewicz is a career coach and owner of Bliss Evolution. She tells US News that what’s most important is gaining managerial experience – regardless if at a big company or small.
“Experience managing is a plus,” she tells US News. “If you’ve managed a coffee shop, or even informally managed a team or project, you are displaying the ability to manage.”
Millennials Are The Least Entrepreneurial Generation
Millennials, who are often associated with startups, are the least entrepreneurial generation in recent history.
The reason? Student debt is through the roof.
David Jolley, a contributor at Quartz, recently discussed how student debt is killing entrepreneurship.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP HAS FALLEN AT STAGGERING RATES
According to The Atlantic, the percentage of people under 30 who own their own business has fallen by 65% since the 1990s.
In 2015, according to Financial Times, 22% of MBA students surveyed by FT started a business within three years of graduating. This year, only 16% did the same.
While 60% of millennials call themselves “entrepreneurs,” fewer than 2% are actually self-employed
60% percent of millennials consider themselves entrepreneurs, even if few of them are. One poll found a majority of millennials would like to own a business someday but fewer than 2% are self-employed, according to the US Small Business Administration.
Student Debt At All Time High
Jolley argues that one of the main reasons behind staggering entrepreneurship rates is the climbing debt millennials are carrying.
Over the past decade, student debt has grown nearly 150%, according to CNBC.
Total student loans increased from around $510 billion in 2007 to more than $1.3 trillion today, according to a New York Times report.
While it’s become easier than ever to start a business, Jolley argues that student debt places a huge obstacle amongst millennials.
“Even if the barriers to entry of starting a new business today can be low—it’s much easier to outsource everything from payroll or get scalable office space—it’s still harder to do if you have to manage a huge student debt loan payment each month,” he writes.
Sources: Quartz, The Atlantic, Financial Times, US Small Business Administration, CNBC, New York Times
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