If you are a college student facing imminent graduation, the anemic job market probably is sending shivers up your spine. Last month, the national unemployment rate was 9.1 percent, still high three years after the recession began. Only 54,000 new jobs were created that month, according to the Labor Department.
Yet, there is a place to look for jobs that is robust, exciting and, best of all, hiring like crazy: Abroad.
Large U.S. companies such as General Electric Co., Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores are all hiring for jobs abroad as markets such as Asia continue to grow briskly. Last year, for instance, heavy equipment maker Caterpillar hired 15,000 new people and more than half were for jobs overseas. Some 1.4 million jobs were created by U.S. companies overseas last year, compared with 1 million in this country, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “U.S. firms are doing far more hiring overseas than in the U.S., so for students, it’s an option,” says Robert Scott, senior international economist at EPI.
For minority students at historically Black colleges and universities and majority schools, overseas work can seem like a winner, but preparing for it takes special skills and a mindset that requires more work and discipline.
Schools such as the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business offer study tours of Latin America and a dual degree in business and Latin American studies. The University of Florida’s Hough Graduate School of Business, with a 10.6 percent Hispanic enrollment, uses its location in South Florida to train students for jobs in Spanish-speaking countries.
The University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, which offers undergraduate and graduate business degrees, emphasizes global studies across the board in its business curriculum, including area studies, marketing, finance and languages. Tom Fitch, associate dean of Commerce Career Services at McIntire, says his school offers a “global immersion experience” that involves study abroad and courses that have a strong international perspective. “Finance is the most popular concentration and Asia seems to be the area of the most appeal,” he says.
Among all the schools, be they HBCUs or others, few can match Howard University’s global business programs for the intensity with which it involves students in global training.
