Photo by: Kayla Parker

The Florida A&M University (FAMU) Career and Internship Expo brought about 90 companies to campus to recruit this week, including Amazon, Apple and Eli Lily Pharmaceuticals. But some companies didn’t come to the historically black campus.

According to past research, many companies choose not to recruit from Historically Black Colleges/Universities (HBCU’s), putting the students at disadvantages for internships.

Of the roughly 300,000 students that attend HBCUs, those students only equal nine percent of black college students in the country, according to the Pew Research Center. To meet diversity quotas, companies often travel to other colleges and universities to recruit students of color.

Joshua Williams, a junior marketing student at Dillard University, an HBCU in Louisiana, saw firsthand the lack of HBCU applicants for internships during his internship at HBO in Los Angeles this summer.

“As the only HR intern, I was responsible for the recruitment of HBO fall interns,” Williams said. “I tried my best to diversify my selection for Department managers to choose from but it became extremely difficult.”

Williams said there was a blatant lack of applications from people of color and HBCU students. This lack of applications can be attributed to the lack of exposure to the internship programs. Many companies leave HBCUs off their college recruiting lists when they tour the country.

When sampling lists of schools that top media companies visited last year to recruit, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Howard University were sometimes the only HBCUs found on the companies’ lists out of the 103 HBCUs in the country.

Though, amid the recruitment lack, recent HBCU graduates are reported as thriving more in job placement and other areas compared to black students who attended predominately white institutions, according to a study performed by Gallup-Purdue University.

The data attempted to measure whether HBCU’s were doing enough to help students’ well-being post-graduation. Well-being was described as positive “social, financial, purpose, community and physical elements.”

Not only did the 50,000 HBCU graduates who were a part of the study say that their schools prepared them for jobs, but more than half of those in the study said they were “thriving in financial well-being.”

Sheree B. Oats, a FAMU alumna, said this is because HBCU students have a particular drive.

“HBCUs teach us that we have to be 10 times as good, 10 times as sharp, and 10 times as prepared in the work force because we are a minority,” Oats said.

Oats is a Foodservice sales representative at PepsiCo. She’s recruited from FAMU several times on behalf of the company.

She said recruiting from FAMU allows her to give back to her alma mater while bringing talented students to the company. However, she knows some companies don’t feel the same. She said the lack of recruiting from HBCU’s may reflect the lack of diversity of some companies.

“There has to be leadership inside the company that understands the importance of HBCU’s and how much value a student who attended an HBCU can bring to their company,” Oats said. “As companies try to advance their diversity, we will see more recruitment at HBCUs.”

Oats also said HBCUs can benefit from building better relationships with companies. Some schools are already operating under this philosophy.

Students like Nicholas Davis, an art student at Xavier University in New Orleans, said his school played a major role in his recent internship.

“Faculty and staff are truly so essential because they hear about many opportunities and know what could be great fits for us,” Davis said. “Without them, I would not be able to say I went from the New York Times Student Journalism Institute as a print designer to then being a digital design intern at the Oprah Winfrey Network this summer.”

Aside from faculty and staff support, many organizations help diversify companies.

While at HBO, Williams reached to the T. Howard Foundation, an organization that places minorities into the entertainment industry, to help diversify the company and “establish a relationship with the company.”

Relationships are key, according to Oats. She said more HBCU’s need to develop connections with companies if they want students to continue to thrive after graduation.

“Companies recruit at Universities they have built relationships with,” Oats said.

She said HBCU’s will need to focus on strategy and relationships to continue to succeed in the future.