Most Likely to Succeed

Smiling recruiters from 18 companies will take over 32 rooms in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria this week to interview more than 600 college graduates. On hand will be personnel specialists from Boeing, Bristol-Myers, Chase Manhattan, Equitable Life, Lever Bros., J. C. Penney, Xerox and other giants. The young men who will get the corporate glad hand are some of the most sought after graduates of the class of '64. They hold a variety of degrees, but they have one thing in common: all are Negroes.

The Right Time. Quite a few companies have asked colleges and Negro organizations to help them find Negro management trainees. In some cases this is a calculated gesture, a sort of bend-over-backward bow that has been forced by social and political pressures. Says New York University Associate Placement Director Andre Beaumont:

"If a white and a Negro graduate were competing for the same job and were equal in every respect save skin color, the job would go to the Negro." Some defense contractors feel it is good business to display Negroes conspicuously at drafting tables and in labs. Consumer-oriented companies are inclined to woo Negro trainees to avoid the unpleasantness of picket lines and sit-ins. By and large, however, U.S. companies are seeking Negroes for promising jobs because they feel it is the right thing to do and the right time to do it. "We are looking for brains," says Swift & Co. Recruiter Edward Hall, "and they come in all sizes and colors."

Finding them is not always easy. Manhattan Personnel Consultant Rich ard Clarke, a Negro who organized the recruiting jamboree at the Waldorf, estimates that there are only five Negro graduates available for every 100 management-level jobs open to them. There are 25,000 Negroes among this year's 500,000 graduates, and many of them do not choose corporate careers. For example, 21-year-old Edward Wong, a B-plus graduate from Chicago's Loyola University, had interviews with eight companies but elected to go to law school. Negro students have traditionally opted for such sheltered fields as teaching, government and social work, where discrimination has been relatively mild. As for business, Negroes have felt--with justification--that their opportunities would be severely limited.

Some doors are still shut. But such formerly "tight" fields as banking, brokerage, steel and the auto industry are opening wider. Negro recruits are increasingly welcome at airlines, retail stores and food, petroleum, aerospace and electrical-equipment companies.

The Right Man. The Negro is arriving at name-on-the-door status at a time when starting salaries for all kinds of graduates can only make old grads cluck in envy. The best-paid are top-graded engineers, whose B.S. degrees will earn them between $600 and $625 a month. Even graduates in the lowest-paying fields--government, journalism and general business--stand to begin at $400 to $500. William Eagleson, a 22-year-old Negro from M.I.T. (B.S. in metallurgy), was interviewed on campus by seven companies, accepted invitations for four plant tours, decided to enter Ford's management program at $625 a month plus many fringe benefits. "The other companies may have been interested in me because I was a Negro," he says. "But I got the job at Ford because I am a man they can use."

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