AREVA was well represented at the NSBE’s diversity career fair by Marcus Jones (Charlotte), Carl Thurston (Lynchburg), Althea Jones (Charlotte), Hank Samerson (Charlotte), and George Ifebuzo (Marlborough).
Over the past several years AREVA has steadily increased its diversity in the workforce, and minority hires are playing a role in recruitment efforts. The increase is due to more aggressive recruitment efforts on college campuses and AREVA’s sponsorship of conferences geared towards minority college graduates.
One successful example is AREVA’s sponsorship of an annual conference hosted by the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). This conference is the largest diversity career fair in the country and attracts more than 10,000 people. At this year’s event, held recently in Las Vegas, AREVA sponsored a company booth at the two-day Conference Career Fair. A five member AREVA team met with hundreds of African-American and international students studying engineering in the United States.
The team educated the students about AREVA and discussed career opportunities. “Our goal is to meet well-rounded, motivated students, who are interested and excited about career opportunities at AREVA,” explained Althea Jones, Technical Recruiter. “We conduct an initial meet-and-greet to learn more about the candidate, and we follow up with the most promising for further consideration.”
Members of AREVA’s University Relations team and AREVA engineers represent the company to address both human resources and engineering related inquiries. Engineers are able to speak on what they do in the company and their engineering experience. HR personnel provide information about AREVA as a company, and discuss areas such as career paths, benefits, and relocation.
And for the first time, a student attendee of a past NSBE conference, now working for AREVA, assisted with recruitment efforts. George Ifebuzo, Auxiliary Systems Engineer, joined Jones and three other AREVA engineers at the Las Vegas event to share his AREVA experience.
Said Ifebuzo, “Helping the recruiting efforts in the 2009 NSBE National Convention was a wonderful and unique experience for me. I was able to shed light on the excitement of being part of the AREVA team by describing the nature of my job and sharing my experience as a new and young engineer with AREVA.”
According to Paul Burneson, Manager, University Relations, AREVA North America, these efforts have really paid dividends in increasing diversity within AREVA. Said Burneson, “We’re proud of our record in hiring minorities, and events like the NSBE conference help to facilitate our minority recruitment efforts by attracting candidates beyond our target schools. Since the NSBE Career Fair in March, more than 40 candidates have thus far entered their profiles in eTalent, expressing interest in joining the AREVA Team.”
Tweet TAGS: AREVA Inc., AREVA North America, AREVA University Relations, George Ifebuzo, Green Jobs, National Society of Black Engineers, Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Paul Burneson, Workplace Diversity
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