Alabama State University student Jamie Coleman gained important assurance and confidence from a weekend seminar at LinkedIn, which she is now putting into practice at a Google internship.
Coleman works in Google’s sales division, helping small- and medium-size businesses get the most from their advertising accounts by optimizing content on their websites. What she learns and how well she performs this summer will influence whether Coleman applies for a full-time job there or elsewhere in the tech industry.
What she knew at the beginning of her three-month internship, however, is that, despite lacking skills in coding, she still has a bona fide shot at a career in technology—something that was impressed upon her during the LinkedIn seminar.
“I was nervous about how well my skills would translate,” says Coleman, who this fall will be a senior majoring in marketing. “You never know. But it turns out technology is so much more than just coding and computer systems. Marketing is needed, so people like me are needed.”
Her phrase “like me” encompasses more than simply interest and experience in marketing.
African-Americans such as Coleman make up an embarrassingly low proportion of the workforce at U.S. tech corporations. In 2014, for instance, Blacks made up only 2 percent and Latinos 3 percent of technology employees at Google and six other Silicon Valley heavyweights.
This is one of the reasons why the nonprofit Management Leadership for Tomorrow organization (MLT) has tech companies among its many partners. It is also why Coleman and 299 of her peers who are MLT Career Prep Fellows attended the college intern seminar at LinkedIn prior to the end of the spring semester—even though many of them were poised to begin summer internships outside the industry.
