TalentPen and Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund form partnership

Recruiting system matches hundreds of outstanding African-American students with Fortune 500 businesses to fill key management positions

Hundreds of leading African-American students were recently connected with recruiting executives from 60 prominent companies, including Wal-Mart, Bank of America, ATandT and Nike, thanks to a partnership between the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund (TMSF) and TalentPen, a candidate collection and personality matching system.

The New York-based college fund promotes equal access to higher education, working with 47 historically black public colleges and universities to prepare the brightest students for todayís workforce. TalentPen was an instrumental partner for TMSFís Sixth Annual Leadership Institute, a November conference that prepares new graduates for corporate employment. Approximately 600 students attended the event, which featured an interactive Recruitment Conference to connect outstanding students with recruiting executives from Fortune 500 companies.

TalentPen was chosen by TMSF for its focus on developing a talent pool database, accessible to recruiters from companies supporting the foundation. TalentPen created a candidate profile collection system that integrated seamlessly with the Thurgood Marshall website. During the month before the conference, students went to the TMSF website and created profiles of their education, work preferences, and internship experience.

Supporting companies were given access to recruit from the candidate pool through TMSFís private TalentPen system, accessed directly on the web. These companies had individual account access for multiple recruiters to enter candidate qualifications, see matching candidates, and invite top matching candidates at the Leadership Conference to meet in person with company representatives.

The result culminated in record-breaking success among the number of live meetings between companies and students during the recruitment conference. Companies that participated included: Bank Of America, ATandT, General Mills, Aetna, Phillip Morris USA, Wal-Mart, Shell Oil, Freddie Mac, Nike, Verizon, MetLife, The NBA, Miller Brewing Co. and the CIA.

ìCompanies all over the country struggle with diversity,î explained Dwayne Ashley, president and chief executive officer of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund. ìA lot of it has to do with understanding the company culture when attaining and retaining candidates. TalentPen is a phenomenal program that allows companies and organizations to more efficiently screen (job candidates). The system sorts our data in a better, more efficient way and ranks candidates.î

ìThese schools serve as the major resource for corporate America to tap talented and well prepared African-Americans for critical management positions,î said Susan Govea, partner and vice president of marketing for TalentPen. ìWe are thrilled that TalentPen was an ideal solution for the Thurgood Marshall Fundís specific needs and for the companies that used our system to identify the candidates who best matched their needs and culture.î