Bain & Company, says partner Hernan Saenz, has always been a welcoming place for those of Latino origin. But he's working to take Bain's Latino initiatives to the next level, spearheading the new version of Latinos@Bain, a once informal network that now is charged with formal recruiting and mentoring efforts. "The program's mission is to make Bain & Company the best career for Latino business talent," he says. And the program is certain to have staying power. "Is this passing fad? Look at the statistics—one-fourth of the children in the United States under the age of five is of Hispanic origin. The population is becoming more diverse every day. And it means that firms will need diverse workforces to understand their customers better." Saenz recently spoke with Consulting about Latinos@Bain. Consulting: Tell me about Latinos@Bain.
Saenz: Latinos@Bain has always existed at the company. It mostly had been an informal network for many years. We knew each other, we helped recruit additional Latinos, we coached, mentored each other. The growth of Bain and the success of that informal network of Latinos has essentially led to a very large group. And I think at all levels we recognize that operating as an informal network would have less impact than actually formalizing some of these initiatives. And so as we were having one of our many Latinos@Bain conversations informally, we realized that from the top, starting with myself, but also with groundswell support, there was a desire to actually formalize the group.
Consulting: What kind of participation are you seeing?
Saenz: [The network has members of] both Latino and Hispanic heritage but also there are some who do not have Latino or Hispanic heritage. Membership is significant. It is across all of our North American offices and across all of the levels of the organization, so [employees] from entry-level associates to the partner ranks are members of the organization.
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Consulting: At what point would a new employee know about the organization?
Saenz: In fact, before they become an employee. When we are on campus, we are very active with Latino and Hispanic clubs. We don't only identify ourselves as Bain, but we identify as a group within Bain. My sense is that part of our success in hiring many Latinos to Bain at all levels of the organization is based on the fact that we develop relationships very early with them.
Consulting: What does being in the network involve?
Saenz: On one hand we have a set of initiatives: recruiting initiatives on campus, a mentorship program, an internal community that has a global footprint but also exists in every local office, and there's community service that's done on a local level. So any member of the organization can expect to participate in all of those.
Consulting: What are your plans for the future of Latinos@Bain?
Saenz: The plans are very aggressive. We have very aggressive plans in terms of recruiting. We hope to have our first global conference later this year. Each local office has begun to think about how they want to make an impact in their local community and that will be launched at the end of this year. In the end, what we would like is more Latinos coming to Bain; we would like Latinos to stay longer at Bain; we want Latinos to become the leaders at Bain and create the cycle again of helping us recruit more and in doing that create a community internally and serve our local Latino community.
Consulting: What kind of feedback are you getting?
Saenz: What we launched Latinos@Bain, we immediately sought feedback and ideas from the broad Bain community. I was surprised with the overwhelming amount of energy and enthusiasm. People were just delighted that there was even one more set of initiatives where they could actually be active in the firm as a community and help grow the community. In fact, a lot of the feedback was: What can I do? How can I take a leadership role? How can I be part of the success of Bain & Company? I think Latinos have always appreciated the informal networks because it's a very tightly knit community, but I think they were even more energized by the formal initiatives.
Consulting: How are you measuring success?
Saenz: At Bain, the key metric is always results. We will literally measure the number of Latinos coming to Bain at every level. We will measure their tenure; we will measure how many of them have a leadership position. We will also as we do at Bain with many of our other initiatives, survey our members regularly to get feedback on what is going well, where are they getting value and what else we could do to make their careers better.
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