HispanicBusiness

A growing Hispanic workforce has inspired a new book focused on Corporate America's human resource departments, and how they can better understand members of the largest U.S. minority group.

"HR and the New Hispanic Workforce" (Society for Human Resource Management and Davies-Black Publishing, $38.95) is marketed as a "comprehensive guide to cultivating and leveraging employee success" for human resource professionals. To underscore its importance, the book cites census numbers that point to an expanding Hispanic workforce and studies that show the effects human resource management has on a company's success.

Authors Louis E.V. Nevaer and Vaso Perimenis Ekstein, a veteran HR executive, cover topics such as Hispanic recruitment tips, benefit program changes that account for differing values and needs of Hispanic workers, and the need for quantitative tools for meaningful performance reviews.

Among the recruitment tips, the book offers insight into the cultural and linguistic obstacles Hispanic candidates sometimes encounter, and it examines the reasons why their interview performance can be weaker than that of non-Hispanic candidates. The book details nontraditional screening methods that can be used to identify qualified candidates.

The authors divided the book into five sections that feature research-based data along with real-life examples from the corporate world. It also contains a host of checklists, questionnaires, interview questions, HR guidelines and a summary of key lessons at the end of every chapter.