As the holiday season approaches, so do the holiday parties. These events bring up mixed feelings for most of us. In a way, look forward to the parties, anticipating that they'll be at least a little bit fun, but there is also so much to do around this time of year, and extra social events can feel like a waste of time. But, holiday parties are actually rife with opportunity – not just to enjoy ourselves, but to do a little professional networking while we're at it.

Here are some tips for networking at holiday parties:

1. First thing first – show up.

Never say no to a holiday party invitation, especially if you're looking for work right now. Instead, go to all of them, and bring your best self along with you. Talk to the hosts beforehand about who will be attending, and make a point to introduce yourself around once you've arrived. These parties can be great networking opportunities, but you have to be there in order to reap the potential rewards. READ MORE AT PAYSCALE HUMAN CAPITAL

The number of Mexican immigrants entering the United States has been on the decline in recent years. But one group of immigrants is bucking the trend: entrepreneurs.

Elizabeth Salamanca Pacheco teaches international business at Universidad de las Américas Puebla, one of the leading private universities in Mexico. This past summer, as a visiting scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute, Salamanca conducted a series of interviews with Mexican entrepreneurs who had immigrated to Houston.

“We tend to assume that all these people are going to [the] United States due to insecurity, and it’s true that insecurity is a main push factor, but it’s not the only one,” Salamanca says. READ MORE AT HOUSTON PUBLIC MEDIA

Over the next four weeks, American shoppers will spend billions on holiday gifts, and advertisers will spend nearly as much trying to convince them to buy their products. It’s important then for media buyers and planners to understand who they’re targeting and choose their media mix accordingly.

New research from Geometry Global, an agency focused on shopper marketing, shows how important it is to target different demographic groups in different ways. The most important thing media people should understand is when a minority group, such as Hispanics, behaves the same as the mainstream versus when cultural considerations become the driving force in a purchase. The study finds that Hispanic shoppers consider shopping a social experience.

They are more likely to try different brands than other demographics, but they dislike feeling uncertain about their purchases or their shopping choices. At the same time, they consider themselves as much American as they do Latino, and so advertising should reflect that dual identity. READ MORE AT MEDIALIFE

Christmas parties aren’t just about mistletoe and eggnog, they’re also a great time for networking.

Whether you are recently unemployed or looking to climb the corporate ladder, Global News is getting advice on how to take advantage of holiday celebrations from professionalism expert Sue Jacques.

Do your research

Get familiar with the party you’re attending before you even walk through the door. “If we prepare in advance, we’re a lot more confident when we walk in the room because we know what to expect,” says Jacques. READ MORE AT GLOBAL NEWS

There’s no doubt that Hispanics are important c-store customers. But convenience operators are not alone in their quest to entice the fastest-growing ethnic group through their doors; grocery, mass-merchant, warehouse/club and drug-store retailers are also targeting Hispanic consumers.

But you do have an edge: Ninety-two percent of Hispanics visit c-stores once a month or more, compared with 87% of the general population, according to an exclusive CSP/Technomic survey released earlier this year.

So we’ve got this group covered, right? Not so fast. C-stores are near the bottom of their list of retail outlets for sourcing a category widely recognized as a strategic imperative for the convenience industry: foodservice. READ MORE AT CPSNET.COM

Hispanics are pioneers in mobile health adoption and will become primary care’s consumer mavericks, according to a new report from PwC’s Health Research Institute (HRI). In the report, “Primary Care in the New Health Economy: Time for a Makeover,” HRI finds Hispanics have adopted mobile health at a faster rate than non- Hispanics, as many other patients are still slow to e-mail their physician or refill a prescription by text message.

Hispanics: Primary care’s consumer mavericks

Hispanics are the fastest-growing US demographic—expected to double in size by 2050—presents enormous possibilities for the market with an estimated $1.5 trillion in purchasing power and a willingness to go outside of the traditional parameters of the primary care system to find better value. This exodus from the traditional system offers lucrative possibilities for health industry veterans and new entrants looking to test innovative approaches. READ MORE AT HIT

That videos resonate with people across age groups is well-known. But what’s really fascinating — and yet widely unexplored — is the cultural connection between users and online videos.

A new survey conducted by Facebook IQ throws up some interesting insights about how demographics are responding to videos posted on the site.

According to the survey, users who identify themselves as U.S. Hispanic, African-American or Asian-American are 1.3-times more likely than average users to say that video helps them stay connected with their culture.
Digging Into the Numbers

The findings reveal a close connection between cultural influences and video consumption. Some of the key highlights are: READ MORE AT SMALL BUSINESS TRENDS

Camino Financial is an online lending marketplace primarily focused on deploying capital to the largest and fastest growing underbanked business segment in the U.S., Hispanic-owned businesses. With the emergence of many new online lenders and credit marketplaces, Camino Financial expects to carve a sizeable niche in online business lending. Recently published research by Geoscape estimates that 4.1 million U.S. based businesses are owned by Hispanics. Based on this research, Hispanic-owned businesses grew 15x faster in 2012-15E compared to all U.S. firms. Despite their size and growth profile, Hispanic-owned businesses struggle to get access to bank loans with approximately 6% of SBA 7(a)1 loans deployed to Hispanics in the last year (source: www.SBA.gov).

Camino Financial was co-founded by twin brothers, Sean and Kenny Salas, while completing their MBAs at Harvard Business School. READ MORE AT PRNEWSWIRE

Whether you're looking to find yourself in a book or lose yourself in a story, there's a colorful and magical literary world to explore through the lens of Latino authors.

You can discover the magic in reality with Gabriel García Márquez, the wonders of love with Pablo Neruda and the power of identity with Sandra Cisneros -- to name a few.

With that in mind, we asked The Huffington Post newsroom to share a book by a Latino author that shaped their life or simply became a favorite. So if you want to find inspiring words between the pages of your next literary obsession, you're in luck.

Here are 23 books by Latino authors that should be on your must-read list:

1. How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez READ MORE AT HUFFINGTONPOST

http://www.eventbrite.com/e/national-black-and-latino-2015-power-player-holiday-saludo-tickets-19529718915?aff=efblike

National Black and Latino 2015 Power Player Holiday Saludo National Black and Latino Council Tuesday, December 15, 2015 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (EST) Atlanta, GA

A record number of students from around the world came to the U.S. to study last year. In all, the U.S. hosted 974,926 international students in the 2014-2015 school year – a 10 percent increase from the previous year, according to a report released today.

As in previous years, Asian nations were the top three countries of origin for U.S. international students.​ Chinese students alone made up 31 percent of all international students in the U.S.,​ according to the 2015 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, ​an annual survey from the Institute of International Education​ in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. India and South Korea rounded out the top three countries sending students to the U.S.

But the flow of international students from another region of the world stood out: Latin America​ and the Caribbean. READ MORE AT U.S. WORLD & NEWS REPORT

Laura Jimenez knew she was worth more than she was making, so she started her own business to prove it.

The Texas native opened Rockville, Maryland-based FireClean, an emergency cleaning and restoration service, in 1996 at the age of 27 after doing similar jobs for others. Jimenez took pride in the quality of her work and thought becoming her own boss would strengthen her family’s finances and allow more time with the children.

Employers “were not paying me what I was supposed to get paid,” Jimenez said. Even though the work is difficult and the hours long -- her current crew of six is on-call nights and weekends -- Jimenez says, “I love what I do.”

While the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce projects the number of Latino-owned firms like Jimenez’s will top 4 million this year and funnel $661 billion dollars into the economy, they lag behind in average number of employees and annual revenue, and suffer from a higher failure rate. Boosting their sales to match the U.S. average for non-Latino businesses would have added $1.38 trillion, or 8.5 percent, to gross domestic product in 2012, according to research issued Wednesday by Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. READ MORE AT BLOOMBERG BUSINESS

Compared to other immigrant groups? No. Compared to their parents? Yes.

Immigration to the U.S. is, at its heart, about one thing: the search for a better life—the search for better safety, work, and education, for the immigrants themselves and for their children and their children’s children.

In 2015, the Hispanic population in the U.S. reached a high of 55 million. With that, the group now represents about 17 percent of the total population, and numbers are still growing. A recent blog post from Nathan Joo and Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution takes a look at how this demographic is faring economically. Are they finding that better life? Will their children?

The data are mixed. READ MORE AT THE ATLANTIC

Latinos are the fastest growing group of people 65 and older in the U.S. today. And the number of elderly Latinos with dementia is growing, too. Already, there aren’t enough bilingual, bicultural services to go around. That means increasingly, Latinos are going to have to leave work and other responsibilities to care for ailing family members.

Luis Sierra was already retired when his wife started to need care. That’s not typically the case, said Caroline Gelman, a social worker who does research on Latinos and Alzheimer’s at Hunter College in New York.

“While most caregivers for other groups, particularly white groups, tend to be the spouse, in Latino populations, they often are adult children,” Gelman explained. “That means that they have many competing obligations: work, their own families, their own children.”

A Met Life study found that caregivers 50 and older who leave the work force to care for a family member lose about $300,000 in income and benefits over a lifetime. To keep working, caregivers need adult daycare for their relatives, counseling, and other services. But those often aren’t available in Spanish, Gelman says. READ MORE AT MARKETPLACE

What’s the largest driver of U.S. economic growth these days? Media attention is focused mostly on high tech and the oil-shale boom, but a new study from Stanford draws attention to a largely overlooked factor: a huge surge in the number of businesses being formed by Latino entrepreneurs.

Latinos in the United States owned an estimated 3.3 million businesses in 2012, nearly triple the 1.2 million of 1997, according to Census Bureau data. By contrast, the tally for non-Latino-owned businesses has stayed largely flat. Less than a third of that growth can be explained by a rising Latino or Hispanic population; the bulk of it reflects a step-up in business formation rates.

“Latinos have not been a drag on the U.S. economy,” said David Rivers, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, who is leading new research by the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative (SLEI). “It’s more the reverse. A weak economy is holding back Latinos.” READ MORE AT FORBES

The name Napa Valley conjures iconic images of vines, majestic chateaus and a gastronomic paradise. The concentration of talent, vines and a near-perfect climate have made it a mecca for winemakers and wine drinkers alike. As you drive up Highway 29 or over onto the Silverado trail, there is a dizzying array of wineries, one after the other.

With such a high concentration of wineries, it seems impossible to be noticed and easy to be lost in a sea of phenomenal producers. But there is a group of winemakers in Napa that is gaining recognition for serious wines with great history and stories.

In the vineyards, much of the work is done by a Hispanic workforce. A number of today’s top vineyard managers are the second generation, the children of workers who tended to the vines. Today there is a legacy of Hispanic talent that has emerged in this highly competitive marketplace. These winemakers did not have massive fortunes or palatial wineries, but instead a history of growing grapes and making exceptional wines. These are the sons and daughters of the Mexican workforce that supports the California wine industry. READ MORE AT THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

Networking is a skill that's critical for career advancement. While talking to strangers and approaching new people are challenging for most people, those tasks can be especially difficult for introverts.

Jacqueline Whitmore, an etiquette expert and author of "Poised for Success: Mastering The Four Qualities That Distinguish Outstanding Professionals" (St. Martin's Press, 2011), said that networking can be challenging for introverts because they are often better at listening than they are at making conversation with strangers. READ MORE AT MASHABLE

These companies achieved the highest scores among Hispanic and Latino employees, who were asked about fairness of promotions, opportunities for advancement and professional development, access to senior leadership, the feeling of honest connection with colleagues, and how comfortable they feel being themselves at work. READ MORE AT FORTUNE

Undertreatment of high cholesterol is a major problem among Hispanics in the United States, a new study finds.

The research, to be presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Fla., found that only one-third to one-half of Hispanics who could benefit from cholesterol-lowering statin drugs were taking them.

One heart expert wasn't surprised by the finding.

"The result of this study is another clear demonstration of the extent of how disparities in health care access affect Hispanic patients," said Dr. Johanna Paola Contreras, an assistant professor of medicine and cardiology at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.

Researchers assessed the need for treatment of high cholesterol among more than 16,400 Hispanic adults, and found that only about 10 percent were taking statins. READ MORE AT HEALTH DAY

The size of the Hispanic workforce is at an all-time high, Latinos are more college educated than ever.

But despite this, Hispanic families brought in less income and have less wealth than they did two decades ago.

In other words, all the college degrees earned by Hispanics over the last two decades have not led to long term wealth, government data shows. What’s more, Latinos with degrees got hit harder by the recession than those without.

While the U.S. job market relies on Latino employees more than ever before, with the Hispanic labor participation rate up 137 percent in 20 years, and the number of Latinos attending college more than tripling since 1996, according to Pew Research, the wealth gap continues to grow as income and wealth for Hispanic families is less today than it was in 1992. READ MORE AT FOX NEWS LATINO